Palestinian Darwish says "My poetry is linked to peace"

05/09/2005

Born in 1941 in Birwa, near Saint-Jean-d'Acre, Mahmoud Darwish is regarded as one of the greatest contemporary Arab poets, attracting fans from Damascus to Casablanca. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has described him as "my favorite poet."

(Humanite.fr, Testament d'un Poete 11/23/2003, "Murale" 2003, "State of siege" 2002)

[AFP] Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish at a UNESCO poetry recital

Mahmoud Darwish was only six-years-old when his family was forced to leave Birwa, the village where he was born. In 1950, he returned to his homeland to find that Birwa had been replaced by two Israeli settlements. While the path of the poet is identical to the one of his Palestinian people, Darwish says, "A poet must not provide his audience with a political agenda."

Some analysts say Darwish's works do not reflect any sort of ideology but are rather fragments, simple clichés of a specific moment, a given scene, or a fugitive thought. His "epic lyrics" are said to be free from all insinuation.

"Some day I will be a poet … as I say nor indicate anything". "Some day I will be a poet … as I say nor indicate anything".

In Ramallah where he now lives, the "poet in exile" notes daily in very short poems his feelings and impressions about the reality of a people not unlike from his own. A "state of siege" as he calls it, where "… facing the sunset and the weaponry of time, [he] … cultivates hope."

Darwish draws his positivist approach from his idol Rainer Maria Rilke. "Celebrate instant beauties in order to respond to barbarism [of conflicts]", as Rile used to say. Look beyond "Murale", beyond whispers and crying. Darwish wants his readers to seize the intense pleasure of ordinary things, fragrances, colours, sweetness, density of an eternal present, so as to tell the thick and fragile mystery of an ever unique destiny.

The role of the poet, stresses Darwish, is to tell, remind what risks to be forsaken. For him "The poet is one with his people … [to] talk about men that history … might forget."

In his collections, Darwish wishes self-denial, refuses egocentrism. "Here, no me" he claims when talking about the "state of siege" that Palestine experiences. No place exists for individualism in a place of cultural and religious plurality.

For Darwish, Palestine and co-existence are synonymous.

"Am I not myself the child of many cultures?", he says repeatedly. There is in himself a place for Jewish, Greek, Christian, and Muslim voices. According to Darwish, it is not hard to do. It suffices to give every man the right to define his identity as he wants to. When conception of identity is not automatically linked to denying the identity of the other in people's minds, the very problematic can be easily solved.