Reuven Snir "Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?"
Conclusion: “The Poet Cannot Be But a Poet”
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Conclusion: “The Poet Cannot Be But a Poet” On May 1, 1964, a young Mahmoud Darwish, only 23 at the time, stepped onto the stage of one of Nazareth’s larger movie houses and, to an unsuspecting but eager crowd, proceeded to read his latest poem, in which the imperative sajjil Ana ‘Arabi! [Write it down! I am an Arab!] is repeated in each of its six stanzas; the first of them is as follows:
Write it down! I am an Arab And my identity card number is fifty thousand. I have eight children And the ninth is coming after the summer. Makes you angry, doesn’t it?
The last stanza combines the persona’s good will and anger: Write it down! At the top of the first page: I do not hate people Nor do I encroach on anyone, But if I become hungry I shall eat the flesh of the one who violated me – Beware, beware of my hunger And of my anger! 33
The tension among the audience was palpable from the moment Darwish began reading, and when he finished the reaction was tumultuous. Within days the poem, “Bitaqat huwiyya” [“Identity Card”], had spread throughout the country and the Arab world—its straightforward language and forceful images imprinted themselves easily on the minds of the very same people of which it spoke. In August 1982, in a Beirut that was being bombarded from the air by Israeli fighter jets and besieged on the ground by Israeli army tanks, Darwish’s mind went back to that May Day gathering in Nazareth eighteen years before:
For the first time [since 1948] they [the Israeli authorities] had given us permission to leave Haifa, but we had to be back at night to report to the police station next to the park, that is, the city park—for each of us to say in his own way, “Write it down!—I exist! Write it down!” An old familiar rhythm that I recognize instantly. “Write it down”—I recognize the voice, then 25 years old. Oh, what a dead time! Oh, for a living time to emerge from this dead time. “Write it down: I am an Arab!” I said that to a government official whose son may very well be flying one of these jets overhead! I said it in Hebrew, to provoke him, but when I put it in a poem the Arab audience in Nazareth was electrified, as if a secret current had sprung the genie from the bottle. At first I didn’t quite understand the secret of this discovery—as if, in a yard full of bombs, with the gunpowder of my identity, I had succeeded in defusing the thunderbolt. This cry of mine soon turned into my poetic identity—not satisfied with bowing to me, it pursues me even now! (Dhakira 140; translation in
The poem was written against the background of the extensive Israeli-Zionist efforts “to rob that [Palestinian] minority of its Arab personality, culture and identity” (Sulaiman, Palestine 200), or in the forceful words of the Palestinian Anton Shammas (b. 1950), the Israeli policy aimed at “initially phasing out the Arab personality in Israel and then, as a follow-up, demanding that this personality accommodate itself to the state.” What Israel wanted to raise were “people whose tongue had been amputated... with no cultural past, and no future. Just an improvised present, and a free-floating personality” (qtd. in Hareven, Ehad 44–45).
In the 1980s, Darwish had no need to assert his Arab or Palestinian identity—it was a solid, unshakable identity that daily sufferings and miseries only served to consolidate and strengthen. Crowned as the unchallenged Palestinian national poet, he wanted to widen his poetic identity. This was the time when he felt totally convinced that the poetry of declarations and slogans had exhausted itself. 34 His major concern now was not solely to narrate reality—in order to engrave new verses in diwan al-‘Arab—or to join his voice to those poets who were satisfied by national or didactic poetry with simplistic and nationalist interpretations. Being aware of his own mythmaking capability, the persona was no longer only a witness at the time of the events but also an outsider looking upon them from a specified point of view in time and space. Ward aqall reflects this intention of the poet to be a witness of his time and place, and at the same time to wonder about poetry’s place in reality and its relationship with myth and about the place his poetry will eventually occupy, if any, in the future. The process of reading and the role of the reader in his efforts to concretize the meaning became much more dominant in Darwish’s poetry, and instead of the imperative sajjil! [Write it down!] the question “But what have we got to do with it?” became the lazima [a refrain, a kind of “filler” or key sentence]. The poet has many more questions than answers; even if each question somehow conceals an answer, this answer depends on the readers’ responses as well as on each reader’s own answer and personal preferred meaning.
