أطياف محمود درويش

Abstract

This paper examines the scholarly and popular prestige that Mahmud Darwish’s poem “Identity Card” enjoys. Having been exceptionally and widely celebrated for more than half a century, the poem has had an impact even on Darwish, who occasionally had to respond to its unparalleled position in Arabic culture. While most previous studies have sought to identify this poem with the so-called “Poetry of the Revolution,” a term that was popularized in the second half of the 20th century, this paper seeks to destabilize such reductionist readings, offering instead an unprecedented interpretation of the poem that takes the text itself as its point of departure.