Enclosed Gardens: Karim Kattan

The garden as a poetic and geopolitical figure

Karim Kattan's poetry collection Hortus Conclusus (2025) is a literary work of profound ambivalence and great poetic density, weaving the aesthetic beauty of poetry with the disturbing reality of everyday Palestinian life. Born in Jerusalem, raised in Bethlehem in a Christian family, and now living in France, Kattan himself is an incarnation of the “geobiography” of exile. His poems are a response to the personal experience of loss and displacement, but also a universal meditation on the role of art in the face of “anéantissement” (annihilation) and colonial violence. They are thematically close to his novel. Eden à l'aube (cf. the review (in this blog).

The collection's title, "Hortus Conclusus" (Latin for "enclosed garden"), is more than a mere metaphor: it is a liminal space, a focal point of memory, utopia, and colonial destruction. This term originates from the biblical Song of Solomon and, in Christian tradition, shaped the iconography of Mary as a symbol of purity and protected fertility. In Kattan's work, this symbolism is reinterpreted and deconstructed: the garden is simultaneously a refuge and a site of confrontation, of origin and loss. The central paradox, "le dehors qu'on trouve dedans" (the outside that is found inside), permeates the entire volume, allowing colonization, apartheid, and annihilation to resonate within.

At the beginning of his work, Kattan poses the existential question: “What is the point of writing poetry when Gaza is dying?” Although the poems themselves were written before the events of October 7, 2023 (see p. 9), the author explains that everything changes after Gaza—Gaza now denotes a place, a moment, an act, and simultaneously a failure. This unambiguous grounding of the work in the history of suffering in Palestine and the Middle East is a manifesto of poetic responsibility.

This literary essay proposes a reading of Hortus Conclusus The following closely intertwined hypotheses are presented: The garden functions as a complex metaphor for a poetic geopolitics in which intimate topography, political reality, and mythological depth interpenetrate. The collection articulates a poetics of contingency in which experience, memory, and desire are radically tied to place; however, this connection is made precarious by colonial violence, exile, and media overlay. Hortus Conclusus can be described as planetary sarha Reading – a nomadic, poetic wandering that overlays real and imagined spaces. The work develops an autofictional topography of transgression, in which queer identity, Palestinian heritage, and postcolonial reflection are inextricably interwoven. Ultimately, the collection represents a radical meditation on violence and visibility, expressed in a poetry of threshold, transition, and imaginary subversion.

The Hortus Conclusus is the contemplative center of Kattan's poetics, a motif that permeates the entire collection and articulates the relationship between inner and outer worlds, between preservation and destruction. The real monastery garden in Artas, not far from Kattan's childhood home in Bethlehem, was once a place of carefree childhood outings, especially at Christmas. But the increasing violence of settlers and soldiers has rendered this "little enchanted Eden" "inaccessible." The nuns advised against visiting in 2024 because soldiers were stationed on the hill. In Kattan's words, the Hortus "withdrawn this year, Avalonian, from our world."

Despite this physical barrier, the garden remains “préservé” (preserved) on the pages of the poems. Poetry here becomes an act of resistance against the “colonial aridification of the territory and the devastation of the landscape.” The gardens in the book are “neither pretexts nor metaphors,” but a “vital force” that represents the “multiple and irreducible” and defies the monolithic logic of colonial power. Where colonization creates “aridité” (aridity), the garden offers “luxuriance” (luxuriance).

The garden's "poetic value" lies in its dual structure: it is a place of retreat and of openness. Thus, in its "enclosedness" one paradoxically finds "access to an unexpected world" and the possibility of "discovering the openness and the whole world at one's feet." This inner, imagined garden thus becomes a utopian space of possibility, standing in contrast to the physical dystopia.

The violence of visibility and repressive geography

Kattan's poetry is deeply marked by the "tragédie palestinienne" (Palestinian tragedy), which constantly haunts him. The introduction emphasizes that the poems cannot exist without the context of the "destruction of Gaza," a name that, as already mentioned, "now simultaneously denotes a place, a moment, an act, and a failure." Kattan's public commitment to calling the war a genocide underscores the urgency and political sharpness of his writing.

