Immigration, poetry, and translation between Syria and Germany: Adel Karasholi

Abstract

The work of Syrian-German poet Adel Karasholi exemplifies key vectors of literature in the context of migration, in particular the tension between nostalgia and assimilation. Karasholi's case is distinctive insofar as he lived between two dictatorships, Syria and the German Democratic Republic, and his poetry testifies to processes of ideological accommodation, integration into GDR literary networks, and identity-political hybridization. A Brechtian aesthetic of engagement and a Marxist discourse of progress coexist with the problematics of immigration and cultural difference. In the early 1990s, Karasholi began to invoke previously rejected orientalist and mystic-religious tropes as he entered the multicultural public sphere of unified Germany, but in his translations of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (2004) he reverted to the secular modernization sensibility of his GDR years. One of these translations (“In Jerusalem”) is examined closely to reveal Karasholi's strategic choices and subtle differences from the Darwish original.