{"id":108718,"date":"2017-03-13T18:51:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T22:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=108718"},"modified":"2017-03-13T18:51:11","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T22:51:11","slug":"why-did-they-resist-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/13\/why-did-they-resist-her\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Did They Resist Her?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

From the cover of Darwish\u2019s Journal of an Ordinary Grief<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Our\u00a0complete digital archive is available now.\u00a0Subscribers can read every piece\u2014every story and poem, every essay, portfolio, and interview\u2014from <\/em>The Paris Review\u2019s sixty-four-year history. Subscribe now<\/a> and you can start reading 0ur\u00a0back issues\u00a0right away. You can also try a free ten-day trial period<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was born on this day in 1941; he died in 2008. A few years before, facing a nightly curfew as Israeli tanks rumbled through his streets, Darwish spoke to BOMB\u00a0<\/em>about the genesis of his interest in poetry<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a child I was physically weak. I could not take part in games. I could not wrestle or play football and could not distinguish myself in sports. So I turned to language. I also spent a lot of time with adults. I would attend the gatherings that used to be held in our house when my grandfather and our neighbors recited the old Arabic legends, which were interspersed with verse. They were romantic tales that as a rule included the lover and the poet. I would listen to them and feel stirred by the poetry. I did not understand why. All I knew was that the sound of the poetry appealed to me. I did not understand the high-flown language of much of the poetry, but it gave me a sense that my dilemma could be resolved through language. The experience aroused in me the love of language. I began to dream of becoming a poet. I believed the poet was a mysterious figure with superhuman faculties. I began to write poetry from a young age, but I was not aware that what I wrote was poetry. My parents and teachers encouraged me to write. I wanted to excel, and since I couldn\u2019t do it through sports, writing became my arena and language my weapon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The\u00a0Review\u00a0<\/em>published his poem \u201cA Song and the Sultan<\/a>\u201d in our Spring 1971 issue. As you can see from the lines below, its speak-truth-to-power message still resonates today:<\/p>\n

When she told them the forest was abounding with secrets
\nand the moon was stabbed with a carving knife
\nand the blood of the nightingale was on that stone, abandoned,
\nwhy did they resist her?
\nWhy did they torture her?<\/p>\n

When she said, my country is a mountain of sweat
\nand on the small bridge a man is dying
\nand darkness burning
\nthe Sultan was angry
\nand the Sultan is an imaginative creature.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cThe fault is in the mirror
\nso let your singer be silent
\nand let my kingdom from the Nile to the Euphrates be.\u201d
\nand he shouted, \u201cPut that poem in prison!\u201d
\nThe torture room, for security,
\nis a thousand times better than an anthem or a newspaper.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole poem here<\/a>, and\u00a0subscribe now<\/a>\u00a0for digital access to every short story, poem, portfolio, and essay from\u00a0The Paris Review.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revisiting a poem by Mahmoud Darwish from our Spring 1971 issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[370,25912,26616,1325,582,7221,165,26970],"class_list":["post-108718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-back-issues","tag-digital-archive","tag-digital-subscription","tag-mahmoud-darwish","tag-palestine","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-spring-1971"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cA Song and the Sultan\u201d: A Poem by Mahmoud Darwish<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Revisiting a poem by Mahmoud Darwish from our Spring 1971 issue.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/13\/why-did-they-resist-her\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Did They Resist Her? 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