Fadwa Tuqan

Fadwa Tuqan (Arabic: فدوى طوقان, romanized: Fadwā Ṭūqān; 1 March 1917 – 12 December 2003) was a poet from Palestine.

Quotes

A Mountainous Journey: An Autobiography (1990)

Translated from the Arabic by Olive Kenny, Editor: Salma Khadra Jayyusi

• Throughout my literary career I have shrunk within myself and shied away whenever confronted with questions concerning my private life and the factors that have directed and influenced it. I've always recognised that the reason for this shrinking and shying away may be that I have never been satisfied or happy with my life. Like a tree that has borne little fruit, I have always longed for greater achievement and wider horizons. (first lines)

• A seed does not see the light without first cleaving a difficult path through the earth. This story of mine is the story of the seed's battle against the hard rocky soil; a story of struggle, deprivation and enormous difficulties. (first page)

• The iron mould the family cast us in and would not allow us to break, the time-worn rules difficult to overturn, the mindless traditions imprisoning the girl in a life of trivialities...I yearned continually to escape from my time and place. The time was an age of subjection, repression and dissolution into nothingness; the place was the prison of the house.
  Some come into this world to find the way smoothly paved before them; others arrive to find it thorny and rough.
  Fate threw me on to a rough path and on it I began my journey up the mountain.
  I carried the rock and endured the fatigue of the endless ascents and descents.
  Great expectations and soaring dreams are not enough; even sheer will-power is not sufficient.
  I realised that action is the obverse of the coin, the reverse being dream and will-power. I determined to do business with this two-sided coin: will and action.
  • p12

• The poorer women thought nothing of moving around the bath rooms with naked breasts and buttocks. I was delighted with the spontaneity of these women, who lived in a much freer and more down-to-earth atmosphere than that of the bourgeoisie, which was characterised by falsehood and hypocrisy. (p23)

• Just as tyrannical surveillance, repression and sugjugation in society give rise to the dual traits of submission and rebelliousness, the same is true of individuals. Anyone who grows up in an environment of secret police surveillance and oppressive family authority will emerge with a dual psyche. There are always acquired characteristics, arising as a result of social and, in particular, family subjugation. (p28)

• The man dominated family life, as in all homes of our society. The woman had to forget that the word 'no' existed in the language, except when she repeated, "There is no God but God', in her ablutions and prayers. 'Yes' was the parroted word instilled in her from infancy, to become embedded in her consciousness for the rest of her life.
  The right to express her feelings or views was prohibited. Laughing and singing were also taboo and could be indulged in only secretly, after the men, the lords and masters, left for work. Personal independence was a concept foreign to a woman all her life.
  • p36

• In school I was able to discover some parts of my lost self. There I established myself as a person, something I had not been able to do at home. (p45)

• With the arrival of spring, I experienced this thing called love that has continued endlessly to spin its cocoon around my being.
  Here was the answer to the question Mother had denied me. It came borne on a jasmine flower redolent with scent that fastened itself to the walls of my heart. Even now I can feel an invisible hand pushing me into that past every time the scent of jasmine drifts towards me.
  There are dozens of years behind me now as I recall that event, but the excitement it aroused in me and the wonder born of that excitement are things I will never forget. I had discovered something new in me and in the world, something very strange that made me stand breathless at the wonder of first love.
  • p47

• For the first time I experienced blissful sleeplessness full of fantasies and delightful imaginings; and for the first time I knew how one person's face can obliterate all other faces, and invade the whole of existence. (p48)

Pages from a Diary, 1966-1967

• I sense the absurdity and aimlessness of life as I stand bewildered, lost and weak before the tide of overpowering death. (p176)

• When some people meet with a private or public catastrophe, the foundations of their faith are sometimes shaken, causing the pillars of their beliefs to come crashing down. But what an appalling existence when the tide of faith suddenly ebbs from the soul; what a frightful life when we lose certainty. (p177)

• psychological problems are not confined to women. Men are afflicted with them too. If a man grows up in unnatural circumstances, or if his childhood is harsh, problems will continue to govern his conduct and attitudes all his life, and his case will be exactly the same as that of a woman." (p179)

• Whenever a new literary venture makes me mentally and emotionally restless, I live in utter chaos. (p179)

• Everywhere, people show a face that is new, but at the same time basically the same. People are a mass of feelings, inclinations and ambitions, fluctuating between triumphs and defeats, despair and hope. Each is created from the same material, with the same innate nature, descended from one human family tree. (p180)

• I withdrew my eyes to take a look inside myself. My heart said: "This is life: every minute one is reborn, leaving behind a personality different from the present one"...the river of my life goes on and, after that destructive experience, I'll never allow an obstacle to stand in its way. (p180)

