Mahmoud Darwish

(13th March 1941-9th August 2008)

A poet, journalist and intepreter, Mahmoud Darwish is considered to be one of Palestine’s most influential literary voices. Many have, in fact, referred to him as Palestine’s ‘national poet’. During his life, he won numerous awards for his work, including the prestigous Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom and the Prince Claus Fund of principal prize. He published over 30 poetry and prose collections, which have been translated into 35 languages. His work still reamins  a legacy for Palestinians all around the globe.

Darwish was born into a Sunni Muslim family of farmers in al-Barwe, a village east of Acre. After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, occupation meant that Darwish and his family were forced to flee to Lebanon. This in itself must have had a profound impact on a young boy. When upon their return a year later, a new Jewish settlement had been built on Barweh’s ruins, Darwish and his family had to contend with a life of secrecy in nearby Dair Al-Assad, where Darwish grew up. This experience of being uprooted, and labelled as a second-class citizen in his own land, affected the young Darwish significantly and it was later cited as a central theme of his poetry.

He wrote his first poem at the tender age of 12 , it was written as a conversation between an Arab boy and his Jewish friend. The Arab boy tells his Jewish friend that he has a home, toys and games and celebrations, but the Arab boy has none of these things, so why don’t they play together? Despite the innocence of its youthful author, the poem caused a furore amongst the ruling classes and a military governor warned Darwish that his father would lose his job in the quarry if similar works were discovered.

After graduating from secondary school, Darwish moved to Haifa. He worked in journalism and in 1961 he joined the Israeli Communist Party, Rakah, and edited for some time Rakah’s newspaper, Al-Ittihad. At a time when nationalism amongst Arabic Israelis was illegal, Darwish’s ideas and musings were greeted with repeated persecution and imprisonment.

Despite having no obvious affiliation to Islam, the pressure of living in such a fraught political situation pushed Darwish to leave Israel in 1971, for Moscow. From here he travelled to Cairo and then Beirut, before joining Yasser Arafat at the Palestine Liberations Organisation (PLO). Despite being part of the team that drafted the Palestinian Declaration of Statehood, Darwish made sure to distance himself from a particular political movement. Like a true artiste, he was adamant that his work would act as the sole testification of his ideology, rather than any political activism.

Considering his itinerant existence during a particularly turbulent time for Arab nations, Darwish was well placed to offer a first hand account of a period of time that would shape the Middle East as we know it today. This was done with an eloquence that endeared him not only to his Arab compatriots, but also the Jews of Israel.

By using imagery that people of that region could directly identify with, Darwish expressed the humanism that formed the core of his poetic discourse. In later years this humanism was further developed, so that his work became somewhat holistic. He saw the Palestinian problem as part of a wider teleology, which included Greek, Persian, Roman, Jewish and even British history.

Darwish’s work is best summarised in his own articulate style: “The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but how he says it. I believe the poet today must write the unseen. When I move closer to pure poetry, Palestinians say go back to where you were. But I have learned from experience that I can take my reader with me if he trusts me. I’ve built my homeland; I’ve even founded my state – in my language.”

For examples of Darwish’s dissident works, see ‘Leaves of the Olive Tree’, ‘A Lover from Palestine’ and ‘End of the Night’.

His mystical works include ‘Psalms’, ‘The Adam of Two Edens’ and ‘Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems’.

There is no better tribute to Darwish than these words, uttered by fellow poet Naomi Shihab Nye: “Mahmoud Darwish is the essential breath of the Palestinian people and the eloquent witness of exile and belonging. What he speaks has been embraced by readers around the world.”

Words by William Mathieson

You can savour one of Darwish’s poems in our poetry section.