In the early 80’s Saturday Night Live had a recurring character, Tyrone Green, played by Eddie Murphy who was a “poet” whose most famous work was “Cill my landlord.” In one sketch, Tyrone shows his versatility, he’s not just a poet, he’s a conceptual artist too.
And of course the all white crowd loves him. They shower Tyrone with self indulgent adulation for his work, imbuing it with a non-existent profundity. And he repays their praise with scorn.
The dilettantes see themselves as sophisticates for embracing and understanding the noble savage. But Tyrone is not so noble.
Man #1: Tyrone, now everyone here knows that you’re most famous for writing “Kill My Landlord.” Do you suppose that you could recite that for us?
Tyrone: No! Shut up! I will recite my latest poem that I wrote about you bougie white trash scum. It’s called “I Hate White People” by Tyrone Green.
They want to be enlightened by Tyrone but are too blind to see that the enlightened artist holds them in absolute contempt.
While not 100% analogous, veneration of a similar sort has been expressed for the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish who died a few days ago. Ethan Bronner writing in the New York Times described him:
Mahmoud Darwish, whose searing lyrics on Palestinian exile and tender verse on the human condition led him to be widely viewed as the pre-eminent man of Palestinian letters as well as one of the greatest contemporary Arab poets, died Saturday night in Houston after complications from heart surgery. He was 67.
And while Bronner takes pains to describe Darwish as an artist, no doubt his international acclaim stemmed from his poltics.
Nonetheless, politics played a major role in Mr. Darwish’s life and work. Born to a middle-class Muslim farming family in a village near Haifa in what is today Israel, Mr. Darwish identified strongly with the secular Palestinian national movement long led by Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Zaqtan and Mr. Abed Rabbo said he was the author of Mr. Arafat’s famous words at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974: “I come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
He also wrote the Palestinian declaration of independent statehood in 1988 and served on the executive committee of the P.L.O. But he quit in the early 1990s over differences with the leadership and moved firmly out of the political sphere, lamenting the rise of the Islamist group Hamas and what he viewed as the bankruptcy of Palestinian public life.
But this leaves something unsaid. Why was it that he left the PLO? Bronner emphasizes that he lamented the rise of Hamas, but Darwish wasn’t necessarily such a strong proponent of peace with Israel.
Time Magazine’s Scott MacLeod’s hagiographic obituary includes this information about Darwish:
He moved to the West Bank in 1996 although he had resigned from the PLO to protest Arafat’s Oslo Accords peace agreement with Israel. Darwish, who had grudgingly agreed to sit on Arafat’s Executive Committee, accepted the principle of a two-state solution but doubted–so far, correctly–that the Oslo deal, which he felt was a sell-out to Israel, would lead to a genuine Palestinian state.
Oslo was a sell out to Israel? That claim’s consistent with Hamas. And why has Darwish been correct? MacLeod implies, of course, that Darwish “correctly” didn’t trust Israel.
But is it the fault of Israel or the failure of the PLO and Hamas to create a nation? Just this week Israel made another overly generous offer to the “moderate” Abbas and having been secure in pledges of millions from Kuwait and Israel, he rejected it.
But it wasn’t just Darwish’s objection to Oslo that is troublesome. The was a more basic problem to Darwish that Martin Peretz observes:
But the tender poetry is not what endears him to his public. There is a poem by Darwish, “Those Who Pass Fleeting Words,” not at all so tender but in fact aggressive…
Above I wrote that Ethan Bronner tried to minimize the political aspect of Darwish’s poetry, but what he wrote was extremely political and that was its appeal. Peretz republishes a translation of one of Darwish’s poems:
The time has come for you to go away
And dwell where you wish but do not dwell among us
The time has come for you to go away
And die where you wish but do not die among us
This poem was addressed to Israel. It does not speak of compromise. And this is an important point about Palestinian nationalism. It doesn’t simply seek to enfranchise Palestinians it seeks to disenfranchise Jews. For all of the flowery words that pseudo-intellectuals are using to eulogize Darwish and credit him with giving a voice to exile, they ignore – some intentionally, some not – the extremity of his views and how that extremism is the true voice of Palestinian nationalism.
Like the pretensions of the clueless fans of Tyrone Green they impute a meaning to Darwish’s art that isn’t there.
As Peretz writes about the “olive branch” line that Bronner and others mention:
Nonetheless, Darwish couldn’t keep his poetic priorities in order…or, rather, his political life for a time overwhelmed his poetry. After all, he was the poet who handed pistol-toting Yassir Arafat for his appearance at the U.N. General Assembly the infamous slogan: “I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun.” Of course, the olive branch was entirely metaphorical and the gun was metaphorical not at all.
That being the case, the line isn’t an expression of conciliation, but a threat.
In the SNL skit, Tyrone Green’s fans are clueless fools who think that Green’s “art” somehow ennobles them. In the case of Mahmoud Darwish, the media people who wrote of his death and his art believe that his poetry somehow romanticized the cause of the Palestinians. While I have little doubt that Darwish’s views represented the Palestinians accurately, it was the Irredentism he expressed that was the basis for his appeal.
In an e-mail Elder of Ziyon summed it up nicely:
Poetry doesn’t make one moderate
Darwish’s fans, for the most part, tried to hide that aspect of his poetry. What they fail to appreciate is that this is precisely why, fifteen years after Oslo there is still no Palestine. Palestinian nationalism is not mainly about the end of an exile, it is mainly about the end of an existing country. It was a sentiment that was accurately captured by the Palestinians’ poet.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
