Palestine as Metaphor

by Mahmoud Darwish, Amira El-Zein (Translator), Carolyn Forchï (Translator)

Overview

Palestine as Metaphor consists of a series of interviews with Mahmoud Darwish, which have never appeared in English before. The interviews are a wealth of information on the poet’s personal life, his relationships, his numerous works, and his tragedy. They illuminate Darwish’s conception of poetry as a supreme art that transcends time and place.

Several writers and journalists conducted the interviews, including a Lebanese poet, a Syrian literary critic, three Palestinian writers, and an Israeli journalist. Each encounter took place in a different city from Nicosia to London, Paris, and Amman.

These vivid dialogues unravel the threads of a rich life haunted by the loss of Palestine and illuminate the genius and the distress of a major world poet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623719425
Publisher:	Interlink Publishing Group, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	738,907
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Mahmoud Darwish, born in 1941 in the village of al-Birweh, Palestine, was the author of over two dozen volumes of poetry and prose. He died in the summer of 2008. Mohammad Shaheen is professor of English at the University of Jordan and the author of many books, including E.M. Forster and the Politics of Imperialism.

AMIRA EL-ZEIN is a poet, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature and Culture at Georgetown University in Qatar. CAROLYN FORCHÉ is the author of four books of poetry, and the editor of two best-selling poetry anthologies, Against Forgetting and Poetry of Witness.

Table of Contents

Preface: A Poet Among Us by Carolyn Forché vii

Introduction: The Never Fading Presence Amira El-Zein xi

Mahmoud Darwish: A Chronology xix

1 The One Who Imposes His Story Inherits the Earth of the Story 1

2 No Dwelling for Poetry Except Outside Poetic Conventions 51

3 Our Present Does Not Decide to Begin or to End 75

4 I Don't Return, I Arrive 91

5 The House is More Beautiful than the Road to It 147

About the Contributors

Interviewers 165

Translators 169

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) 171

Editorial Reviews

A brilliant poet—certainly the most gifted of his generation in the Arab world.”

"These interviews are a rich trove of his reflections on his art, personal revelations, and political insight ' vivid and fluid translations, one clearly hears Darwish's voice: self-assured yet sensitive, witty yet sincere.

Any reader who has enjoyed Darwish's poetry or prose collections would surely also enjoy these exchanges.

From the Publisher

Mahmoud Darwish is indispensable. His work makes us question our hearts, takes us apart and leaves us space to reassemble ourselves. Palestine as Metaphor, elegantly translated by long time friends Amira El-Zein and Carolyn Forché, is an essential reader. This collection of five interviews opens the curtain to the mind and spirit, life and oeuvres of the literary visionary. His views on poetry and passion, exile and existence, offer us sheltera room, musical note, breath. His answers stir fundamental questions, and these questions become a language to imagine in, an image infinite and impassioned. This book transforms us as we cross each sentence."

Nathalie Handal

No other poet has expressed the fractured and discontinuous experiences of the Palestinian people as well and as powerfully as Mahmoud Darwish. His considerable work amounts to an epic effort to transform the lyrics of loss into the tragic drama of exile's indefinite aftermath. A poet who had the stylistic virtuosity and artistic gift to express the collective sentiments of a people without overlooking the most intimate textures of individual life, Darwish's great achievement was to also reveal how there was scarcely any language that existed which could adequately represent the unfixed and unsettled life of a people who have, since their expulsion from British Mandatory Palestine in 1948, lived as refugees and exiles in a realm without place and in the time of an ending without end. This selection of remarkable interviews with Darwish, translated and published in English for first time in Palestine as Metaphor, shows his thought in action as it traverses the intellectual and territorial boundaries that have been imposed at an extraordinary cost to human life and dignity."

Andrew Rubin

Any reader who has enjoyed Darwish's poetry or prose collections would surely also enjoy these exchanges.

ArabLit

"These interviews are a rich trove of his reflections on his art, personal revelations, and political insight ' vivid and fluid translations, one clearly hears Darwish's voice: self-assured yet sensitive, witty yet sincere.

New York Review of Books

A brilliant poet—certainly the most gifted of his generation in the Arab world.”

Edward Said

Darwish narrates Palestine, conflict and confrontation, love, exile, loss and return in a profound, sensitive and assertive tone which illustrates both his individuality and his attachment to Palestine and the Palestinian people ' Reading Darwish's interviews is equivalent to immersing one's self in an unrivalled metaphor. His language is impeccable, passionate and pondering, like an extension of his verses which resonate upon every reading. What is conventionally associated with Darwish is dismantled through the poet himself, allowing the reader to arrive at a deeper understanding, and one that reads like a timeless and regenerating revelation of the man and his poetry."

Middle East Monitor