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Mahmoud Darwis) (1942-2008))

Poet and journalist, an interpreter of the exile and hopes of the Palestinian pe
ople. Darwish's major theme in his poems is the fate of his homeland. He uses si
mple vocabulary and plain, recurrent images: an open wound ('wound that fights')
, blood ('we will write our names in crimson vapor'), mirrors ('shape of the sou
l in a mirror'), stones ('my words were stones'), and weddings. Darwish often ad
dresses the reader arguing fiercely, defending, and pleading, as a prophetic voi
ce from a large supporting choir.
"Sister, there are tears in my throat
and there is fire in my eyes:
I am free.
No more shall I protest at the Sultan's Gate.
All who have died, all who shall die at the Gate of Day
have embraced me, have made of me a weapon."
(from 'Diary of a Palestinian wound')
Mahmoud Darwish was born into a landowning Sunni Muslim family in al-Barwe, a vi
llage east of Acre. After the war of 1948, the Israelis occupied the village, an
d Darwish with his family became refugees. When a new Jewish settlement was buil
t on Barweh's ruins, the family settled to another Arab village, where Darwish g
rew up. This experience, uprootedness, marked later deeply Darwish's life. After
graduating from a secondary school, Darwish moved to Haifa. He worked in journa
lism and in 1961 he joined the Israeli Communist Party, Rakah, and edited for so
me time Rakah's newspaper, Al-Ittihad. During these years he experienced impriso
nment and house arrest.
Darwish studied in 1970 at a university in Moscow, USSR. He left in 1971 Israel
and settled in Beirut, Lebanon, where he worked for the PLO and edited the month
ly Shu'un Filistiniyya, Palestinian Affairs. Later he was appointed editor-in-ch
ief of the Palestinian literary and cultural periodical, Al-Karmel. When Israel
invaded Lebanon in 1982, the PLO abandoned its headquarters there and Darwish mo
ved to Cyprus. He was elected to the PLO executive in 1987. Darwish wrote in 198
8 the official Palestinian declaration of independence but five years later he r
esigned from his post in opposition to the the Oslo Agreement, which earned in 1
994 the Nobel Peace Price to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin for
their efforts to create peace in the Middle East. Darwish demand a tougher stand
in the negotiations with Israel. In March 2000 Ehud Barak's government faced a
political crisis following a proposal by the education minister to include Darwi
sh's poems in the school curriculum. In 2001 Darwish reveived the Prize for Cult
ural Freedom established by Lannan Foundation.
Darwish started to write poems while still at school. His first collection appea
red in 1960 when he was only nineteen. With the second collection, Awraq al-zayt
un (1964), he gained a reputation as one of the leading poets of the resistance.
The work dealt with two general topic: love and politics. Gradually the love fo
r a woman transformed in subsequent works into a unbreakable union between the p
oet and his homeland. "Her words and her silence, Palestinian, / Her voice, Pale
stinian, / Her birth and her death, Palestinian." (from 'The Lover') Qasidat Bay
rut (1982) and Madih al-xill al'ali (1983) took their subject from the Palestini
an resistance to the Israeli siege of Beirut during the summer of 1982. Beirut w
as bombed almost constantly from 13 June to 12 August to drive the PLO guerrilla
s out of the city. In English Darwish's anguished account of the invasion was pu
blished in Memory for Forgetfulness (1995). The text is fragmented, like a broke
n mirror. "To whom shall I offer my innocent silence?" asks the poet on the war-
raveged streets, walking slowly, "that a jet fighter may not miss me." Images ar
e nightmarish, the poet no longer waits for the end of the steely howling from t
he sea. In the middle of the infernal dawn, the writer says that "sleep is peace
. Sleep is a dream, born out of a dream."
"The sea is walking in the streets. The sea is dangling from windows and the bra
nches of shriveled trees. The sea drops from the sky and comes into the room. Bl
ue, white, foam, waves. I don't like the sea. I don't want the sea, because I do
n't see a shore, or a dove. I see in the sea nothing excerpt the sea." (from Mem
ory for Forgetfulness)
Darwish has received several awards for his work, including the 1969 Lotus Prize
by the Union of Afro-Asian Writers, the Lenin Peace Prize in 1983, France's Kni
ghthood of Arts and Belles Lettres in 1997, the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedo
m in 2001, and Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings in 2007. Many of his hero
ic poems have become popular as songs. In 1999 the well-known musician Marcel Kh
alifeh was brought before the Beirut Court on charges of blasphemy. The charges
related to his song entitled 'I am Yusuf, my father', which was based on Darwish
's poem and cited a verse from the Qur'an. In this poem Darwish shared the pain
of Yusuf (Joseph), who was rejected by his brothers. "Oh my father, I am Yusuf /
Oh father, my brothers neither love me nor want me in their midst". Darwish has
also used the lamentations Isaiah and Jeremiah from the Old Testament, to conde
mn injustice.
