The Significance of the Sea in the Palestinian Contemporary Poetry

Abstract

Sea, as a space, is so present in Palestinian contemporary poetry, but

what strikes my attention is the potential hidden behind the sea. It is itself

a space for poétic contemplations that search for the meaning of homeland

through dialectical dichotomy: The land and the exile. Space is closely related

to all the spacial forms (waves, ports, boats, gull, sails…) and elements to exit

the homeland, all that is stuck in the collective memory, and the imaginative

poetic images of leaving and adventure towards the unknown. Still, it stands

forever as a sign for looking forward to return. It has stored all the hopes

and wishes of the exiled whose return to the homeland has been an eternel

concern.

Based on the elements mentioned above, I chose to search for the

meaningfulness of the sea in Palestinian contemporary poetry of space and

beauty as a perspective of such image as a poetic case. This perspective forms

a symbolic phenomena and an iconic level to its imagery in poetic text. More

over, it has become a model to several representative objects closely related

to the land ,exile and return.

In this study I have been guided by the systemic cultural approach of

yuri « Lothman» and the phenomenological concepts of « Gaston Bachelard»

and «Christine Dupouy» and others. In what concens the global structure of

the discourse within the image under research, The analysis first targeted

the study of space elements linked to the sea as a space for contemplation;

then the study of elements structuring the poetic imagination through the

concepts of modelization, that linked the space of the sea standing for exile,

land, home, migration, nostalgy return, and all principal allusions that poets

have strongly used in the exile imagination.

Key Words: Sea , Place , Space , Semantic , Poetic ,Systemic cultural