Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
In this space that “Arabi 21” newspaper provides for us, I continue to dig into the role of Palestinian intellectuals and creators in shaping the Palestinian identity in the Palestinian collective consciousness first and the Arab and international consciousness second. Today I stop at the contributions of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Salim Al-Hout in the history of Palestine and the meanings of belonging to it in poetry and prose. .
The poet Mahmoud Salim Al-Hout lives in the literary culture and national poetry of most Palestinians. It is rare to find a Palestinian student who did not study in the sixth or seventh grade curriculum the poem “Jaffa,” which he published in his famous epic “The Arab Farce,” which is a 30-page book of The poetry has the same meter, but on each page there is a different narration (rhyme as people know it, but its name is narration in prosody).
This is the poem in which he says:
Jaffa, my tears dried up and I cried blood... When will I see you? Is there a long lifespan?
Evening, morning, and the memory is renewed.. carried in the folds of the soul forever.
How are the sisters? And I long for cities for it. . As if they were pieces of an eternal paradise
. How is it today, O Jaffa? Have you enjoyed it after being handed over yesterday, hand to hand?
And what about those who remain in its pastures, whom we have left behind, left alone?
What is the matter with my heart when I walk from a country? It cries out from the heart of my country,
no matter how upright it is with a comfortable life.. I found it mocking the comfortable life. I am
tired, but I am still tired. I complain to God, I do not complain to anyone.
The Pisces poet is technically considered a classical, follower poet. He adheres to vertical poetry in terms of meter and narrative in his poetry.
In the chronological division of the poets of Palestine, he is considered one of the veteran poets who lived through the Nakba and its repercussions. The massacres, the defense of homes and then their loss, the bitterness of asylum and Arab betrayal (the whale called it a farce), then the Arab-Zionist wars and their details (the nationalization of the canal, the resistance to Port Said, the unity between Egypt and Syria) were evident in their poetry. The defeat of 1967, Jerusalem, etc.).
The Nakba poets are divided geographically between refugees outside Palestine (such as Al-Hut, Al-Buhairi, Al-Khatib, Al-Aboushi, Abu Salma, and Haroun Hashim Rashid), and those who remained under occupation in Palestine.
It happened that most of the veteran poets (in the Nakba) were among the two trios we mentioned in the previous article (Touqan and his two companions, and Darwish and his two companions), and they were not the leaders of the renaissance, but they were without a doubt the strong bond that connected them and maintained the high level of Palestinian poetry between them.
Who is our poet?
The poet Mahmoud Salim Al-Hout was born in the city of Jaffa (coast of Palestine) in 1916, and died in Beirut in 1989. He
lived his life as a worker and teacher in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and the United States of America.
He completed his pre-university education in Jaffa City Schools (1933), then joined the American University of Beirut and obtained a BA in Arabic Literature in 1937.
He began his professional life in the city of Jaffa in the field of self-employment, then moved in 1939 to Baghdad, where he worked as a teacher. In 1940, he obtained a professor’s degree in science from the American University for his thesis, “On the Path of Mythology among the Arabs.”
Then he returned to Palestine and worked as assistant controller of Arabic programs and publishing on Al-Quds Radio, then he moved as inspector of the Jaffa Municipality Department, then as assistant inspector of the Southern District in Palestine in the period between 1942 and 1948. Following the Nakba, he traveled to Iraq and joined the university education field as a professor, and moved around
. He moved between several colleges, including Baghdad Higher College for three years, after which he returned to Beirut and worked in the preparatory college at the American University.
He then worked as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, where he established a department for Oriental Arab Studies. Then he returned to Beirut as a lecturer in psychology for female students at the National Nursing School, then as a professor of Arabic literature at Al-Maqasid Charitable College. In 1963, he was appointed general observer at Kuwaiti Radio.
He was a member of the Al-Urwa Al-Wuthqa group at the American University of Beirut. He participated in cultural life in Lebanon and Palestine even before the 1948 Nakba, and had connections with a number of prominent Arab writers and intellectuals.
His poetry was composed in rhymed meter and ranged between sentimentalism and patriotism, making it an emphasis on love for Palestine and presenting its cause. In his sentiments - according to Al-Babtain Dictionary - there is a romantic and humanitarian tendency that depicts his alienation and feeling of loneliness far from his family and homeland. His language is smooth, his structures are solid, and his meanings are close.
He wrote articles, research, and poetry - according to the Encyclopedia of Palestinian Notables - and published his results in Arab newspapers and magazines with multiple signatures (Palestinian - Bahri - Rabie - Baghdad resident - and far away... and others).
Among his poetic works are: “The Arab Farce” 1951 - “Arabic Epics” 1958 - “The Infidel Flame” 1963 - “The Scream of the Earth.” He has a poetry play called “The Magic Dagger.”
Other works: He wrote a number of short story translations in the 1950s, and presented to the Arab Library a number of specialized books, including: “On the Way of Mythology among the Arabs” - 1955, and “Revolution and Literature” - 1963. Examples of his poetry: Most of the themes and issues were evident in Al-Hout’s
poetry
. (Like contemporary poets of the Nakba), he says, motivating the people of Jaffa to defend their city and repel enemy attacks:
Whenever the molars become more severe, they will remain in humiliation for peace.
That is Jaffa. Is it visible except behind a wall of shooting stars? Amina.
Concerning Arab unity, we choose from his collection “Arabic Epics”:
The Arabs are a nation that they have loved... God is a sacred, brilliant pulse
in the blackness of Iraq, in Egypt and the Levant... and in The beloved Morocco is far away
in Riyadh, in every region...whether it is Eastern or Moroccan
, and the whale does not forget what the Arab regimes did in Palestine, calling in his poem for the rulers to step down from their chairs:
Those who elevated the people and set off...to the pinnacles of glory and left them in our fields have
failed in the field of governance. So depart from our face, O protectors of our genius.
I conclude the article with the prose with which he opened the book “The Arab Farce”:
a dedication
to the leader who will recover the first inch of Palestine.
To the battalion that will plant the first seed in the soil of the usurped paradise.
To everyone who will heed the general call.
To the greater Arab people.
I raise these songs.
Baghdad, May 1951.
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