Darwish has described the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis as "a strug
gle between two memories." Ibrahim Muhawi, his translator, has written that "his
is a poetry of witnessing." In 1988 Darwish's doubtful poem 'Those Who Pass Fle
eting Words' upset his Israeli readers, who considered it a call for the destruc
tion of Jews. "O those who pass between fleeting words / It is time for you to b
e gone / Live wherever you like, but do not live among us / It is time for you t
o be gone / Die wherever you like, but do not die among us". Darwish himself has
admitted that the poem was too slogan-like.
Darwish led somewhat nomadic life. He lived in Lebanon, Cyprus, Tunisia, Jordan,
and France. In 1996, after 26 years of exile, Darwish returned to Israel and vi
sited his native village again. Since the mid-1990s, his home was in Ramallah, a
central West Bank Palestinian town, where Yasser Arafat had his headquarters, a
nd which became again a battlefield in 2002, when it was was reoccupied by Israe
li army. Darwish died on August 9, 2008, in the Memorial Hermann Hospital in Hou
ston, Texas, after undergoing open-heart surgery. Darwish was married twice, he
had no children.
For further reading: Mahmoud Darwish, Exile's Poet: Critical Essays by Hala Kh N
assar and Najat Rahman (2006); Passage to a New Wor(L)D: Exile & Restoration in
Mahmoud Darwish's Writings 1960-1995 by Anette Mansson (2003); Encyclopedia of W
orld Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 1, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Th
en Palestine by Larry Towell et al. (1999); Modern Arabic Poetry, ed. by Salma K
hadra Jayyusi (1987) - For further information: - Mahmoud Darwish (poetry) - Mah
moud Darwish (Encyclopaedia of the Orient) - BIRZEIT NEWS ("... the footprints o
f occupation are beautiful when they are in a museum") - 'Sareer Al Gharibah' -
Arab Poetry - Mahmoud Darwish (Humboldt State University) - 'Those Who Pass Flee
ting Words' - Al-Karmel
Selected bibliography:
Asafir bila ajniha, 1960
Awraq Al-Zaytun, 1964
Ashiq min filastin, 1966 - A Lover from Palestine
Akhir al-layl, 1967
Yawmiyyat jurh filastini, 1969
al-'Asafir tamut fi al-jalil, 1970
al-Kitabah 'ala dhaw'e al-bonduqiyah, 1970
Shay' 'an al-watan, 1971
Works, 1971 (2 vols.)
Mattar na'em fi kharif ba'eed, 1971
Uhibbuki aw la uhibbuki, 1972
Selected Poems, 1973 (transl. by Ian Wedde and Fawwaz Tuqan)
Yawmiyyat al-huzn al-'adi, 1973
Muhawalah raqm 7, 1974
Wada'an ayatuha al-harb, wada'an ayuha al-salaam, 1974
Splinters of Bone, 1974 (transl. by B.M. Bennani) - Ahmad al-za'tar, 1976 (bilin
gual edition, transl. by Rana Kabbani)
Tilka suratuha wa-hadha intihar al-ashiq, 1975
Ahmad al-za'tar, 1976
A'ras, 1977
The Music of Human Flesh, 1980 (ed. and transl.by Denys Johnson-Davis)
Qasidat Bayrut, 1982
Madih al-zill al-'ali, 1983
Hissar li-mada'eh al-bahr, 1984
Victims of a Map: A Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry by Samih al-Qasim, Adon
is, and Mahmud Darwish, 1984 (trans. by Abdullah al-Udhari)
Ward aqal, 1985
Sand and Other Poems, 1986 (ed. and transl. by Rana Kabbani)
Hiya ughniyah, 1986
Dhakirah li-al-nisyan, 1986 - Memory of Forgetfulness (transl. by Ibrahim Muhawi
)
Fi wasf halatina, 1987 (with Samih al-Qasim)
Ma'asat al-narjis, malhat al-fidda, 1989
al-Rasa'il, 1990 (with Samih al-Qasim)
Aabiroon fi kalamen 'aaber, 1991
Ahad 'asher kaukaban, 1992
From Beriut, 1993
Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982, 1995
Psalms, 1995 (trans. by Ben Bennani)
Flowers of Palestine, 1997
Sareer El Ghariba, 1998
Then Palestine, 1999 (with Larry Towell, photographer, and Rene Backmann)
Jidariyya, 2000
The Adam of Two Edens: Selected Poems, 2001 (ed. by Munir Akash and Daniel Moore
)
Halat Hissar, 2002
La ta'tazer 'amma fa'alt, 2003
Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems, 2003 (trans.by Munir Akash, Caro
lyn Forché, Sinan Antoon, Amira El-Zein)
al-A'amal al-jadida, 2004
al-A'amal al-oula, 2005 (3 vols.)
Fi hadrat al-ghiyab, 2006
The Butterfly's Burden, 2006 (trans. by Fady Joudah)
Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? 2006 (trans. by Jeffrey Sacks)