Contemporary Poetry of Angst and Exile

A Comparative Study of the Poetry of Ali Ahmad Said Esber ‘Adunis’ and Mahmoud Darwish

“Banished, lost among the roads

a cipher to arms and heart,

hunger is all our cries

and the wind our clothes.

even the morning flees from our sight,

glares hatred into our eyes” (Adonis, Adonis Selected Poems, 2010)

True are these words that Khalil Gibran enunciated “a poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote”; Adonis’ poetry is truly his autobiography unraveling all the strands of his life, who believes that poetry is the exploration of an individual‘s metaphysical sensitivity not a collective political or socially oriented vision while his counterpart from Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish, ‘the poet of resistance’ encapsulates, “poetry could never reflect on itself in the absence of external events and political influences” (Shehadeh, 2002).

Both poets of enormous fame had to undergo the ordeal of exile that incited them to pen down their catastrophic voyage of their life through the craft of poetry. Adonis’ poetry largely rests upon what he calls ‘internal exile’ which he thinks to be an impetus for a poet; he proclaims in an interview, “I have a different notion of exile from that which is prevalent today, which is really about geographic exile. My own understanding is different. I believe exile is an internal experience, more than it is an external, physical one. I don’t believe that a real poet does not have that sense of internal exile and it’s really to do with language – because language for a poet is both his homeland and his exile. Homeland because in the end a poet really only finds himself in his language; exile because inevitable and invariably, language fails to say what he wants.” (Allsop, 2012). Being highly influenced by the philosophy of mysticism and Sufism, he defines exile as an epiphany that lets him realize the ‘existence of another invisible reality’. He speaks in a conversation that “Mysticism helped me to realise the existence of another invisible reality, which is also very vivid, dynamic and also constantly changing. It’s like a human being; outside, there is his or her face, body and movements, but behind all of that is an astonishing reality that is deeper, richer and often full of unknowns. So that movement between the visible and the invisible, it’s a form of exile because in looking for the invisible, you force yourself into exile to understand that different reality. Sufism alerted me to this unknown world, which remains unknown.”

(Allsop, 2012). He so often does not deplores ‘exile’ in his poetry but he embellishes his verses with the ‘rare feelings’ of exile that as he says,” is not given to everyone” (Esber, 2008). For him creativity is the banishment in itself in that sense and the creative person is always in exile. How he celebrates his ‘exile’ can be conjectured by reading the following verses,

“A strangers to you

I reside on the other edge,

A nation that belongs to me only.

In sleep and in walking,

I open a blossom and live inside it.” (Adonis, Mihyar of Damascus, His Songs, 2008) .

Rainer Maria Rilke also espouses the fact that “we’re unutterably alone in exile, essentially, especially with the things most intimate and most important to us” (Rilke, 2005).

Now let’s swerve to the poet, Mahmoud Darwish whose “work carries the mark of the sensitive émigré’s obsession with his own fate and his hopeless attempts to make any satisfying contact with his new surroundings” (VYAS, 2009). The obvious dissimilarity of these two poets lies in how they deem their exile in this poetry; Darwish like modernist laments and angrily screams in his poetry, on the other hand Adunis like post-modernist celebrates his ‘exile’ in his verses. In his poem, Identity Card, Darwish quells at oppressors of Palestine and warns them that his anger may turn into a gigantic explosion,

“I hate nobody

Neither do I steal

But when I am made hungry

Then I will eat the flesh of my oppressor

Beware of my hunger and my anger” (Darwish, 1964) .

Adonis and Darwish seem to be reconciling when speaking of the global hegemony of the West ; even while viewing Western conceptual innovations with a sense of entitlement, and considering them human cultural advancement, Adonis nonetheless has been a concicetent critic of Western societies’ and government’s treatment of the rest of humanity. Khaled Mattawa, the translator of Adonis’s verses observes “Adonis has repeatedly asserted that Western weaponry,industry and capital have dehumanized both Westerners and those subject to their violence and greed. His critique of the damaging effects of mechanization and the “mongrelizing” force og globalization have become acerbic in the last two decades, coinciding with his relocation to Paris” (Mattawa, 2010) . The poem, West And East criticizes the Western oreintalist’s hegemony and makes a critique of the frightening consequences of it,

“It was East like a child asking,

Pleading

And West was his flawless elder.

I turn the map,

For the world is all burned up :

East and West, a heap

Of ash gathered

In the self-same grave.” (Adonis, Adonis Selected Poems, 2010)

Darwish has also reminded Europe to atone for “its great crime against its Jewish inhabitants followed up through giving unlimited support to Israel as a resolution to the Jewish question, and that it bears responsibility for creating another question which is the Palestinian question.” He said, “No tragedy justifies the creation of another tragedy, and there is no intercession for a victim when such intercession transforms one who is innocent of the crime into yet another victim. We bear no responsibility for the great tragedy which Europe inflicted upon the Jewish people. (Darwish, Mahmoud Darwish Spoke in TheName of The Palestinian People).

Objectives of my Research

During the course of my research, I’ll make stern efforts to achieve the following goals for the new prospects in this area of study:

To track down the similarity and dissimilarity for the nuanced anatomy of their poetry with the critical standpoints.

To delve into the thematic hypothesis of ‘angst and exile’ in the new horizon with reference to the poetry of the two poets Adunis and Darwish.

To measure the contribution of their poetry in global poetical narrative of exile and its impressions upon contemporary literary activism.

To seek out the influences of Arabic poetry in the contemporary global literature.

Works CitedAdonis. (2010). Adonis Selected Poems. London: Yale University Press.

Adonis. (2008). Mihyar of Damascus, His Songs. Boa Editions.

Allsop, L. (2012, 2 28). A Life in Language :Adonis in conversation with Laura Allsop. Retrieved from IBRAAZ: http://www.ibraaz.org/interviews/13

Darwish, M. (1964). Leaves of Olives.

Esber, N. (2008). Conversations With My Father. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Mattawa, K. (2010). Adonis Selected Poems. London: Yale University Press.

Rilke, R. M. (2005). Letters To Young Poet. New Delhi: Yogi Impressions.

Shehadeh, R. (2002). BOMBSITE. Retrieved from BOMBSITE: http://bombsite.com/issues/81/articles/2520

VYAS, R. (2009, January 4). Mahmoud Darwish: Romantic Exile. Retrieved from The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-literaryreview/mahmoud-darwish-romantic-exile/article662150.ece