Darwish

On March 13, 1941 Mahmoud Darwish was born in Al Birweh, Palestine, into a landowning Sunni Muslim family. During the beginning of the existence of the State of Israel in 1948, his village was destroyed and his family ran away to Lebanon. Darwish faced imprisonment for his political activism and for publicly reading his poetry. He lived in exile for twenty-six years, between Beirut and Paris, until his return to Israel in 1996. I believe that without being exiled Darwish would not have been the poet he was without it : Darwish was know as the prince of Palestinian poetry and author who won numerous awards for his literary output. What I saw was how most of Darwish’s work was about the loss of his home and identity. Even mentioned in the
Darwish not having a home is what lead to him trying to discover himself by pushing his poetry forward, but the Palestine he wanted to get back to no longer existed. So Darwish spent his life on an endless, purposeless journey. In the poem “I come from there” darwish said. I learnt all the words and broke them up. To make a single word: Homeland..... which i think means that all that he has learned and went through in his lifetime. Was all his way of trying to strive back the homeland that he felt he need to reach in order to understand himself. Which make me think that darwish was stuck in a psychological paradox. What I mean by that is that he talks to express that what was once his homeland before it was snatched away by the israelites and the memory became a dream that darwish would chase for the rest of his life as a refugee. I also feel that the setting for most of the poetry gives us a deeper understanding of how Darwish wanted to get back to what was taken from him. Well what I came to understand that darwish and his work was strongly influenced by egyptian culture because in the biography on the darwish foundation website darwish stated that “I found myself living between the literary texts that I read and was fascinated
It was due to the fact that it was taken from him at such a tender age that he was unable to take his mind away from it. I also think you can see these in the setting of most of his poetry. They matter because in the poem “I come from there” darwish speaks of the home, the family, and friends he once had. To show how in the past he was forced from his home and when he talks about it, he speak from the view of one that looks back on all he had lost which he once held dear and was forced away from home. Also he talks to express that what was once his homeland before it was snatched away by the israelites and the memory became a dream that darwish would chase for the rest of his life as a refugee. The setting gives us a deeper understanding of how darwish wanted to get back to what was taken from him. Something that I noticed with Darwish’s poetry Darwish is that he tends to use a lot of imagery of nature in his poetry to represent how he was battling against an unnatural force which represents the israelites and How he was kicked out of his homeland by something that was unnatural in during his poetry since he uses a lot of motifs repetition Well something that I found common in darwish poetry was that the underlying theme always has something to do with Palestine there was the loss of Palestine how great it once was or simply have felt like a stranger