Yet the reader may remain merely a consumer and be satisfied by reading the poems as he read Darwish’s previous poems, tracing the footsteps of the persona in his experience as a refugee. This is the story of the nakba from the viewpoint of the victim and through the process of reading the reader identifies with the persona. But the poem is also addressed to the community of poets, the producers, whose texts may conduct a dialogue with Darwish’s texts. The process of reading is thus also a process of poetic dialogue whose core is poetic and aesthetic, the purpose and value of the poetry written on the nakba, and its continuous aftereffects. In this sense the reader assumes not only the role of a poet but also that of a critic who is interested in the internal connections in the poems and their relationship to the myth as well as the process of the creation of myths.
This interplay between reality, poetry and meta-poetry, myth and meta-myth, as well as the role of the reader in the concretization of meaning and the significance of the reading process, grant the poems of Ward aqall their particular significance. “Other Barbarians Will Come” illustrates this singularity of the collection—the question “Will Homer be born after us, and the myths open their gates to all?” is imbued with all the above components and dimensions—and the reader is expected to take part in a poetic and critical discourse that asks whether the poetry of Darwish could be considered the equivalent of Homer. Can Darwish sing the poetry of Palestine and the days of its lost paradise as Homer sang the story of Troy?
At the same time, despair and frustration are deeply ingrained in the poems of Ward aqall and other poems written in the 1980s. Suicide is sometimes seen as a possible solution to the persona’s crises. For example, receiving a pistol as a present, he hastened to hide it “for fear of a rage that cannot be contained” (Dhakira 7; Memory 5). Yet, he “placed the pistol in his vision, and tried to sleep”:
If I find no dream to dream, I will fire my bullet And I will die like a blue-tailed fly in this darkness, Without appetite. (Hiya 73–74)
But because there is no dream to dream—“The Time Has Come for the Poet to Kill Himself”:
Not for a reason, but rather in order to kill himself [...] The time has come for the poet to leave me forever. (75–78)
The persona wishes not only to renounce his poetic abilities but also thinks of actual suicide. Wandering in Beirut, the poet looks at the balcony of the Lebanese poet Khalil Hawi (1925– 1982) and muses: The twilight of twilight [...] Where will I go after this twilight? [...] Here is the balcony of the poet who saw all things fall, and chose the time of his end. Khalil Hawi grasped his hunting rifle and hunted himself, not in order to witness something, but in order not to see anything, and not to bear witness to anything. He was bored with this garbage, hated to observe the bottomless abyss [...] He was alone, without an idea, without a woman, without poetry, and without promise [...] I don’t want to look at his balcony. I don’t want to see what he did that I did not do. (Dhakira 123–124; Memory 153–154) In his hours of distress the poet is aware of the fact that poetry has no value: The wounded and the thirsty, and those who seek water and bread do not want melodies from you, and the fighters pay no attention to your songs. Sing if you want, or be quiet. We are marginal in war. We have the ability to offer other services to people: a small can of water is equal to the ‘Abqar valley. 