Salīm Barakāt’s Intermediary Existence: His Poem Maḥmūd Darwīsh

Authors : Aviva Butt

Pages : 328-358

Doi:10.21600/ijoks.516511

View : 200 | Download : 1900

Publication Date : 2019-01-25

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :In January this year, with my first article on Salīm Barakāt, Empire, Split Ethnicities, and an Explosion of Poetry, I introduced Barakāt’s early writings saying that guidelines to understanding the poetry of the Kurdish poet Salīm Barakāt (b. 1951, Qamishli, Syria) are to be found in a poem by his friend, Palestinian poet Maḥmūd Darwīsh  (b. 1941, al-Birweh, Palestine – d. 2008). I now present guidelines to understanding the mature output of both these poets guided by Barakāt’s poem “Maḥmūd Darwīsh” (1984 – 2002). Barakāt’s multi-layered substantially surrealistic poem also serves as an ‘index to the acts of the wind.’ In the same period, Syrian Alevi poet Adūnīs (Ali Ahmad Said Esber, b. 1930) published his book al-Sūfiyya wal Surriyāliyya (Sufism and Surrealism) (Dar al-Saqi, 1995), and then his poem Fihris li-A‘māl al-Rīḥ (Index to the Acts of the Wind) (1998) exemplifying the theories of the book. I have included translations of salient whole poems. 
Keywords : Salīm Barakāt, Maḥmūd Darwīsh, Adūnīs, Modern Arabic Poetry, Sufism, Surrealism

ORIGINAL ARTICLE URL