Махмуд Дарвиш: Палестинский поэт и голос народа

Palestinian writer (1941–2008)

Mahmoud Darwish (مَحمُود دَرْوِيْش; 13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who was regarded as Palestine's national poet. In 1988, Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which was a declaration for the creation of a State of Palestine. Darwish won numerous awards for his works. Darwish used Palestine as a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. He has been described as incarnating and reflecting "the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry." He also served as an editor for several literary magazines in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in al Birwa in the Western Galilee, the second child of Salim and Houreyyah Darwish. His family were landowners. His mother was illiterate, but his grandfather taught him to read. to prevent its inhabitants from returning to their homes inside the new Jewish state. A year later, Darwish's family returned to the Acre area in Israel, and settled in Deir al Asad. Darwish attended high school in Kafr Yasif, two kilometers north of Jadeidi. He eventually moved to Haifa. He published his first book of poetry, Asafir bila ajniha, or "Wingless Birds," at the age of 19. He initially published his poems in Al Jadid, the literary periodical of the Israeli Communist Party, eventually becoming its editor. Later, he was assistant editor of Al Fajr, a literary periodical published by the Israeli Workers Party (Mapam). Darwish left Israel in 1970 to study in the Soviet Union (USSR). He attended the Lomonosov Moscow State University for one year, When he joined the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) in 1973, he was banned from reentering Palestine. That year Darwish was allowed to settle in Ramallah. The relationship was the subject of the film Write Down, I Am an Arab by filmmaker Ibtisam Mara'ana. Darwish had a history of heart disease, suffering a heart attack in 1984. He had two heart operations, in 1984 and 1998. There, he criticized the factional violence between Fatah and Hamas as a "suicide attempt in the streets."

Over his lifetime of 67 years, Darwish published more than 30 volumes of poetry and eight books of prose. At one time or another, he was editor of the periodicals Al Jadid, Al Fajr, Shu'un Filastiniyya, and Al Karmel. He was also one of the contributors of Lotus, a literary magazine financed by Egypt and the Soviet Union. By the age of seventeen, Darwish was writing poetry about the suffering of the refugees in the Nakba and the inevitability of their return, and had begun reciting his poems at poetry festivals. Seven years later, on 1 May 1965, when the young Darwish read his poem "Bitaqat huwiyya" ["Identity Card"] to a crowd in a Nazareth movie house, there was a tumultuous reaction. Within days the poem had spread throughout the country and the Arab world. Published in his second volume "Leaves of Olives" (Haifa, 1964), the six stanzas of the poem repeat the cry "Write down: I am an Arab." His 1966 "To My Mother" became an unofficial Palestinian anthem, and his 1967 poem "A Soldier Dreams Of White Lilies" about a conversation with a young Shlomo Sand as an Israeli soldier stirred debate due to its portrayal of the Israeli soldier. Darwish's poems were translated into Danish and published in various publications, including Politisk Revy. In the 1970s, "Darwish, as a Palestinian poet of the Resistance committed himself to the objective of nurturing the vision of defeat and disaster (after the June War of 1967), so much so that it would 'gnaw at the hearts' of the forthcoming generations." Darwish addressed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in Ward aqall [Fewer Roses] (1986) and "Sa ya'ti barabira akharun" ("Other Barbarians Will Come"). Darwish's work has won numerous awards and been published in 20 languages. A central theme in Darwish's poetry is the concept of watan or homeland. The poet Naomi Shihab Nye wrote that Darwish "is the essential breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging " Among his awards was the "Cultural Freedom Prize" by the United States Lannan Foundation, for the stated purpose of recognizing "people whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and expression."

Darwish's early writings are in the classical Arabic style. He wrote monorhymed poems adhering to the metrics of traditional Arabic poetry. In the 1970s he began to stray from these precepts and adopted a "free verse" technique that did not abide strictly by classical poetic norms. The quasi Romantic diction of his early works gave way to a more personal, flexible language, and the slogans and declarative language that characterized his early poetry were replaced by indirect and ostensibly apolitical statements, although politics was never far away.