35 What is demanded of us now is not creative aesthetics but human action. (Dhakira 52; Memory 62–63; cf. Leeuwen, “The Poet” 265–266) But this poet who believes that poetry cannot be of any benefit is at the same time a very prolific writer. The same paradox is known from the mystical experience: it is ineffable 36 and the mystic himself inclines to be silent regarding his divine experience, because it is an intimate experience with the divine beloved. At the same time, paradoxically, mystics are very prolific. This conflict between the mind [‘aql] and the heart [qalb] brings us to the meta- poetic dimension. It is sometimes argued that those mystics who speak about their experiences are “weak”—they could not help but surrender to the temptation of disclosing what happened to them. The greatest of the mystics resist the temptation of speaking and thus we will never know anything about them. But they will remain mystics even if they don’t speak because, like lovers, their experience is not conditioned by language. Can we say the same about the psychological structure of poets? That is, that those poets who write and publish their poetry are weak for preferring to speak about their experiences rather than keeping them for themselves? Moreover, ever since Theodor Adorno argued that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (Prisms 34), all kinds of artists, not just poets, have been debating whether poetry has any value vis-à-vis reality. Should we also see poetry through the eyes of Walter Benjamin? There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain. (Benjamin, “Theses” 256) In his most recent collection, Ka-zahr al-lawz aw ab‘ad [Like almond flowers or further], Darwish dedicates a poem to Edward Said in which he states: qad yakunu al-taqaddum jisra al-
Darwish, whose interest in Sufi texts had been mainly limited to cultural and literary allusions (see, for example, Neuwirth, Myths), started in the mid-1980s to present in his poetry a persona whose poetic experience is sometimes intermingled with the mystical one, culminating in his long poem “Al-Hudhud” [The hoopoe]. 37 Thus it is no wonder that in his exchange of open letters with Palestinian compatriot Samih al-Qasim (b. 1939) he used a mystical “pretext” in order to explain his desire to write poetry even if he was very much aware that poetry has in fact no “real” value. Speaking about the generic relationship of poetry to prose, Darwish asserts the dominance of fiction over poetry, “if television has left to it any remnant.” But if the poet himself is also writing prose he should not mix the two activities, because poetry is “an explosive desire.” Just as the mystic cannot help but speak of his experience because love overflows his heart, so the poet cannot resist this desire; he must “put himself in the wind and madness, because the poet cannot be but a poet” (Darwish and al-Qasim, Al-Rasa’il 72). Nevertheless, for Darwish it is not only overflowing emotions but also a rational choice—mind and heart are in harmony:
If I could start all over again I’d choose what I have chosen: roses on the fence I’d travel again on the roads that may or may not lead to Cordova.
CHAPTER 4: SNIR
Translations from the Arabic in this chapter by Reuven Snir unless otherwise indicated. 1 This saying is found in different forms in various medieval works, e.g. Ibn Qutayba, ‘Uyun al-akhbar vol. II, 185; al-Suyuti, Al-Muzhir vol. II, 470. Cf. Lyall, Translation xv. For an examination of the above saying with regard to the change in perception of poetry and its function during the emergence of Arabic-Islamic society, see Ouyang, Literary Criticism, 56–60. 2 Ibn Rashiq al-Qayrawani, Al-‘umda 65; al-Suyuti, Al-Muzhir vol. II, 473. The translation is according to Lyall,
