TEHRAN -- In his recent works, Darwish did not voice Palestinian dreams but he painted them through his verse, translator Musa Bidaj explained during the Darwish commemoration ceremony at the Honar Cultural Center.

Iranians Academy of Arts held a commemoration ceremony of recently deceased national Palestine poet Mahmoud Darwish on Tuesday.
Darwish is the author of thirty books of poetry and six volumes of prose. Over 20 volumes of his works have been translated into Persian. His book “The Butterfly’s Burden” was published two months ago in Iran, he added.
“Arab scholars believe that after Nizar Qabbani, he is the only Arab poet who attracted thousands to his public readings,” he said.
Speaking at the ceremony, the Iranian Academy of Arts (IAA) secretary Bahman Namvar-Motlaq stressed that it is the shared Iranian and Palestinian affinity for literary works that leads to holding this commemoration ceremony.
The head of the Iranian Poets Society, Fatemeh Rakei described Darwish as a committed poet who became immortal with his monumental works of poetry.
At the ceremony, Alzahra University professor Soheila Salahi Moqaddam spoke comparatively about the wishes and dreams for the motherland in the poems by Iranian poet Mohammad-Taqi Bahar and Darwish.
Bahar composed poems in classic style while Darwish composed poems in blank verse. Darwish used symbolism more than Bahar in his poetry but both of them have been concerned with social issues, she said.
Scholar Hossein Goli also reviewed Darwish’s poems concerning symbolism and metaphors in his poems.
“He is not a symbolist but he used symbols and myths extensively in his poetry, which shows his inclination to classic literature. He called the Zionist regime beast, wolf and thief in his poems,” he mentioned.
University of Isfahan professor Narges Ganji, who conducted an interview with Darwish in 1983, said that she always admired Darwish as a great poet.
The ceremony was attended by Iranian academics, literary critics and Palestinian officials to honor the Palestinian national poet Darwish through various lectures and poetry readings.
Mahmoud Darwish is widely seen as one of the greatest contemporary Arab poets, and many of his writings have been translated into more than twenty other languages.
He died on August 9, 2008 in Houston at age 67, Texas due to complications following heart surgery. The Palestinian Authority held a state funeral for him in the West Bank, the first since Yasir Arafat died in 2004.