Darwish was impressed by the Iraqi poets Abd al Wahhab Al Bayati and Badr Shakir al Sayyab. He cited Arthur Rimbaud and Allen Ginsberg as literary influences. Darwish wrote in Arabic, and also spoke English, French, and Hebrew. According to the Israeli author Haim Gouri, who knew him personally, Darwish's Hebrew was excellent. Four volumes of his poetry were translated into Hebrew by Muhammad Hamza Ghaneim: Bed of a Stranger (2000), Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (2000), State of Siege (2003), and Mural (2006). It has been suggested that the incident had more to do with internal Israeli politics in trying to damage Prime Minister Ehud Barak's government than with poetry. With the death of Darwish, the debate about including his poetry in the Israeli school curriculum was re opened in 2008. "Although it is now technically possible for Jewish students to study Darwish, his writing is still banned from Arab schools. The curriculum used in Arab education is one agreed in 1981 by a committee whose sole Jewish member vetoed any works he thought might 'create an ill spirit'." Darwish described Hebrew as a "language of love."

Darwish was a member of Rakah, the Israeli Communist Party, before joining the Palestine Liberation Organization in Beirut.

Darwish consistently demanded a "tough and fair" stand in negotiations with Israel. Despite his criticism of both Israel and the Palestinian leadership, Darwish believed that peace was attainable. "I do not despair," he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "I am patient and am waiting for a profound revolution in the consciousness of the Israelis. The Arabs are ready to accept a strong Israel with nuclear arms – all it has to do is open the gates of its fortress and make peace." "So leave our land/Our shore, our sea/Our wheat, our salt, our wound". Adel Usta, a specialist on Darwish's poetry, said the poem was misunderstood and mistranslated. Poet and translator Ammiel Alcalay wrote that "the hysterical overreaction to the poem simply serves as a remarkably accurate litmus test of the Israeli psyche (the poem) is an adamant refusal to accept the language of the occupation and the terms under which the land is defined."

In 2005, outdoor music and dance performances in Qalqiliya were suddenly banned by the Hamas led municipality, with authorities saying that such events were forbidden by Islam. The municipality also prohibited the playing of music in the Qualqiliya zoo. In response, Darwish warned that "There are Taliban type elements in our society, and this is a very dangerous sign." In July 2007, Darwish returned to Ramallah and visited Haifa for a festive event held in his honor; it was sponsored by Masharaf magazine and the Israeli Hadash party.

Many of Darwish's poems were set to music by Arab composers, among them Marcel Khalife, Reem Kelani, Majida El Roumi and Ahmad Qa'abour. The most notable are "Rita and the Rifle," "I lost a beautiful dream," "Birds of Galilee" and "I Yearn for my Mother's Bread." They have become anthems for at least two generations of Arabs. In the 1980s, Sabreen, a Palestinian music group in the 1948 territories, recorded an album including versions of Darwish's poems "On Man" and "On Wishes." The composer Marcel Khalife was accused of blasphemy and insulting religious values, because of his song entitled "I am Yusuf, oh my father," which he based on Darwish's lyrics, and which cited a verse from the Qur'an. In this poem, Darwish shared the pain of Yusuf (Joseph), who was rejected by his brothers and fear him, because he is too handsome and kind. "Oh my father, I am Yusuf / Oh father, my brothers neither love me nor want me in their midst." Darwish presents the story of Joseph as an allegory for the rejection of the Palestinians by the Israelis. Tamar Muskal, an Israeli American composer, incorporated Darwish's "I Am From There" into her composition "The Yellow Wind," which combines a full orchestra, Arabic flute, Arabic and Israeli poetry, and themes from David Grossman's book The Yellow Wind. In 2002, Swiss composer Klaus Huber completed a large work entitled "Die Seele muss vom Reittier steigen ", a chamber music concerto for cello, baritone and countertenor that incorporates Darwish's "The Soul Must Descend from its Mount and Walk on its Silken Feet." In 2008, Mohammed Fairouz set selections from State of Siege to music. In his third symphony Poems and Prayers of 2012, in addition to the lyrics of Mahmoud Darwish, poems by the Arab poet Fadwa Touqan and the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai are sounded. In 2011, the Syrian composer Hassan Taha created the musical play "The Dice Player", based on the poems and lyrics of Mahmoud Darwish. Their premiere took place at the experimental Center for Contemporary Music Gare du Nord in Basel, Switzerland. In 2014, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho set Darwish's poem "The Last Train Has Left" (from the collection Fewer Roses) within her work for baritone and orchestra True Fire, "a profound, important work" according to the L. A. Times. Inspired by the attempted suppression of Khalife's composition "I am Yusuf, oh my father," the Norwegian singer songwriter Moddi composed a fresh melody to the poem. The song is titled "Oh my father, I am Joseph," from his 2015 album Unsongs. In 2017, British musician Roger Waters set to music an English translation of Darwish's "Lesson From the Kama Sutra (Wait for Her)" on his album Is This the Life We Really Want? in a song titled "Wait for Her."