This is particularly evident in the poem "Je m'étais promis de ne jamais [Checkpoint 300]". Here, the speaker reflects on the paradox that the checkpoint cannot be described, as any description would trivialize its brutality. Yet it must be named, "so that people know they did this to me." The act of writing becomes a "trace résistante" (resistant trace) that captures the "oppressive géographie" (oppressive geography). Kattan describes how at the checkpoints he feels like "rien" (nothing), how the soldiers' "blue eyes" see him as "sous-race" (subhuman), and how everything seems designed for his "destruction." The "administrative check, banal but violent," forms the "backbone of apartheid."

In “Tu n'as pas traversé la porte encore [Porte d'Ishtar],” the city of Babylon serves as a projection screen for colonial superiority and exclusion. The speaker “burns with envy, hatred, and desire” and wishes to “burn and slaughter everything in Babylon” because it does not belong to him and exists “against you, despite you, regardless of you.” This poetics of negative identification reflects radical exclusion and the feeling of self-hatred for being unseen.

Wadi al-Ward (Valley of Roses), marked on maps from 1870 but later lost, symbolizes the loss of territory and memory. Kattan's search for this "lost, unnamed place" in his memory and dreams is an act of resistance and preservation of what is in danger of physical disappearance. He spiritually imagines a "titanic gardener-sower" who once sowed the wild roses there, an allusion to the resurrected Christ as a gardener. This imbues the valley with a mythical, almost paradisiacal quality, transforming the loss into a source of imaginative energy.

Planetary sarha and fluid identities

A central motif of the collection is the pilgrimage of “wandering” (pérégrination). Kattan describes his poems as “sarha et safar, excursion et voyage, promenade et aventure” (excursion and journey, stroll and adventure). This “planetary sarha” is not an escape from reality, but a poetic re-territorialization. Places such as Kyoto, Glastonbury, Mount Olympus, Pangaea, and Endor become stations in a “géobiographie” that interweaves geographical locations, personal memories, and universal themes.

In “La neige ce jour-là faisait luire Kamogawa [Kyoto]”, Kyoto becomes a place of inner stillness, an “acceptance of nothingness” (consentement au rien). At the same time, the grandmother’s presence in Kyoto in the 1930s points to an unexpected familial connection across time and space. In contrast, in “Grotte du dieu-cerf [Glastonbury Tor]”, the British landscape becomes the stage for a queer ritual that fails because the god does not respond. The text reflects the ambivalence of spiritual quest, touristic gesture, and queer loneliness.

Kattan's Arthurian poems, such as "Dans ma chambre nouvelle [Camelot]" and "Viviane" (implied in the Arthurian references), subvert patriarchal heroisms. The speaker becomes the "dame au lac" (Lady of the Lake), the magician, the lover, the animal. Identity becomes fluid, and Camelot appears as a "rêve enfiévré" (feverish dream). This blurring of the boundaries of identity is closely linked to a queer identity as well as the postcolonial reflection that Kattan develops in his autofictional topography.

Excursus 1: On the queer dimension of Hortus conclusus

The queer and gay dimension in Karim Kattan's Hortus conclusus It is multifaceted and explicit. It permeates various textual levels and is closely linked to the central themes of the volume, such as identity, imprisonment, liberation, and the power of imagination. One of the clearest examples is the section "Port Island." The opening line, "Il m'encule" (He fucks me), is a direct and unvarnished depiction of male homosexuality. The sexual act is staged here at a height of thirty thousand stories as an act of liberation and retreat from a hostile world: "That it's safer up there than down below—he and I know that." The speaker experiences a soaring of the soul ("mon âme qui affleure") and is "bathed in pink," thus emphasizing the sensual and almost transcendent dimension of this experience. This is a place of refuge and the fulfillment of unconventional desires. The longing for a “Babylonia beau comme une Babylonienne” in “Tu n'as pas traversé la porte encore [Porte d'Ishtar]” also points to same-sex desire. The passage “Zeus doigte Ganymède comme on caresse un chat [Olympe]” is a key queer reference. The seduction and forced “domestication” of Ganymede by Zeus is read as an allegory for abuse of power, loss of identity, and the yearning for autonomy. Zeus’s “gentle tyranny” (“tyrannie douce”) and Ganymede’s enforced “eternal childhood” (“enfance éternelle imposée”) not only reflect universal dynamics of subjugation but can also be interpreted as a commentary on specific power relations within queer contexts or as a metaphor for colonial control over Palestinian identity. Ganymede's longing to grow wings and return home represents the urge for liberation.