3 Muhammad Ibn Isma‘il refers to the marginalization of Arabic poetry in relation to politics as being a metaphor for the rupture between poetry and culture in the contemporary Arab world (“Bayna al-siyasa”). 4 Cf. Adonis on the value of contemporary poetry: “Our success has been substantially and paradoxically due to our marginality” (Adonis, Ha anta 180). Muhammad ‘Ali Farhat sees this development as corresponding to the disappearance of the “spirit of the countryside” [al-ruh al-rifiyya] and the dominance of the town in the Arab world (Farhat 51). On the dichotomous roles played by town and country in modern Arabic poetry, see Moreh, “Town and Country.” 5 Al-Akhbar, 11 August 1993, 11. Cf. the special volume of Fusul 12.1 (Spring 1993) entitled Zaman al-riwaya [The time of the novel] as well as Jabra, Ta’ammulat 11–26. See also Ihsan Abbas’s words, “‘asruna huwa ‘asr al- riwaya duna adna rayb,” in Ghurbat al-ra‘i 230). 6 Preminger, Princeton Encyclopedia 582–583. Cf. Eliot, Selected Essays 248. On obscurity in modern Arabic literature and the reasons for it, see Adonis, Muqaddima 43–47, 124–125; Adonis, Zaman al-shi‘r 158–159, 276– 284; Adonis, Al-Thabit 290, 297; ‘Abd al-Sabur, Rihla 37–44; Isma‘il, Al-Shi‘r al-‘Arabi 194; Lu’lu’a, Al-Ba’hth 151–154. 7 Darwish was born in the village of Birwa, near Acre (Akka), which was destroyed by Zionist forces in June 1948 after they had expelled all its inhabitants. Darwish’s family fled to Beirut, but after a year managed to make it back across the border and find refuge in the village of Judayda. Darwish published his first poetry collection, ‘Asafir bi-la ajniha [Birds without wings], when he was nineteen (1960). In 1961 he joined the Israeli Communist Party but in 1971 decided to leave Israel. Since then he has moved from one place to another (Cairo, Beirut, London, Paris, Tunis) and currently has homes in Ramallah and Amman. He edits the Palestinian cultural and literary journal Al-Karmil. 8 Darwish, Ward aqall 9. This translation is based on that of al-Udhari, Mahmud Darwish 23. For another English translation, see Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise 5. For a German translation of the collection Ward Aqall, see Mahmud Darwisch, Weniger Rosen; for this poem in particular, see page 11. 9 On the motif of the road in Ward aqall, see also Mansson, Passage 155–157. 10 On al-Andalus in Arabic literature, see Uthman, Ida’at 5–72; Noorani, “The Lost Garden of al-Andalus”; Reuven Snir, “‘Al-Andalus Arising from Damascus.’” 11 For the argument that traces the beginnings of the Renaissance in Europe to al-Andalus, see Anwar G. Chejne, “The Role of al-Andalus in the Movement of Ideas between Islam and the West,” in Semaan, Islam 110–133; Recapito, “Al-Andalus and the Origin of the Renaissance in Europe.” 12 One of the first uses of al-Andalus as a mirror for Palestine appeared in 1910, when the Damascene Al- Muqtabas, edited by Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali (1876–1953), wrote: “We fear that the new settler will expel the indigenous [population] and we will have to leave our country en masse. We shall then be looking back over our shoulder and mourn our land as did the Muslims of Andalusia” (Al-Muqtabas, 15 March 1910, as quoted in Yazbak, Haifa 221). 13 Darwish, Ahada ‘ashara kawkaban 29–31. The poem is structured like a classical qasida, consisting of ten stanzas each in a kind of couplet: a pair of lines that are the same length and rhyme and form a complete thought. The first couplet imitates the buka’ ‘ala al-atlal [weeping over the ruins] of the beloved homeland and it is repeated in the fourth stanza and again in a different order in the lines in the tenth stanza. The meter of the poem is mutadarak (- U -) and the rhyme scheme is aa/bb/cc/aa/dd/ee/ff/ff/gg/aa. On the metrical system in Arabic poetry, see below. 14 On the story of Cain and Abel in ancient sources, see Busse, Islam 68–70. On this story as an archetypal conflict in classical and modern Arabic literature, see Sebastian Günther, “Hostile Brothers in Transformation: An Archetypal Conflict in Classical and Modern Arabic literature,” in Angelika Neuwirth, et al., Myths 309–336. 15 Darwish, Ward aqall 77. For a German translation, see Darwisch, Weniger Rosen 79. On the story of Joseph (Yusuf) in the ancient sources, see Busse, Islam 88–92; Tottoli, Biblical Prophets 28–31. On this story as employed in modern Arabic literature, see Hartman, Jesus, Joseph and Job. For a study of the poem, see Husayn Hamza, “Ana Yusufun Ya Abi.”
