Twentieth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

To achieve international renown and to tell the story of his people to a larger audience successfully, Mahmoud Darwish realized early on that he had to attract the attention of some first-class translators. To do so, he had to break away from the restrictive bounds of localization and look globally; he correctly concluded that serious translators would not undertake translation projects if they did not pass the test of universal appeal to global audience. He found it imperative to enlarge the scope of his art thematically and stylistically. Thematically, he realized the need to tie his people’s local concerns to universal concerns to engage the sympathies of global audience. To that end, Darwish and Kanafani, another well-known Palestinian writer, succeeded in tying their people’s alienation to the overall universal motif of alienation with which many readers across the globe identify and sympathize. In doing so, they attracted the attention of translators and readers. Stylistically, Darwish realized the importance of using universal symbols, archetypes, myths, and imagery to suggestively communicate more than what is written on the page; this amounted to adopting the vision of essences in communicating shared universal feelings and common emotional experiences that speak powerfully to the deep mainsprings of human nature, a vision that defied space and time.