Manifestations of the Sea in Contemporary Palestinian Poetry: A Critical Study of Vision and Poetic Formation

Abstract

The sea constitutes one of the most recurrent spatial motifs in contemporary Arabic poetry and lies at the heart of the thematic meanings embedded in its image. In itself, it is a space for poetic contemplation that seeks the meaning of homeland through the dialectic of land and exile. Since the sea and the spatial forms associated with it—waves, ports, ships, sails, and others—are signs of departure and distance from the land, owing to the images of travel and adventure into the unknown that have become attached to it in collective memory and poetic imagination, it simultaneously remains a sign of awaiting return and returnees, because it has stored within itself the hopes and dreams of exiles for whom anticipation of the moment of return has remained an eternal preoccupation.

Like other natural phenomena, the sea enters poetry and its meaning and significance expand beyond mere description toward connotations associated with the poet’s psychological states and the atmosphere surrounding the text. In representations of the sea, these connotations are often similar. Among the most important meanings of the sea encountered in the poetry under consideration are the poetics of the sea, anxiety and disturbance, and fear and the unknown—features intrinsically associated with the sea. The connotations of anxiety and disturbance in the sea correspond to the poet’s psychological state.