Strange rain in a distant autumn
Amine Bekki
Instructor: Shadi Shidrawi
Course: English 203
Date : 13 september 2013 Response 1
An Analysis of Mahmoud Darwish’s “ a gentle rain in a strange autumn
In this poem, “A gentle rain in a distant autumn”, Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s national productive poet and author, expresses his nostalgia and craving for both; his homeland after his exile, and for the glorious and sparkling era when Palestine was a free country. In my opinion, his love of the country is obvious in all the verses. I find that Darwish makes this poem moving by using a wide range of figures of speech, mainly metaphors, he also emphasizes on his willingness to sacrifice for the country by repeating the verse “and reasons for a new death “. I believe that He also misses the tenderness of his mother by mentioning several times ‘the handkerchief ‘, all of that, demonstrates the strong bond between him and his country and his attachment to it.
In the first stanza, Darwish starts by showing his missing for the shiny era, when everything was beautiful and sparkling, but that’s not the case anymore, it’s a distant autumn. The tone here is a mixture of nostalgia and happiness especially in the third verse “the earth is a feast”. But suddenly, the tone becomes sad, especially in the fifth verse, “from my country which fell out of the window of a train “I believe that he used that metaphor to point out that this era is just a part of the past, and that things have changed. Then he talks about his mother’s handkerchief which I believe is used to show the sadness he is experiencing and that he is in need of the tenderness of his mother to wipe away his tears. I think that the last verse of that stanza is about Palestinians’ surrender, he wants his people to be rebellious again, there is nothing to die for now, which I believe means that he lost hope, and faith.
In the second stanza, he is kind of giving a title to the stanza, by changing the adjective of
Instructor: Shadi Shidrawi
Course: English 203
Date : 13 september 2013 Response 1
An Analysis of Mahmoud Darwish’s “ a gentle rain in a strange autumn
In this poem, “A gentle rain in a distant autumn”, Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s national productive poet and author, expresses his nostalgia and craving for both; his homeland after his exile, and for the glorious and sparkling era when Palestine was a free country. In my opinion, his love of the country is obvious in all the verses. I find that Darwish makes this poem moving by using a wide range of figures of speech, mainly metaphors, he also emphasizes on his willingness to sacrifice for the country by repeating the verse “and reasons for a new death “. I believe that He also misses the tenderness of his mother by mentioning several times ‘the handkerchief ‘, all of that, demonstrates the strong bond between him and his country and his attachment to it.
In the first stanza, Darwish starts by showing his missing for the shiny era, when everything was beautiful and sparkling, but that’s not the case anymore, it’s a distant autumn. The tone here is a mixture of nostalgia and happiness especially in the third verse “the earth is a feast”. But suddenly, the tone becomes sad, especially in the fifth verse, “from my country which fell out of the window of a train “I believe that he used that metaphor to point out that this era is just a part of the past, and that things have changed. Then he talks about his mother’s handkerchief which I believe is used to show the sadness he is experiencing and that he is in need of the tenderness of his mother to wipe away his tears. I think that the last verse of that stanza is about Palestinians’ surrender, he wants his people to be rebellious again, there is nothing to die for now, which I believe means that he lost hope, and faith.
In the second stanza, he is kind of giving a title to the stanza, by changing the adjective of