[News] Mahmoud Darwish - In the presence of Absence

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.mahmouddarwish.com/english/index.htm

In the presence of Absence

Mahmoud Darwish has quietly left us on Saturday 9 
August 2008 after 67 years of a life jumping from 
one peak to another, rising higher every time, 
transcending his own successes. He was a 
beautiful human being, able to see what no one 
else can see: in life, politics, and even people, 
expressing his visions in a language that seems 
to be made only for him to write with. When he 
decided to take on this difficult surgery we 
thought that he can beat death, like he did 
several times before
 but he, it seems, with his 
prophetic insight, could clearly see his “ghost coming from afar”.
He wanted to surprise death rather than wait for 
the “time bomb” that was his artery to explode 
unannounced
 he went prepared, as he always is, 
leaving us behind to “nurture hope”.

Mahmoud Darwish

Darwish is considered to be the most important 
contemporary Arab poet working today. He was born 
in 1942 in  the village of Barweh in the Galilee, 
which was razed to the ground by the Israelis in 
1948. As a result of his politi-cal activism he 
faced house arrest and imprisonment. Darwish was 
the editor of Ittihad Newspaper before leaving in 
1971 to study for a year in the USSR. Then he 
went to Egypt where he worked in Cairo for 
Al-Ahram Newspaper and in Beirut, Lebanon as an 
editor of the Journal “Palestinian Issues”. He 
was also the director of the Palestinian Research 
Center. Darwish was a member of the Executive 
Committee of the PLO and lived in exile between Beirut
and Paris until his return in 1996 to Palestine. 
His poems are known throughout the Arab world, 
and  several of them have been put to music. His 
poetry has gained great sophistication over the 
years, and has enjoyed international fame for a 
long time. He has published around 30 poetry and 
prose  collections, which have been translated 
into 35 languages. He is the editor in chief and 
founder   of the prestigious literary review Al 
Karmel, which has resumed publication in January 
1997 out of the Sakakini Centre offices. He 
published in 1998 the poetry collection: Sareer 
el Ghariba (Bed of the Stranger), his first 
collection of love poems. In 2000 he published 
Jidariyya (Mural) a book consisting of one poem 
about his near death experience in 1997. In 1997 
a documentary was produced about him by French TV 
directed by noted French-Israeli director Simone 
Bitton. He is a commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters.

Muhamoud Darwish is the winner of 2001 Lannan 
Prize for Cultural Freedom. The prize recognizes 
people whose extraordinary and courageous work 
celebrates the human right to freedom of 
imagination, inquiry, and expression. As defined 
by the foundation, cultural freedom is the right 
of individuals and communities to define and 
protect valued and diverse ways of life currently threatened by globalization.

In  the words of poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Mr. 
Darwish is “the Essential Breath of the 
Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile 
and belonging, exquisitely tuned singer of images 
that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light 
into the world’s whole heart. What he speaks has 
been embraced by readers around the world – his 
in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered.”

Mr. Darwish published his first book of poetry, 
Leaves of Olives, in 1964, at the age of 22. 
Since then, he has published more than twenty 
poetry books, including The Adam of Two Edens, 
Mural, Why Have you Left the Horse Alone, and 
Eleven Planets. The University of California 
Press has published his prose work, Memory For 
Forgetfulness. In 2000, Gallimard published the 
latest French anthology of his work and, in 2002, 
a new English translation of Mr. Darwish’s 
Selected Poems will be published in the United 
States.Among his accomplishments is the 1969 
Lotus Prize and 30 compilations of poetry and prose.


  Mahmoud Darwish: The Expropriated Poet


To a reader: Do not trust the poem –
The daughter of absence
It is neither intuition nor is it
Thought
But rather, the sense of the abyss


                                                (State of Siege)

Born on 13 March 1941 in Al Birweh, a quaint 
village in the Galilee, Mahmoud Darwish went on 
to live a life that is a poignant example of how 
far talent and determination, combined with a 
precarious life, can carry an individual from a 
simple background into the international halls of 
fame. At the early age of seven, Darwish and his 
family were forced to flee to Lebanon to escape 
the ongoing massacres by the Israeli Army as it 
occupied Palestine and, in the process, destroyed 
the poet’s village (in addition to over 400 other 
Palestinian villages). Returning “illegally” to 
their country the following year, he and his 
family were subjected to military rule and 
emergency regulations of the State of Israel 
established over expropriated Palestinian 
land.  They were given the status of 
“present-absent alien,” a status that will mark 
the poet from that point onwards, preventing him 
from ever finding his homeland, except in his 
language and his ever-loving audience.

