LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

darwish’s ‘indian speech’ as dramatic performancediachronic dimension, which catalogues man’s historicity as homo sapiens, biologicaland social man. Prometheus, in appropriating fire from the heavens tobring life and new possibilities to mankind, found himself alienated across bothdimensions. Condemned by Zeus to leave the realm of the gods and chained tothe rock at Mount Caucasus, he was separated from both his celestial originsand from mankind, to whom he had bequeathed material gains and ‘progress’.Alone against the rock, his liver consumed daily by predatory birds, the pain ofhis double alienation was excruciating – and enduring.For Darwish, this conflict between the spiritual truth (the synchronicdimension) and that of the material world (the diachronic dimension) is playedout by means of a metaphor which places the spirit-centred culture of theAmerican Indian against the dominating materialist culture of the white man.In the larger global historical setting, this is a confrontation between thecolonised and the coloniser; and as a subtext, in the particularist setting, it is theconfrontation between the displaced Palestinians and the West. Consider thenarrator’s opening:So we are who we areas the Mississippi flows. Ours stillwhat remains of yesterdaybut the color of the skyhas changed, the sea to the East has changed.What is it that you want, then, white master, Lordof the horses, from those on their wayto the woods of night?Sacred our pastures, our spirits high, the starsluminous words in which you can read our tale entireif you’d only lift up your eyes and gaze:Here, between water and fire we were born.And, in clouds, on the azure shoreas the Judgement Day comes to passwe are reborn. Don’t slaughter the grassmuch, too much more, for it possessesA soul in us, that could shelter the soul of the earth. [Section 1]From the beginning of the discourse, the imagery associated with theAmerican Indian is that of essences: ‘sacred our pastures’, ‘spirits’, ‘stars’,‘luminous words’, ‘here between water and fire we were born’, ‘clouds’, ‘azureshore’. Imagery associated with the white man (read: the West) on the other handinvokes (later in the poem) terrestrial images, images of plunder, dominance,material gain: ‘horse-master’, ‘your’s the iron’, 5 ‘take all the gold’, ‘flaming horses’,‘clash of steel’, ‘English guns, French wine, and Influenza’, ‘this is the iron age’,‘here the strangers triumphed’.The wholeness of man (alternatively, the integrity of the ontological status— 83 —www.taq.ir