16 The song was released on the album Rakwat ‘Arab [Arabic coffeepot] (Nagam Records, 1995). Khalifa divided the song into four stanzas with short musical intervals between them; the duration of the song is 6 minutes and 30 seconds and the division is as follows: Musical prologue (21 seconds); first stanza (1 minute and 8 seconds); musical interval (7 seconds); second stanza (1 minute and 9 seconds); musical interval (13 seconds); third stanza (2 minutes); musical interval (19 seconds); fourth stanza (1 minute and 32 seconds). 17 While some Muslim clerics maintain that all singing of the Qur’an is forbidden, others have had no qualms about making lyrical recordings of the Qur’an, and tapes of clerics singing Islam’s holy book can be bought in many places. Also Qur’anic verses, whether in the original Arabic, or translated into Persian, have been routinely used in Iranian revolutionary songs since 1978. According to early Islamic tradition, listening to the recital of the Qur’an accompanied by music is considered a sin of disobedience against God (Kister, “‘Exert Yourselves” 61). On the issue of setting verses of the Qur’an to music, see Diya’ al-Din Baybars, “Talhin al- Qur’an bayna Ahl al-Fann wa-Rijal al-Din,” Al-Hilal, December 1970, 118–127. 18 Following the case, AlJadid (Los Angeles) published an issue dealing with the freedom of artists, intellectuals and media in Lebanon (11 [September 1996]). Among the articles in this issue were Elie Chalala, “Arab Artists, Intellectuals, Condemn Charges Against Khalife as Attack on Liberty, Civil Freedom”; Marcel Khalifa, “We Turn the Page from City to City”; Paul Sha’ul, “Marcel Khalife and the Modern Inquisition,”; Michelle A. Marzahn, “Lebanese Media Restrictions Stir Broad Opposition.” On the case, see also AlJadid (Los Angeles) 28 (1999), 7–9, 16; ‘Abd al-Rahman, “Al-Qur’an.” 19 Because of the meter, the poet used imra’a instead of mra’a. 20 For example, see C. D’Ohsson, Histoire vol. I, 387 (quoted in Browne, Literary History of Persia vol. II, 427); Nicholson, Literary History 129; I. Goldziher, Short History 141. Cf. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, vol. II, 463.
21 For example, see Ghanim, Mahasin 153; Hasan, Ta’rikh al-Islam vol. IV, 160; Majid, Ta’rikh al-hadara 291; al- Sayyad, Mu’arrikh 42; al-Alusi, Baghdad 136. 22 For example, see Zaydan, Ta’rikh vol. III, 10; Husayn et al., Al-Mujmal 139–140; al-Iskandari and al-‘Inani,
300–301; al-Zayyat, Ta’rikh al-adab al-‘Arabi 400; al-Jundi, Al-Ra’id vol. I, 544; al-Fiqqi, Al-Adab 8–9; Dayf, ‘Asr al-duwal 240–241. 23 For example, see al-Rusafi, Diwan vol. II, 192–202; ‘Abd al-Mu‘ti Hijazi, Diwan 410, 430; al-Qasim, Diwan 540; Darwish, Al-Jiyad 67–68; Habib, Al-‘Awda ila al-ati 35–41. Cf. Mahmoud Darwish, “Hudna ma‘a al- Maghul”; al-Din, Al-Riwaya fi al-‘Iraq 31–32. 24 Gibb, Arabic Literature 141. Cf. Lewis, Islam 179–198; Lewis, The Middle East 12; Wiet, Introduction 243; Smith,
25 Zurayk, Meaning of the Disaster 48. See also Gharayiba, Al-‘Arab 185–186; Abu al-Khashab, Ta’rikh al-adab al- ‘Arabi 141–154. Cf. Grunebaum, Modern Islam 255; Lewis, Islam 182. 26 On the linear and ironical modes of intertextuality, see Somekh, Genre 53, 61. 27 For example, see the figure of Hulagu in “al-Kutub” [The books] by Mishil Haddad (1919–1997), first published in Al-Sharq (Shfram) (January–April 1985), 3. The poem was incorporated in Haddad’s collection Fi al-nahiya al-‘ukhra 9. 28 Elias Sanbar, www.autodafe.org/correspondence/chroniques/elias2.htm, June 2002. It should be noted that only Cafavy’s poem is called “Waiting for the Barbarians” and that neither this nor Darwish’s poem illustrate Sanbar’s point—it seems that Coetzee’s novel is much more suitable as an illustration of the message he wished to convey. 