In 1997, a documentary entitled Mahmoud Darwish was produced by French TV, directed by French Moroccan director Simone Bitton. Darwish appeared as himself in Jean Luc Godard's Notre Musique (2004). In 2008 Darwish starred in the five screen film id – Identity of the Soul from Arts Alliance Productions, in which he narrates his poem "A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies" along with Ibsen's poem "Terje Vigen." Id was his final performance. It premiered in Palestine in October 2008, with audiences of tens of thousands. In 2010, the film was continuing an international screening tour. In 2009 Egin, a patchanka band from Italy, published a song setting the poem "Identity Card" to music. In 2016, his poem "We Were Without a Present" served as the basis for the central song, "Ya Reit" by Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar in the film "Junction 48". Additionally, one of his poems was read as part of Nafar's speech during the Ophir Awards. In 2017, his poem "Think of Others" was set to music by a South African artist and 11 year old Palestinian youth activist, Janna Jihad Ayyad.

Mahmoud Darwish died on 9 August 2008 at the age of 67, three days after heart surgery at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas. Before surgery, Darwish had signed a document asking not to be resuscitated in the event of brain death. According to Ibrahim Muhawi, the poet, though suffering from serious heart problems, did not require urgent surgery, and the day set for the operation bore a symbolic resonance. In his Memory for Forgetfulness, Darwish centered the narrative of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and 88 day siege of Beirut on 6 August 1982, which was the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. A new bomb had been deployed, which could collapse and level a 12 storey building by creating a vacuum. Darwish wrote: "On this day, on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb, they are trying out the vacuum bomb on our flesh and the experiment is successful." By his choice of that day for surgery, Muwahi suggests, Darwish was documenting: "the nothingness he saw laying ahead for the Palestinian people." Early reports of his death in the Arabic press indicated that Darwish had asked in his will to be buried in Palestine. Three locations were originally suggested; his home village of al Birwa, the neighboring village Jadeida, where some of Darwish's family still resides, or in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Ramallah Mayor Janet Mikhail announced later that Darwish would be buried next to Ramallah's Palace of Culture, at the summit of a hill overlooking Jerusalem on the southwestern outskirts of Ramallah, and a shrine would be erected in his honor. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning to honor Darwish and he was accorded the equivalent of a State funeral. A set of four postage stamps commemorating Darwish was issued in August 2008 by the PA. Arrangements for flying the body in from Texas delayed the funeral for a day. Darwish's body was then flown from Amman, Jordan for the burial in Ramallah. The first eulogy was delivered by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to an orderly gathering of thousands. Several left wing Knesset members attended the official ceremony; Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash) and Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List Ta'al) stood with the family, and Dov Khenin (Hadash) and Jamal Zahalka (Balad) were in the hall at the Mukataa. Also present was the former French prime minister and poet Dominique de Villepin. After the ceremony, Darwish's coffin was taken in a cortege at walking pace from the Mukataa to the Palace of Culture, gathering thousands of followers along the way. On 5 October 2008, the International Literature Festival Berlin held a worldwide reading in memory of Mahmoud Darwish.

Miller, Kevin (1975), review of Selected Poems, in Calgacus 1, Winter 1975, p. 59,