In relation to article Intertextuality 1 this article tends to provide an analysis of the way intertextuality operates over pre-existing texts. The following poem is form Darwish’s In Jerusalem.
تنبُتُ الكلماتُ كالأعشاب من فم أشعيا النِّبَويِّ: ((إنْ لم تُؤْمنوا لن تَأْمَنُوا)).
Words sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.”
This quotation has been cited form the Biblical verse where the messenger Isaiah is addressing Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah:
“إنْ لم تُؤْمنوا لن تَأْمَنُوا” (اش 9:7)
“If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.”(IS 7:9).
The above listed instance of direct quotation is recognized through the use of quotation marks signed by single enclosed commas. The quoted words, thus, are separated from the rest of the text. The context of this Biblical allusion as commented by (Flemming, 2005) is as followed:
When the Judean king Ahaz knows of the trooping of the Israelite-Syrian army, he and all his society are frightened (7:1-2). While Ahaz is scrutinizing Jerusalem’s water supply in preparation for the siege, Isaiah meets him and clarifies that he does not need to be frightened of Israel or Syria, nor need he request Assyria for assistance. God supports Judah. Pekah and Rezin may plan to invade Judah and assign their own king on Judah’s throne, however, they will not prosper. They think they can takeover Judah in a blistering defeat, but in fact they are not more perilous than the smoke from two smoldering firewood (3-6). Israel and Syria, along with their kings, are close to their end. If Ahaz believes in God, he has nothing to fear; but if he does not, nothing will save him (7-9). (Only three years after this foretelling, Syria fell to Assyria, and ten years later so did Israel. Within 65 years of Isaiah’s prediction, people of the former northern kingdom had become so dispersed that they no more had any national identity; see v. 8b.).
The reference to such biblical text manifests two ideological implications: first, God protects people’s homeland when they believe in him; they have nothing to fear when God is the one who is the support. Otherwise, no other power has the ability to save their homeland. Faith in God is the key. On the word of these lines the prophecy has come true within ten years. This leads into the second ideological implication which enfolds that if sufferings and fears are still ongoing, then there is something wrong with inner belief in God and people need to return to God in order to restore tranquility and peace.
The ideological manifestations of such intertextuality made by the text producer (the poet) invites the text perceiver (the reader) into a glimpse of hope and faith that Jerusalem would definitely be free and protected the same way it was protected by God as the prophet Isaiah foretold hundreds of years ago.
This intertextuality satisfies another ideological effect: the reference to the identity of the text producer’s homeland, Jerusalem, as a highly significant land which has constantly been subject to conquest and occupancy; the reference to prophets who prophesize Jerusalem’s protection by God and this creates a worldview in which this land is not like any other land where no other land had ever been subject of discussion among prophets and kings.
Drawing on others’ preexisting utterances, the text producer is aided to present the reader with a more realistic and authentic situation and thereby the reader is more liable to accept the ideologies transferred through the lines of poem. Ideologically, this textual utterance reflects the lost peace in Jerusalem which would definitely be restored same as it had been fulfilled before.
