LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

j. kristen urbanwhich is becoming ever more permanent, threatening the historic reality of thePalestinian people.Harshly governed by military occupiers after 1967, Palestinians saw themselvesliving in a history being increasingly narrated by the West. 1 For many,hopes raised during the first years of the intifada in the late 1980s were dashedwith Yasir Arafat’s acceptance of the 1993 Oslo Accords. In response to thequincentennial commemoration of Columbus’s voyage to the New World, andin protest of the Oslo negotiations, Darwish wrote two narrative poems in 1992,‘Eleven Planets Over Andalusia’ 2 and ‘Indian Speech’. This discussion will focusfirst on an English translation 3 of the poem ‘Indian Speech’ which, within anarrative format, operates as a dramatic performance. 4 In so doing, the performancecreates empathy with two audiences through the blurring of boundariesand within the sacred space reserved for the rituals of the performance. It willargue that the poem, which employs a metaphor of the Native Americanexperience for that of Palestinians, not only resonates with Palestinians, but isaccessible to a broader audience, that of American college students who canappreciate concerns for social justice raised by this metaphor. The second partof this chapter explores the pedagogical rationale for using literature as a meansto build empathy. In ‘Indian Speech’, for example, the poet is able to establishempathic connections between both his primary and secondary audiences. Inthe process of achieving such empathy, the boundaries between self and otherbecome blurred, enhancing possibilities for creating understanding.Ciardi (1959) understood this in the same way that Darwish understands it,and ‘Indian Speech’ is dramatic performance at its best, for it establishes conflictin universal terms; it addresses itself to an audience, inviting participation, andit recognises the concept of ‘sacred space’, within which such conversation canoccur and through which levels of empathy are created, depending upon theboundaries between poet and audience. It is a script Darwish’s audienceunderstands. In this it must be recognised that there are, in fact, two audiences:the first (and most immediate, from the poet’s perspective) will be an audienceplaced within the Palestinian – and larger Arab – world; the second, and one atissue for the present purposes of pedagogy, will be from the Western world ofacademics. This chapter will argue that meaning for the second audience derivesfrom their ability to understand and empathise with the meanings evokedamong the poet’s more immediate audience.The conflict around which this poetic discourse devolves is universal in thatit calls upon the Promethean dilemma of alienation. The ontological state ofman derives from two sources: one is the spiritual essence from which hesprings, and the other relates to the terrestrial domain wherein he resides.Durand (1979) describes these as the vertical or synchronic dimension, whichhighlights man’s metaphysical (celestial?) connections, and the horizontal or— 82 —www.taq.ir