The volume explicitly emphasizes the "endless doubling of identities, genders" ("re-doublement interminable des identités, des genres"). This is particularly vivid in "Dans ma chambre nouvelle [Camelot]," where the speaker assumes diverse and shifting roles: "hunter, king, fairy / no longer quite king, nor fairy, nor knight / all simultaneously determined." Later, it states explicitly: "The king became a sorceress, or the lady became a king." Through this deconstruction of binary gender roles, the work is positioned within a queer context of identity exploration. Even in prehistoric times, in "Saturne violet cobalt pluton [Pangée]," an original fusion of identities is described: "you, who you are I, and I, who I am you," suggesting a fundamental fluidity of being. The “Château de Joyeuse Garde” in “Toi du lac moi des îles” becomes the setting for a tender and self-sacrificing same-sex love. In the story, the conqueror Lancelot lays down his weapons out of love and voluntarily devotes himself to “domestic destiny” (“la domesticité”). The conquest of the world becomes the “conquest of the world within me,” offered to the beloved—a redirection of traditional male lust for conquest into an inner, loving transformation. The once painful fortress becomes “joyful” (“joyeuse”) through their shared presence, emphasizing the transformative power of love. The act of “reclaiming” (“prendre leur roi et leurs magiciennes”) in the section “Grotte du dieu-cerf [Glastonbury Tor],” where the speaker takes on mythological figures and places, is also an act of resistance against the disenfranchisement of one’s own country and God. This can imply a queer dimension of subversion and redefinition of norms.

Excursus 2: Arthurian References

Avalon is described as "the measure of our dreams" and an "impossible" island, alluding to deep longings for a lost paradise and the search for hope, while the real-world location of Artas, threatened by expulsion, becomes "Avalonic," withdrawing from the tangible world. The Speaker's visit to Glastonbury Tor, a place associated with Arthur, Lancelot, and Morgan le Fay, is initially sobering and realistic. However, the gesture of "taking away their king and their enchantresses, their island and their king too," because "they are taking away my God and my land," is a provocative act of reclaiming and symbolic resistance against the colonizing power. It is also a reaffirmation of one's own identity in the face of loss. Camelot is portrayed as a place of transformation and fluid identity. There, the Speaker becomes "the Lady of the Lake," or the King becomes "the Enchantress." This rejects rigid gender and role attributions and underscores the "endless doubling of identities and genders." At the same time, it is an "air prison, a prison forest," thus addressing the omnipresent themes of imprisonment and confinement. These dimensions are also reflected in the book's title. Hortus conclususThe text, which articulates “enclosure and liberation,” undermines Camelot. It appears as a bygone ideal or ruin, a “gentle dream of towers and fortresses,” “the remains of a fevered dream, nothing, the scraps of an empire,” reflecting the disintegration of grand narratives and the destruction of the land. The reference to Château de Joyeuse Garde, linked to Lancelot, speaks of a profound love and voluntary submission, in which the conqueror lays down his weapons and chooses “domesticity” over the conquest of the universe. The “fortress that was once painful” becomes “joyful” through their shared presence, highlighting the transformative power of love and a shift of the urge to conquer inward, toward “the conquest of the world within me.” Ultimately, the Val sans Retour is a mythical valley where men are held captive in the memory of a sorceress, a place of immobilization, stasis, and a paradoxical “peace” where the prisoners are “removed from desire and time.” It embodies a controlling female figure and illustrates the seductive yet suffocating nature of certain forms of enchantment or control, in which the yearning for freedom (the “sea”) remains painfully unattainable. Overall, the Arthurian myths are recontextualized to reflect the Palestinian experience of exile, resistance, fragmentation, and the search for (re)home. This allows the author to connect the brutality of reality with the power of imagination, as expressed in the quote, “Le haut du jardin est là où se fait la jonction entre la brutalité et le rêve.” These figures and places serve as “servants of the forces of brilliance” (“servantes des puissances de l'éclat”), who confront anéantissement with the power of the imaginary and lead to the “endless doubling of identities, genders, wars and peace” in the Hortus conclusus beitragen.

Further references that thematically connect Kattan's poetry include biblical narratives, allusions to Babylon and the ancient Near Eastern civilizations, Greek mythology with Knossos and Pasiphaë, Olympus and Zeus/Ganymede, the Oracle of Dodone, the Egyptian sky goddess Nout, the primeval continent of Pangaea as the first Earth, as well as Endor, Waqwaq, a Persian mountain, and a lost Breton city. All these references contribute to elevating the real experiences of colonization, loss, and displacement in Palestine to a universal, archetypal level. They create an "endless doubling of identities, genders, wars, and peace" and show how imagination, as a "servant of the forces of radiance" ("servantes des puissances de l'éclat"), is used to confront the brutality of reality and find a path of dreams and resilience.