• silence has its own aesthetic genius that bespeaks a thousand thoughts and emotions. (p181)

• [[Happiness] is the child of the moment; it consumes its moment and vanishes with it; but prolonged suffering, although it eventually stops smarting like a live coal, changes into a profound grief where our pain is lulled to sleep until reawakened by a memory or aroused by a beautiful sight. (p181-2)

• Anyone who has experienced disastrous friendships and endured treachery from friends, values a friendship that develops on the basis of trust, honesty and confidence. Reservation, apprehension and wariness do not breed true friendship. (p182)

• Science and art are two separate tendencies, each representing a significant aspect of human enterprise. In general, art in all its branches is one of the vital manifestations of life and its true expression. It is futile to advocate repressing it for it is something that will never die until all life on earth is extinct.
  It is wrong for us Arabs to call a halt to literature, ignoring, or ignorant of the fact that future enterprises in any nation are directed and outlined first and foremost by its literature. The way to a conscious revolt and struggle for a free, decent life is paved by literature. Through literature and art, in general, pride is awakened, ambitions are enhanced, and a psychological boost given to the morale of the citizens of a nation...A nation whose literature has become dry and sterile cannot determine what is best for itself or for humanity, no matter how high it climbs on the ladder of scientific development. (p182-3)

• The sweetest moments in life are those that transcend time and impose themselves on us, with all the life force in them. (p183)

• which one of us, unless greatly lacking in responsiveness of heart and soul, can deny the beauty and aesthetic value art has so lavishly bestowed upon our lives? (p183)

• Spring, the breath of youth, sends a driving force through my whole being. I have just returned from a walk. The moon was full, the air laden with a unique fragrance from jasmine, damask roses and al-naseem flowers from the gardens of the surrounding houses. (p184)

• Dear refugees! How cruel for people to die as strangers in a strange land! Only in the land of our ancestors can we have a sense of growth in our humanity and of accord between ourselves and life around us. (p184-5)

• The power of the Arab reactionaries increases day by day, thanks to the flood of wealth in the arid sands...Arab progressivism is still a child, lacking method and organisation. (p187)

• A world in tumult... I search in it for a bright spot, but I hear nothing but the noise of radio broadcasts on every side. It is like a nightmare. (p187)

• my reticence and lack of involvement in the political uproar did not mean that I had no sensitivity to it, or did not live under its curse, which hangs constantly over our heads. Like many others, I stood perplexed at the reality around us. With hearts burning from the pain and tragedy we had known, we continued searching, in vain, for a meaning to all that was happening around us. The reality we were living every moment of our lives was one of sheer pain and misery. (p188)

• Annihilation is, indeed, part of our being, but art is immortal. A sense of the tyranny of annihilation and the ephemeral quality of life always prompts the artist to create something more permanent then the self. (p188)

• I shall write, I shall write a lot. I feel I have been for some time living moment by moment in a drama, moved by every act in it. All of a sudden I, myself, am a poem, burning with anguish, dejected, hopeful, looking beyond the horizon! (p191)

Quotes about

• one of the most important poets of Palestine. She wrote a book that is like the bible of the palestinian feminist movement...She was a rebel, and she established the poetry of love and loneliness in Palestine.
  • Liana Badr Interview (2010)

• A marvelous book for a very important Palestinian poetess.
  • Yousef Khanfar about her autobiography, "My Palestine Bookshelf" (2021)

• In a poem I wrote to her at the death of her younger brother Nimr in 1963 I called her: 'Mistress of the two gifts: love and pain'. She is as eloquent in her praise of love as she is in her communion with death, and later on, when her political anger changed her into a poet of the Palestinian resistance, in her homage to the struggle of her people for

freedom. A new phase of her career as poet began when she started holding her audiences spellbound as she read her poetry denouncing the evils of occupation...A woman with no inclination to preach, teach or pontificate, the riches of her life and experience cannot fail to set the example of final triumph and achievement to thousands of women all over the world.

• • Salma Khadra Jayyusi, from her Forward to A Mountainous Journey: An Autobiography (1990)

• I had a chance to be with Fadwa Tuqan or Samih al-Qasim, Taha Muhammad Ali, whom I adored—or just so many people who are now not available to us in the flesh, only through their words. I felt them as a wellspring of the spirit of Palestine, and the love and the care for Palestine—that is something that the media often finds easy to overlook. It’s just so insulting—versus the poetry which is so respectful, passionate, loving, and nostalgic.
  • Naomi Shihab Nye Interview (2024)