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Ibrahim Muhawi Ibrahim Muhawi Centerfor CorrtemporaryArab Str-;clies EdlnundA WalshSchrool cf FcreiqrrSetrvir-e Georq ctc-rwn U n itrr-' rsity (O2CC9 Contextsof Languagein MahmoudDarwish lbrahim Muhawi Ibrahim Muharvirvits born in llamallah,Palestine, ancl receivecl his higherecti- catiotritr lrnglishliterature at the Universityof'California. l{e hastirtrght at ur-ri- versitiesin Clanacia,the .lvlidcllellast, North Africa, lhe UnitetlStates, Scotiaitd, atrd(ierman,v. He is the authol of a nurnberof booksand articlcsrln l)alestinian arndArabic folkloreand literatrLre,including (rvith Sharif'l(anaana) Spcak, Birrl, SpetrkA{oin: PolestininnAralt Folktttlcs(i989) ancl(rvith Yasir Suleinran) Litcro- tureand licttittt'tin thc NliticlleEnst (2006). Fle is alsothc translutor<>f iv'lolrmoud I)orv'islish4etrtorl'_f or I:orgct-firlircss(199-5) and Zakar"ia'lanrer's Ilreokire Knccs (2008),andis cr-rrrcntlynorking on a trauslationol I)arlvish'sltturrral of'rut Or- riinary Grie/. 'Ihis patrrerwas eclitt'db,v N1inri Kirlt ancl'l'rarriss (lassidv ils a pilper lr'onrits origir-ralfbrmat irsa 20-rninutetall<, gir.,e n on the occasior-ro1- a tributeto thc lif'c atrdrvorli of N'lal'rrrouci[)aru'ish. IBRAHIMMUHAWI Center for Contemporary Arab Studies EdmundA.Walsh Schoolof ForeignService 241 Intercultural Center Georgetown University Washington, D.C. 20057- 1020 202.687.5793 http ://ccas.georgetown. edu @2009 by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Atl rights reserved. CONTEXTSOF LANGUACEIN MAHMOUDDARWISH MahmoudDarwish was born in Al-Birweh,Palestine, in 1942.With theadvent of the Israelioccupation in 1948,he fled with hisfamily to Lebanon.The family returned to their homelandthe following year, only to find an Israelisettler colony built on the ruins of their home.Darwish left Israelin 1970and for 26 yearslived in exile in Moscow,Cairo, Beirut, Tunis,Paris, and Ramallah.His first volumeof poetry,Birds Without Wings, waspublished when he was 19.Other collectionsof hispoetry and proseinclude Leaves of Olives (1964),Lover from Palestine(1966), Memory for Forgetfulness(l 985),and In the Presenceof Absence(2006). In 1996he movedto Ramallah.Mahmoud Darwish died following open-heart surgery on August9, 2008. This paper exploresthree contextsof languagein Mahmoud Darwish'spoetry. The first is Darwish'sperformative use of language.The seconddeals with reading Darwish asa resistancepoet. The third is Darwish'sdeath, which I interpretas part of his language.This lastpoint is speculativebut of considerableinterest in view of the role he assumedas the poeticvoice of Palestine. he more we know about Darwish, the more we realizethe depth of his engagementwith the Arabiclanguage. In his book Mural,we find this cry to the goddessAnat: "Thereforesing, my noble Goddess/ Oh Anat, I am the quarry and the arrows/ I am language."' If languageis both the quarry and the arrows,then languageuses itself to hunt itself.Darwish is undoubtedlya difficult poet to understand.He pushesthe very limits of what languagecan say, sometimes descending into obscurity.In his 1985 book Memory for Forgetfulness,Darwish explainshow he usesobscurity: "The obscure heapsup on the obscure,rubs againstitself, and ignites into clarity."2 There is an element of wonder in this. If you rub two dark flints againsteach other,you will get a spark.And if you rub two dark thoughtsagainst each other, a new meaningwill result.This is Darwish'sironic way of proposinga new kind of dialecticsin which an obscurethesis rubs against an obscureantithesis, resulting in a luminous synthesis.We find thinking by dialectic everywherein Darwish. Indeed,the titles of his two magnificentworks of prose,Memory for Forgetfulness and In the Presenceof Absence,reflect this. In both, more meaningemerges from the combination of the two obscure elementsthan from each element on its own. Like all poets,Darwish grappled with languageto createnew meanings and fresh IBRAHIMMUHAWI exPression.Darwish alsoharnessed language's performative power to embodyhis homelandof Palestine.As such,he usedlanguage itself as a metaphorand ire* on its grammar and structurefor conceptsthat addedphilosophical depth to his "My work. languageis the metaphorfor metaphorl'hewrites ii Mural.t Somany havedubbed Darwish the poetof Palestinethat doingso hasbecome clich6.Even Time magazineacknowledged this at the end of 2008when it called "the him unofhcial voice of Palestine."The lines in Time'sobituary from the poem"IBelong There" provide an opportunityto examineDarwishs embodiment "I of Palestine: have learned all the words, and torn them all apart,to createa single word: / homeland."aPaying attention to the /k/ sound that characterizes the lines in Arabic, we note the musical rubbing that occurs in the words, and that is lost in translation: taallamtu kull al-kalaamiwa fakkaktuhu kay urakkiba kalimatan wahida I hiya-I-watan.Moreover, there i; a direct, metaphorical equationof homelandand language.The imagereceived is that of a poet with the god-likePower to tearlanguage asunder and createa new beingfrom the disorder he has imposed upon it. Essentially,Darwish presentslunguige metaphorically as having materiality,and the homelandtakes its form from that bodv.A kind of incarnationseems to arisefrom this poeticperformance. "If you rub two dark flints against each other, you wilt get o spark.And if you rub two darkthoughtsagainst each other, i nr* meaning will result. This is Darwish's ironic way of proposinga new kind of diolecticsin which an obscurethesis rubs against-an obscureantithesis, resulting in a luminous synthesis.,, This is not asabsurd as it sounds.To understandthe notion of the materialitv of language'we turn to Memoryfor Forgetfulness.Thisbook is a collageof highly poeticProse pieces that includescitations from other sources.The most relevant citation for the purposesof this paperis that given belowfrom theal-Mukhassas, a dictionary cum thesauruscompiled by Ibn Sidah,who died in 1066.At one point during the siegeof West Beirut in the summerof lgi2, the Israeliarmy cut off the water,and that becamethe occasionfor an extendedreflection on the meaningof water."For me,"Darwish says, andothers like me who have burned with thewounds of water,Ibn Sidahhas set out the namesof waterand its attributes.What follows is onlya dropfrom that flood:water, waters, waterfall, rapids, cataract, cascade, snow ice, hail, backwater, backwash,aqueduct, canal, droplet, drizzle,cloudburst, rain, and so on, addingup to I 12synonyms.t CONTEXTSOF LANGUAGEIN MAHMOUDDARWISH If the water is cut off in West Beirut, it has not beencut off in the dictionary, where there is a river of synonymsfor water.Clearly, Darwish thinks of words as objectswith a separateexistence, as things in themselves.Language is a flood that can overflow material reality.Water is as much there in the imaginativeuniverse of the poet as it is not there in the material world, and who ultimately is to tell which world is more real?"Oh fast-movingtimej'Darwish criesout in Mural, "You'vesnatched me away/ from what the obscurealphabet is telling me / The actualis the imaginedindeed."6 In the 112words for water,we alsosee the power of synonymyto createa meaningthat engulfsphysical reality. Theorganization of soundinto rhythmic patternsis anotherway of incarnating the homeland.Darwish gloried in the inherentmusicality of Arabic,in which new meaning is createdby altering the rhythm of the basicroot of words-that is, by vocally rubbing the consonantsagainst each other. We saw this processat work in the examplegiven abovethat hingeson the rhythmic elaborationof the sound representedby the letter /k/. Everything that Darwish wrote, including his prose,is suffusedwith rhythm. The whole first sectionof Don't Apologizefor What You'veDone, consistin g of 47 poems( 121pages out of 157)is titled,"On the Passionfor Rhythm."The first sectionof that sequencedeclares: Therhythm chooses me; it chokeson me I'm thetempo of theviolin, not itsplayer I'm in thepresence of memory Whenthe echo of thingsspeaks in me I speak.T Memory and Presenceare two of the most significantthemes in Darwish's Poetry,as we can seefrom the titles of the two books,Memory for Forgetfulness and In the Presenceof Absence,the first written in mid-career(1982-85), and the secondtowards the end of his life (2006).An earlierwork, lournal of an Ordinary Grief (1973),explores Darwish's memory of his early years and how in the processof the transformationof the homeland from Palestineto Israel he became a present-absentperson. The phrase"in the presenceof" has a reverentialconnotation, and memory refersto everythingthat connectsDarwish with Palestine.Therefore, when he is "in the presenceof memoryi' the complex emotional/psychologicalstate that is Palestineis presentin his consciousnessand he is in an unusuallyreceptive frame of mind, suchthat it is not he but the "echo of things"that organizesthe rhythm of his words. Part of the problemwith translation,even at its most rhythmic,is that it cannot conveythe samerhythms. We sawthat with the /k/ example.Of course,rhythm is part of the very structureof Arabic. However,the poet has to be there to receive the vibrations from nature,which he then turns into patternedlanguage, almost IBRAHIMMUHAWI choking from the excessof passion.Therefore, if Palestineincarnates in Darwish's poetry as language,perforce it has to be the Arabic languagethat embodiesthat incarnation.To someextent this processparallels the kind of manifestationof the Divine in the Arabicwords of the Qur'an. The first stanzaof the poem titled "For Our Country"
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