29 See the interview with A. Shavit in www.haaretzdaily.com, 9 January 2004. In response to the interview, the Palestinian scholar Salim Tamari refers to the “barbarians” as including also the Mizrahi people inside Israel (www.haaretzdaily.com, 16 January 2004). On how the Israeli establishment created the “barbarians” in the image of the oriental Jews, see Nissim Rejwan, Outsider 111–136. 30 The daughter of Leda and Zeus, Helen was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world. When she reached marriageable age, she was wooed by the most illustrious men of Greece. She married Menelaus and lived happily with him for a number of years and bore him a daughter, Hermione. After a decade or so of married life, Helen was abducted by—or ran off with—Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy. As a result, the Greek leaders mobilized the greatest army of its time, placed it under the command of Agamemnon, and set off to wage what became known as the Trojan War. After the fall of Troy, Menelaus took Helen back to Lacedaemon, where they lived an apparently happy married life once more. At the end of their mortal existence, they were reunited in Elysium. 31 Cf. the poem “Matar Athina” [Athens Airport], where zawaj sari‘ means, though ironically, sexual intercourse, but full of compassion toward two young refugees (Ward 23; Darwish, Unfortunately 12)
32 Al-Karmil 18 (1985), 4–9. The article was later incorporated into Darwish’s Fi wasf halatina 169–175. 33 Darwish, Diwan Mahmoud Darwish 73–76. For other translations of the poem, see Darwish, Music 10–12; Asfour, When the Words 199–200. For a French translation, see Laâbi, La poésie 33–35. The influence of the poem has sometimes traversed the national field and spread into the religious sphere, as we find, for example, in “Sajjil ana Islami” [Write it down! I am an Islamist] by the Moroccan poet Muhammad Bin‘Amara, (b. 1945) in Min al-shi‘r al-Islami al-Hadith 311–318. 34 Already in 1969 Darwish had published an article entitled “Anqidhuna min hadha al-hubb al-qasi” [Save us from this cruel love!], in which he voiced strong dissatisfaction with the injustice Arab critics were doing to Palestinian literature by avoiding objective criticism and in their readiness to accept unconditionally anything that was Palestinian—poetry of slogans included—as a positive contribution to the spirit of the nation. Asking the Arabs not to allow affection for the Palestinian cause to be a decisive criterion when assessing literary works, he points out that Palestinian poetry should not be looked upon as if it had suddenly come from nowhere—“it is only a stream originating from and pouring into the big river of Arabic literature.” 35 The legendary dwelling place of the demons, according to Arab tradition, which maintains, like the Greek theory of the muses, that poetry has its source in divine forces. 36 On the impossibility or difficulties of expressing the mystical experience through human language, see al- Ghazzali, Al-Munqidh 96; Scholem, Major Trends 4–5; Eliade, Sacred 10; Knox, Enthusiasm 249; Scharfstein,
uniqueness of the subjective experience associated with certain ASC [Altered States of Consciousness—R.S.] (e.g. transcendental, aesthetic, creative, psychotic, and mystical states), persons claim a certain ineptness or inability to communicate the nature or essence of the experience to someone who has not undergone a similar experience.” See also ibid. 23, 40–42, 405–406. 37 First published in Al-Karmil 38 (1990), 33–43; incorporated in his collection Ara ma uridu 79–99. For an English translation, see Darwish, Unfortunately 31–51. For a Hebrew translation with clarifying notes, see Snir, “Mahmoud Darwish—Birds without Wings.” Download 332.55 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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