Resistance, Martyrdom and Death in Mahmoud Darwish's Poetry

Abstract

Struggle, personal sacrifice and death play significant roles in Palestinian poetry – a poetry of national struggle whose poets are driven to defend the existence of people and land by way of a fighting poetry which serves as a resistance to occupation. This article traces the evolution of the motifs of resistance and death in the poetry of Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish. It distinguishes between two main types of death in Darwish's poetry; these are collective death, which the author expresses by way of his people's experiences with death, and individual death, as reflected in the poet's own experience with death. The articleexplores each of these types and analyses their conceptual evolution. It shows how the changes which occurred in this motif are reflected in the poetic forms used by Darwish. In this paper we aim to show that Darwish's view of death is multi-faceted and takes into account chronological and geographical, as well as personal aspects. His attitude towards death is complex and is not limited to the ideological aspect. The paper provides a comprehensive investigation into this multiplicity in Darwish's poetry