A Stylistic Approach to Prison Poetry in Mahmoud Darwish’s Collection “At the End of the Night”: Selected Examples

Abstract

This study aims to deconstruct the aesthetic and semantic structure of prison poetry in Mahmoud Darwish’s collection At the End of the Night, highlighting the dialectical relationship between the poet’s besieged self and the usurped homeland. The study examines the rhythmic structure of the poems “Blood Flowers” and “The Impossible,” as well as the linguistic and artistic manifestations of semantic and syntactic deviation in shaping poetic discourse. The research problem focuses on examining how Mahmoud Darwish explored the poetic text within the confined space of prison how he transformed his personal experience of detention into a social cause? And how he articulated his personal suffering in an engaging artistic narrative form that transcends the self to touch the human conscience? The study adopts the stylistic approach, which is appropriate for analyzing the texts and identifying their suggestive symbols. The findings demonstrate that Mahmoud Darwish succeeded in transforming prison into a platform for struggle, breaking through the darkness of detention so that his voice could become a universal call for freedom and humanity, carrying the truth to all corners of the world.