It was as early as 1950 that the poet first 
realized how the poem can be “a threat to the 
sword” as he was harassed by the Israeli military 
governor for writing and reciting poetry that 
expressed his strong sense of Arab and 
Palestinian identity. These “harassments” were to 
continue until 1970 when he left to Moscow and 
then to Egypt, to finally settle for a while in 
Beirut until the Israeli invasion in 1982. After 
Beirut he became a “wondering exile” in Arab 
capitals, settling in Paris for a while, then 
Amman, and finally Ramallah, moving a step closer 
to the home which he still cannot reach. The circle is not yet complete
.

“There is no age sufficient for me

to pull my end to my beginning.”

(Mural)

His life in the exodus somehow helped to ignite 
the poetic flame within him and exile became one 
of the sources of his literary creation. However, 
despite his geographic separation from his 
homeland, Darwish continued over the years to 
disrupt the status quo in Israel through the 
medium of poetry. In 1988, his widely circulated 
militant poem “Passers by in Passing Words,” a 
poem that he does not think highly of in literary 
terms but that nevertheless was met with great 
acclaim amongst the Arab public, was cause for a 
great uproar in Israeli circles, both the right 
and left wing alike. A book in French entitled 
“Palestine Mon Pays: L’affaire du Poeme,” 
published by Les Editions de Minuit in 1988, 
documents some of the articles that were written 
in defence of Darwish and his poem. In a similar 
manner, but this time in March 2000, Yossi Sarid, 
then the minister of education in Israel, 
suggested the inclusion of Darwish’s poetry in 
the Israeli high school curriculum. This 
suggestion resulted in a very close no-confidence 
vote for the Barak government.

The year 2000 witnessed the publication of 
Darwish’s twentieth book of poetry, Mural, a 
masterpiece epic poem which synthesizes his 
experience and poetry spanning 36 years as he 
contemplated impending “eternity” in a hospital 
bed after having undergone life-threatening 
surgery in 1998. In addition, he has five books 
of prose, and his work has been translated into more than 22 languages.

His most recent translations in English, “Mahmoud 
Darwish: Adam of Two Edens” (Jusoor and Syracuse 
University Press, 2000) and “The Raven’s Ink: A 
Chapbook” (Lannan Foundation, 2001) include a 
host of Darwish’s most acclaimed poems written 
between 1984 and 1999. Even though “he is known 
the world over as the poet of Palestine,” as 
Margaret Obank says in her review of “The Adam of 
Two Edens,” Darwish’s poetry “has been published 
only sparingly in English.” These two volumes are 
an excellent introduction, in English, to this 
poet who is considered to be “indisputably among 
the greatest of our century’s poets.” (Carolyne Forche)

It is perhaps Darwish’s very special relationship 
to the Arabic language that has set him apart 
from other Arab poets of his time. Putting the 
political cause aside, a double-edged sword in 
the case of the poet’s literary career, Darwish 
has created a new zone in the Arabic language 
that he can call his own: he constructs his 
kingdom – homeland in language. Considered by one 
prominent Arab literary critics as “the saviour 
of the Arabic language,” Darwish manages to 
describe mundane events and uncover his (and his 
people’s) innermost feelings through words 
juxtaposed in the most idiosyncratic of contexts, 
creating fascinating new images. The symbols, 
metaphors, and style in his poetry are carefully 
chosen; yet at the same time they reflect an 
integrity and clairvoyance that are a unique 
characteristic of this writer. A number of his 
poems have even been called “prophetic.” With his 
artistic intuition and acute political common 
sense, he manages to see and read what very few 
people can. When that understanding finds its way 
into a poem, it gains a totally new significance 
to the readers, because it usually is an 
expression of what they fear most but are unable to utter.

This is true of his character even in politics. 
In 1993, when Darwish resigned from the PLO 
executive committee to protest the Oslo Accords, 
he could see at the time, as very few people 
within the PLO could, that there was a structural 
problem with the accord itself that would only 
pave the way for escalation. “I hoped I was 
wrong. I’m very sad that I was right.” (New York Times interview)

His relationship to language remains unsurpassed 
by any relationship he has with anyone or 
anything. Having a special talent for uncovering 
and creating the music in language, his poetry 
has been a fertile ground for musicians all over 
the Arab world to compose the most beautiful and 
popular of songs. The fact that his words 
translate so easily and splendidly into musical 
lyrics resulted in a wide array of beautiful 
songs that are as much a credit to the poet as they are to the musicians.

