Mahmud Darwish

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Mahmud Darwish ( Arabic محمود درويش, DMG Maḥmūd Darwīš ; * March 13, 1941 in al-Birwa, Palestine near Akko ; † August 9, 2008 in Houston , Texas ) was a Palestinian poet who has been referred to as the poetic voice of his people.

Mahmud Darwisch (2006)

Life

Mahmud Darwish came from a landowning family, his mother was called Hurriya and was the daughter of the former mayor of the neighboring town. He was the second oldest and had three brothers and three sisters. In 1948 Darwish fled with his family to Lebanon , where the family first lived in Jezzine , but after a few months in Damur . Mahmud Darwish and his family soon returned to Palestine / Israel in secret. Since the family's home village had been destroyed and two kibbutzim had to give way, his family settled in the village of Dair al-Asad. Her life as "illegal intruders" was marked by degradation.

After a protest, he was taken to an Israeli prison when he was 14 years old . He learned Hebrew at school and then read classics of world literature and the Bible in Hebrew. After attending the Arab high school in Kufr Yasif , he went to Haifa . In the 1960s he worked there as the culture editor of the communist newspaper "Al-Ittihad" (The Union) and its culture paper "Al-Gadid" (The New) and wrote poems such as "Identity Card" (1964) and "A Lover from Palestine" (1966), who made him famous throughout the Arab world through Ghassan Kanafani's anthology "The Resistance Poetry in Occupied Palestine" (1966). After multiple imprisonment and repression under the discriminatory Israeli military law, Darwish left Israel in 1970 to study in Moscow . He then lived in exile in Cairo , from 1972 in Beirut , which he left because of the Israeli invasion in 1982, then in Cyprus , Tunis and Paris . Since 1996 he lived in Amman and Ramallah . In July 2007 Darwish appeared again in Haifa for the first time. In particular, the historical turning point of the Beirut summer in 1982, the weeks of bombing and the collapse of previously cherished hopes led to a radically new spelling and (cultural) political position, which he unified in prose texts such as "A Memory for Forgetting" (1987) essays and volumes of poetry such as "Siege der Hymnen auf dem Meer" (1984), "Es ist ein Lied, ein Lied" (1986), and finally the orchestral "Praise of the High Shadow" in "To describe our situation" (1987) an impressive polyphony expressed.

In Beirut he became director of the Palestine Research Center of the PLO and editor of the journal Palestinian Affairs and the literary journal Al-Karmal (The Carmel). From 1987 to 1993 he was a member of the Palestinian National Council and on November 14, 1988 co-author of the Proclamation of the Palestinian State .

Well-known poems that were set to music by the Lebanese musician Marcel Khalifé are Rita and the rifle and To my mother . The motif of love for a (Jewish-Israeli) stranger, which caused a sensation in the Arab world in the "Rita poems" of the sixties, continues poetically into his late work, about the possibilities of a philosophical dialogue and a utopian new beginning re-exploit.

Mahmud Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after heart surgery in a Houston hospital. His body was transferred to Ramallah, where he received a "state funeral" on August 12, 2008 on a hill not far from the Palace of Culture, which was renamed the "Darwish Palace of Culture".

meaning

Mahmud Darwish has been described as one of the outstanding contemporary poets in the Arab world as well as the poetic voice of the Palestinian people; his volumes of poetry have been translated into 30 languages. In his works he campaigned against injustice and oppression as well as for a peaceful and just coexistence of Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews. He also repeatedly addressed the fate of many Palestinians in exile. For a long time, his life's work was shaped by political commitment to an independent Palestinian state. As a former member of the Executive Committee of the PLO , he wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988. Darwish was seen as a sharp critic of both Israeli politics and the Palestinian leadership.

In Germany, unlike in France, Darwisch has remained an insider tip.

A fascinating aspect of Darwīš's lyrical work lies in the continuous search for new poetic forms, rhythms and images that, despite continued loss, dispossession, despair and resignation, retain their affirmation of life and their musicality. His poems try to capture the voices of others, including the "enemy", to perceive other parts of the self as enrichment and to question nationalistic-colonial identity constructions in order to show possible ways to a more humane world and society. This is accompanied by a change in the understanding of exile, which is increasingly valued as an elementary component of one's own identity - similar to Edwards Said's perspectives on exile and identity.

On October 5, 2008, the Berlin International Literature Festival held a worldwide reading in memory of Mahmud Darwisch.

