‘A Necessary Forgetfulness of the Memory of Place’

Mahmoud Darwish's Poetry of No Return

Datos Bibliográficos

ID18958905
AutoresCharlotta Salmi (0000-0002-8099-6033, University of Oxford, autor de correspondencia)
Año2012
Volumen14
Número1
Páginas55-68
Fecha de publicación2012-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInterventions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369801x.2012.656936
OpenAlexW1487011578
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas17

Since the first translation of his work into English in the 1970s Mahmoud Darwish has been internationally received as a spokesman for the Palestinian national cause in exile. Associating himself and his work with resistance, Darwish's poetry has been instrumental in voicing Palestinian political demands such as the right of return. In the last two decades, however, there has been a marked shift in Darwish's poetry towards a recognition of the impossibility of physical return. Although this development has been critically acknowledged, readings such as Anette Månsson's (2003) which focus on return – as a symbolic rather than physical possibility in Darwish's work – are still prevalent in English language criticism. This essay argues that Darwish in his later work ‘Don't Apologize for What You've Done’ problematizes any return at all – including the symbolic and metaphoric – and moves away from representing the communal experience of exile, driven by the possibility of return, in favour of the more private experience of exile as a poet. It suggests that the desire to read Darwish as a national representative and his more private concerns with exile do not align as neatly in his later poetry as previous criticism has suggested

Art · Criticism · Impossibility · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Middle East Politics and Society · Psychology