Choosing to spend most of his time during the 
recent Palestinian Intifada in Ramallah, under 
siege, Darwish wrote three extraordinary poems of 
resistance slightly reminiscent of his early 
poetry. “Mohammad,” “ The Sacrifice” and “A State 
of Siege” were published in newspapers in 
Palestine and the Arab world during 2001 – 2002. 
The last one, “A State of Siege,” is currently 
being published in a book in Arabic, to become 
Darwish’s 21st book of poetry. In this last poem, 
he describes the siege of Ramallah and the 
Palestinian land in profound images that invoke 
daily life in a vivid and multi-layered way:

A woman asked the cloud: please enfold my loved one

My clothes are soaked with his blood

If you shall not be rain, my love

Be trees

Saturated with fertility, be trees

And if you shall not be trees, my love

Be a stone

Saturated with humidity, be a stone

And if you shall not be a stone, my love

Be a moon

In the loved one’s dream, be a moon

So said a woman to her son

In his funeral

He goes on to add:


During the siege, time becomes a space


That has hardened in its eternity

During the siege, space becomes a time

That is late for its yesterday and tomorrow

(A State of Siege)

Often called “the poet of the resistance,” and 
sometimes accused of writing in defence of 
Palestinian mainstream politics, Darwish still 
manages to constantly defy any strict definition 
of who and what he is or wants to be.  He wrote 
the Palestinian declaration of independence 
in1988 and many poems of resistance that are an 
integral part of every Arab’s consciousness. But 
he also wrote a lot about love and death; he 
wrote poems that can be easily understood, and 
others that are so mystifying that many critics 
could not begin to decipher. In all this, he 
remains confident in his open and honest 
relationship to his readers. “When I move closer 
to pure poetry, Palestinians say go back to what 
you were. But I have learned from experience that 
I can take my reader with me if he trusts me. I 
can make my modernity, and I can play my games if 
I am sincere.” (New York Times interview) This 
intricate relationship with his ever-increasing 
audience is best described in this excerpt:

Whenever I search for myself I find the others

And when I search for them

I only find my alien self

So am I the individual- crowd?

(Mural)

Darwish is the recipient of many international 
literary awards including the Lotus prize in 
1969, the Lenin prize in 1983, France’s highest 
medal as Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres in 
1997, and the Moroccan Wissam of intellectual 
merit handed to him by King Mohammad VI of 
Morocco. In 2001, he won the Lannan prize for 
cultural freedom. This prize recognizes people 
whose extraordinary and courageous work 
celebrates the human right to freedom of 
imagination, inquiry, and expression. As defined 
by the foundation, cultural freedom is the right 
of individuals and communities to define and 
protect valued and diverse ways of life currently threatened by globalisation.

His reputation all over the world as a highly 
esteemed poet and individual is partly due to the 
fact that Mahmoud Darwish affirms an open 
conception of what being an Arab is. Arab, to 
him, is not an identity closed unto itself, but a 
pluralism totally open unto others. In his 
oeuvres, he dialogues with a group of cultures 
(Canaanite, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Persian, 
Egyptian, Arab, French, English, Ottoman, Native 
American) as well as with myths of the three 
monotheistic religions. These dialogues create 
multiple layers within the poem that may be 
difficult to appreciate unless the reader can 
develop a full understanding of the “I”s and the “others” of the text.

When Darwish gives a poetry reading anywhere in 
the Arab world, a rare event, he easily draws 
thousands of people from all walks of life and 
social classes. It is as if he has become a 
personal possession, a national treasure, for 
every Arab, regardless of age, education, 
background, nationality, or religion. Now in 
translation perhaps he will also be embraced 
elsewhere in the world. No poet has been 
expropriated as Mahmoud Darwish has been over the 
past thirty years. No one realizes this more than him:

And history makes fun of its victims

And its heroes

Takes a look at them and passes by

This sea is mine

This moist air is mine

And my name-

Even if I spell it wrong on the coffin –

Is mine

As for me,

Now that I am filled with all the possible

Reasons for departure –

I am not mine.

I am not mine

I am not mine


(Mural)


Serene Huleileh.





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