Awards

Poems

  • Asafir bila Ajniha ( Birds Without Wings ), 1960
  • Olive tree leaves (أوراق الزيتون aurâq az-Zaytūn) 1964
  • A lover from Palestine (عاشق من فلسطين 'âshiq min filastîn), 1966
  • Akhir al-layl ( The End of the Night ), 1967
  • Yawmiyyat jurh filastini ( Diary of a Palestinian Wound ), 1969
  • Habibati tanhad min nawmiha ( My Beloved Awakens ), 1969
  • al-Kitabah 'ala dhaw'e al-bonduqiyah ( Writing in the Light of the Gun ), 1970
  • al-'Asafir tamut fi al-jalil ( Birds Die in the Galilee ), 1970
  • Works by Mahmoud Darwish, 1971. Two volumes.
  • Mattar na'em fi kharif ba'eed ( Light rain in the far autumn ) 1971
  • Uhibbuki aw la uhibbuki ( I love you, I don't love you ), 1972
  • Jondiyyun yahlum bi-al-zanabiq al-baidaa ( A soldier dreams of white lilies ), 1973
  • Muhawalah raqm 7 ( attempt number 7 ), 1974
  • Tilka suratuha wa-hadha intihar al-ashiq ( This is her image and this is the lover's suicide ), 1975
  • Ahmad al-za'tar , 1976.
  • A'ras ( Weddings ), 1977
  • al-Nasheed al-jasadi (The Corporeal Hymn), 1980
  • The music of the human flesh. Poems of the Palestinian Struggle. Translated from Denys Johnson-Davies. Heinemann 1980
  • Qasidat Bayrut ( Beirut's poem ), 1982
  • Palestine as a metaphor: conversations about literature and politics. Palmyra, Heidelberg 1998 ISBN 3-930378-16-7
  • A memory to forget. Beirut, August 1982 (ذاكرة للنسيان dhâkira lin-nisyân, 1987) prose. Lenos, Basel 2001 ISBN 3-85787-316-7
  • Less roses. Poems. Hans Schiler, Berlin 2002 ISBN 3-89930-101-3
  • "We have a land of words". Selected poems 1986–2002. Ammann, Zurich 2002 ISBN 3-250-30013-6
  • Where you have been and where you are Poems. A1 Verlag , Munich 2004 ISBN 3-927743-71-2
  • Why did you leave the horse alone? Poems. Hans Schiler, Berlin 2004 ISBN 3-89930-244-3
  • State of siege. Poems. Hans Schiler, Berlin 2006 ISBN 3-89930-106-4
  • The dice player. Poem. Arabic-German. Übers., Vorw. Adel Karasholi . A1 Verlag, Munich 2009 ISBN 978-3-940666-08-6

literature

  • Stephan Milich: "Alien to my name and alien to my time." Identity and Exile in the Poetry of Mahmud Darwish . Hans Schiler, Berlin 2005

Web links

Commons : Mahmoud Darwish  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Palestinian poet Darwish died . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . August 9, 2008.
  2. ↑ Darwish laid to rest in Ramallah. In: Al Jazeera English .
  3. ^ Suleman Taufiq: New Arabic Poetry . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-13262-0 , p. 217.
  4. ↑ Mahmoud Darwish. Short biography on the Lannan Foundation website
  5. ↑ Palestinian poetry legend. Mahmud Darwish died . In: Der Spiegel . August 10, 2008.
  6. ↑ Metaphor Palestine. The influential Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish revolutionized Arabic poetry. In: the daily newspaper . August 11, 2008.
  7. ↑ Stephan Milich: "Alien to my name and alien to my time: Identity and exile in the poetry of Mahmud Darwisch". Berlin: Hans Schiler Verlag, 2005
  8. ↑ October 5th, 2008 - Worldwide reading in memory of Mahmud Darwisch - Worldwide Reading. In: www.worldwide-reading.com. Retrieved April 5, 2016 .
  9. ^ Lannan Foundation: 2001 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Mahmoud Darwish
  10. ↑ After the Israeli army radio broadcast this poem and had it discussed, the station manager received a warning and the Israeli war minister Avigdor Lieberman compared Mahmoud Darwish with Hitler and his poems with Mein Kampf .
personal data
SURNAME Darwish, Mahmud
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Palestinian poet and essayist
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH al-Birwa at Akko
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 2008
Place of death Houston , Texas