Hussein Barghouti

Hussein Jamil Barghouti ( May 5, 1954 – May 1, 2002, ) was a Palestinian poet, writer, essayist, critic, lyricist, play write and philosopher, born in the village of Kobar in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate. Barghouthi lived his childhood between Kobar, where his mother lived, and Beirut, where his father worked. An outcast since childhood, seen and treated by his society as different and distant for being unique, he found his friends to be the rocks and trees of his village, and the words of his language. He was misunderstood by his surroundings, and was too different from his society by the time he reached his last year in highschool, when he read out loud one of his poems for the first time in a poetry contest. The contest was held by Jordanian education ministry, during the Jordanian custody of the West Bank, and Barghouthi was deprived of 1 place because the ministry of education thought he had stolen a poem from some famous author. “Ignorance is not an excuse” replied Barghouthi, in front of the live audience. Barghouti got his high school diploma from Amir Hassan School in Birzeit.
He went on to continue his studies in Budapest, Hungary, studying Political Science and State Finance there for 5 years. After returning to Palestine, he studied at Birzeit University and obtained his BA English literature from in 1983, and taught there for one year before leaving to obtain both his M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1992) in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington - Seattle. He returned to Palestine to become a professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University, and went on to work for three years in Al-Quds University as a professor of Literature Critique and Theater in 1997, during which he was a founding member of the Palestinian “House of Poetry” and Publishing Manager in a couple of literature magazines.
Hussein Barghouthi died in May 1 , 2002 in Ramallah Hospital, after a long struggle with cancer.
Works
The various and diverse works of Hussein Barghouthi include novels, poetry, autobiography, critique, folklore, song lyrics, theater and cinema script, and many intellectual research and studies scattered in newspapers, books and magazines. Only two of his works were translated, both into French by Marianne Weiss, which are “The Blue Light” and “I’ll be among the almonds”. The book was translated to French in the title of "Lumière bleue", by Marianne Weiss in 2004.
=== "The Third Bank of The Jordan River" ===
He wrote his book “The third bank of the Jordan River”, published first in 1984, on his journey in Europe, describing his mental state at the time, that was edging both reality and insanity and not settling in either. Making the Jordan River an analogy, he uses it to explain that while there are two banks to the river of life, homeland and exile, there are some people destined to live in the virtual third bank; The bank of spiritualism, thought, passion, pain, love, magnitude, madness and poetry. A book that takes you on a trip, and might bring you to tears, and make you fall in love with it.
=== "I'll Be Among the Almonds" ===
Written in his last years in the same time as “The blue light”, his autobiography, “I’ll be among the almonds”, documents his final years of struggling with cancer, in which he reflects on his origins, beginnings and end, and paints an image of his beautiful village that was, and still is, subject to colonialism. The book was meant to give the magical place of “Deir al Juwani”, an area of wilderness and mountains in the village of Kobar, eternal life, and so it did. The reader can live in the place that was slowly being deformed by colonialism and civilization. “Tell her, no matter what happens… I’ll be among the almonds”, and so it was; Barghouti was buried between the almond trees in the garden of his mother's house.
“The Demise of The 7 Wall: Psychological Struggle In Literature”
Considered a cornerstone in cognition and psychology, in the form of an extended essay, the book serves as a therapist to the reader. It analyzes the history of psychological conflict, starting from Brahmanism, and going on to include the development and diversification of psychological conflict through time and place, including that of many poets like Mudhafar Al-Nawab and Al-Mutanabbi, and various fictional characters of literature from writers such as Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. It explains the origins of conflict in human life and politics, and is considered the key to understanding one’s own difficulties, and understanding the rest of his books.
=== "The Emptiness That Saw The Details" ===
A post-mortem accumulation of 5 writings of various subjects including the beginning of existence, a philosophical analysis of the First Intifada, the magnitude of experience, the paradox caused in Palestine by capitalism and an analysis of the concepts of time and place; A book that brings together many cultures, visions and times.
Philosophy
Barghouti's criticism of the Palestinian mind was that "it lost its ability to create", and that's what he sought not to lose: his ability to create. In his writings, he presented new concepts to explain the mind, heart, language, psychological conflict, time, memory, cancer, blossom, occupation, love, exile, nature, passion, pain, magnitude, madness and poetry; all of which are themes discussed in his various works.
He did not seek to be framed into a certain or single genre, like 'poet' or 'philosopher . Barghouti's works are inter-connected; one book might explain a missing part of another book, or one poem might explain a sentence in one of his novels.
Quotes
"To meditate on yourself is to understand what you have always known without understanding it"
"What awakens in solitude is only that which is already inside us"
"There is a type of people, like me, who cannot decide on his whole life, with his whole heart, for anything in the world. His destiny is to stay scattered like dew over grass, instead of all of his droplets uniting to form a stream or a river. To determine a destination, one destination, which cannot be doubted returned from. I mean, I'm the type of person who can only live for something with half a heart, at most. And all his evils arise from this half a heart, if there was even a heart left."
"A person who doesn't give me knowledge and expand my awareness, and take from me knowledge to expand his awareness, is a person I don't need"
"Every person fights his own ghosts"
"At times, kindness to people is a crime against self"
"I'm a simple person who's always misunderstood"
"A wide imagination is necessary in a narrow world"
"I know nothing about you, for the depths of the sea knows nothing about its shores. Your face is a shore"
"In art, you have to touch on madness without waking it"
"Beauty cannot save the world. But the beauty in the world is worth saving."
"Beatitude to those who taught the heart to withstand knives! and those who were crushed like wheat by experiences until they became bread. And beatitude to who was close to finding the flower in the dumpster"
"You're the only person who can teach yourself more than I can"
"..and he left his life to become a homeless madman, or any other word we use to describe those we don't understand."
"Watch the water to understand something that no one has yet understood: change. Watch the water to understand madness"
"I cannot humanly stay, I cannot in reality leave, and I can be anything but myself"
"My life was a small delusion. I knew that. But the suggestion of it being a "great delusion" was new."
"..thinking, thinking and thinking. My heart not feeling that which my mind thought, nor my mind ceasing to dominate my soul, and every thought like a hard block of lumber."<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />

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