Poetry
وحدي مع الأيام
Not translated into English
Fadwa Tuqan · 1952
Synopsis
The first collection of a young woman from Nablus who did not go out alone, who learned verse outside school. The poems speak of isolation, waiting and a deep melancholy, the lives of women in a society governed by men, in a language still classical that owes much to the Arab Romantics of the emigration, Elia Abu Madi and Ali Mahmoud Taha.
Context
The collection appeared in 1952 and was reissued in 1965; the next opened up to free verse and to love. Tuqan signed with pseudonyms, Dananir or al-Mutawwaqa. After 1948, she wrote, “when the roof fell on Palestine, the veil fell from the face of the woman of Nablus”. Later, Moshe Dayan compared reading one of her poems to twenty enemy commandos, and Darwish called her the mother of Palestinian poetry.
Who it is for
A collection in Arabic, with no French translation; her memoirs, in translation, shed light on these early poems.
Prizes and reception
Her poetry was translated into English in the 1980s; in 1990 she received the Jerusalem Prize for culture.
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