Ipek Celik

New York University

Attributed to Berweh, the poet’s village in Palestine "wiped off the map" in 1948, this selection of poems is one of the few book-length translations of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry into English available in the United States. Even though, being the Palestinian poet per se, Darwish’s poetry readings draw thousands of people and his works are translated into more than twenty-two languages - primarily into French - English has been hardly receptive to the corpus of most widely-read and applauded poet in the Arab world.

The collection brings together the ardent work of seven translators, most of them poets, who successfully relay the musical quality of Darwish’s lines. Munir Akash’s comprehensive introduction tracks the changes in the interconnected fate of Palestinian politics and Darwish’s life and poetics while it gives a useful insight into the poet’s allegories, symbols and tone.

Darwish draws his strength from the ongoing search for new resources to add to his poetics of continual transformation intermingling new structures and possibilities with the conventions of traditional Arabic poetry. The selection of poems in the Adam of Two Edens [from I See What I Want to See (1989), Eleven Planets (1992), and Why Have You Left the Horse Alone (1995)] all were written during Darwish’s eleven-year stay in Paris--a period that represents a new phase in his poetic expression[1]. Darwish refers to this period as that of a transformation during which he interjects a mélange of history and myth within his poetic geography. Darwish explains the transformation in his poetry as follows: "In Eleven Planets I put our case in the context of history.  You might be surprised to know that I consider Why Have You Left the Horse Alone? to be one of the most sublime kinds of aesthetic resistance. In this collection I had to defend a forgotten history; or to put it more clearly, I had to defend the land of the past and the past of the land, the land of language and the language of the land…I feel that the past is subject to plunder, and have always said that it should be the arbiter of the conflict." (Banipal 8)

In his Paris period, Darwish moved beyond the earlier pictorial landscapes and the declarative and definitive voice that highlight the space and formulation of Palestinian identity primarily as it is attached to the land. With his movement beyond realistic themes, Darwish’s poetry became more introspective while Palestinian identity is re-framed by alluding to ancient myths as rhetorical instruments - not to exclude but to invite the Israeli Other for a dialogue.

Munir Akash explains Darwish’s project as "us[ing] the dimension of myth as a field to indicate life’s unlimited possibilities" and giving "the sense that we are actively participating in the image making of a master forger of myths" (33-34). In The Phases of Anat (1995) the poet calls for the return of the moon goddess, the ancient goddess of several cultures in the region (Astarte in Hebrew, Ishtar in Assyrian and Babylonian, Inanna in Sumerian) to the city of Palestine to give birth, revive the land and the people. After the death of Anat, goddess of multifarious genealogy, "all is lifeless…for life died out like the conversation of/ people on the way to Hell" (100). Anat is a mythical figure not only capable of nurturing and embracing multiple ancient traditions and belief systems but also embodying dualities of birth and death, fertility and destruction: "two women never to be reconciled,/ one bringing water to fountains,/ the other driving fire to the forests" (99). Without such expansion that can hold the two poles in opposition "there is neither life nor death…there is only chaos under doomsday’s arch…no future arrives and no past returns" (101).

Contextualizing the interaction with the Other in the realm of myths, Darwish displays the indispensability of this realm as a part of the identity-making process. Furthermore, the poet not only defies the myth’s sacred and above-human aura by portraying the sorrow of a Palestinian self through it but he also denies any claims of private property over myths. He alludes to the Other’s Biblical myths in the On A Canaanite Stone at the Dead Sea to tell "A family bond exists between us, but you will not/ rise from history, nor erase/ foaming sea from your body" (78). Then he refers to the "sea of Moses," bringing it back to its original size, content, and lifetime: "And the sea, this very sea,/ smaller than its myth, smaller than your hands,/ is a crystalline isthmus,/ same from the beginning to end" (78). The poet’s inner-self is dissected: "I looked for the root of my name/ but I’m split apart by a magic wand" (74). Alluding again to the Biblical-mythical story of Moses, Darwish too finds salvation in the act of "splitting." With the augmented sources for his identification the poet then claims "All the prophets are my kin" only to disenchant his audience again with the harsh reality: "But heaven is still far from its earth/ and I am still far from my words" (74).           

As a narrative tool he revives ancient myths by offering alternative interpretations of them or suggesting counter myths of plurality, a parallel discourse for rights to the homeland, past and memory. As Speech of the Red Indian and Eleven Planets in the Last Andalusian Sky cue, Darwish ventures to attain universalism by establishing links with other dispossessed communities and histories of oppression. The poet hunts for words, for "a moment [to] crack open" (58) in the passage of time when these oppressed histories emerge from the fragments of memory. Darwish’s poetry aspires to transmit multiple voices from the distant past, to capture the undocumented stories. Darwish’s depiction of an expanded Palestinian identity and memory - that includes the Israeli Other as well as the communities of the dispossessed - open the boundaries of nationalist exclusions and mythologies. ●