Intact and destroyed, sacred and profaned

Kattan often contrasts places that were once intact, or remain intact in their conception, with the physical reality of their destruction or inaccessibility. Bethlehem, for example, is described as "everywhere in shards," yet simultaneously as a city that "irrigates and radiates." The "Wadi al-Ward" is a vanished place marked on old maps, symbolizing the "colonial desiccation of the territory and the devastation of the landscape." Colonization, he argues, created "aridity" where it did not exist, and "uniqueness" where diversity did.

The sacred is contrasted with the profane and violent realities of Palestine. The "Hortus Conclusus," a place with a "marital theme" and a symbol of "fertile purity," is profaned and transformed into a dangerous place by the presence of settlers and soldiers. The site "Ras al-Bustan," whose name might evoke a garden on the "summit of the unique, primordial garden," houses a military center of the occupation. The "administrative scrutiny" there is described as "banal but violent" and as the "vertical column of apartheid."

In “Je m'étais promis de ne jamais [Checkpoint 300],” the confrontation with the “oppressive geography” leads to a “humiliation of my side, of my soul.” The feeling of being reduced to “nothing” (rien rien) is a profound profanation of human dignity. Similarly, in “Zeus doigte Ganymède comme on caresse un chat [Olympe],” the exercise of divine power becomes a tyranny that profanes Ganymede’s body, memory, and identity, trapping him in eternal childhood. The repeated “tue-le” (kill him) in “Alors, tue-le [en Aulide]” is a shattering profanation of childhood and of human life itself, revealing the dystopia of everyday Palestinian life and the despair in the face of profaned innocence.

Love, body and community

The collection of poems suggests that amidst destruction and loss, "amours" (love) plays a role. The poem "Toi du lac moi des îles [Château de Joyeuse Garde]" testifies to the transformative power of love, in which the speaker, once a conqueror, exchanges his honor for the shame of surrendering to his beloved. Here, the world is not conquered to rule, but to give it to the beloved. The fortress, once "douloureuse" (painful), becomes "joyeuse" (joyful) because it is now inhabited together. This reveals a personal reconciliation and inner peace.

The mother's garden in "Sans un citronnier [Gan Eden]" is a place of familial love and preservation. Her hands, which shaped the garden, symbolize nurturing and the creation of life. The garden represents her "happiness and her only life" and becomes a place of "shared presence" where the mother and her unfulfilled identities can be rediscovered. This demonstrates how love and familial bonds endure beyond physical absence and loss.

The community itself is fragmented by colonization and its freedom of movement restricted by checkpoints. Yet literature functions as a space for community and connection. The example of the Gazan poet Refaat Alareer, who knew every corner of Jerusalem through poems and books, even though he could never visit the city due to the 70 kilometers separating Gaza from Jerusalem, underscores the power of literature. It creates a "Palestine that is much larger than that of the 'oppressive geographies,' the walls, and the colonization." This imagined homeland, accessible through poetry, becomes a space of belonging and resistance against division.

The poem "Retrouvailles [Pont Allenby]" (Reunion [Allenby Bridge]) is an explicit expression of reconciliation and peace. "Retrouvailles" describes not only a physical encounter but also an "inner state and place of remembrance" where the absent live on within us. The "uncontrollable laughter at the wake" and the "quiet joy" demonstrate the resilience of the spirit to find peace amidst grief. The crossing of the Jordan in this poem symbolizes a metaphysical journey to a "one true heaven," a pilgrimage across real and imagined boundaries. In this way, home is defined not only as a physical space but also as a spiritual and remembered one.

The garden as a utopian echo of resilience

Hortus Conclusus It is not a "book of consolation," but a "book of possibilities." It refuses a simple depiction of destruction by circling the trauma and embedding it in myths, scenes, and bodies. Kattan makes no direct political proposals, but insists on the visibility of suffering—"ils m'ont fait ça" (they did this to me). The poem becomes a "gesture of witnessing" and persistence, a "will to language" that does not allow violence to have the last word.

The garden, understood as a place of inner and outer movement, transformation, and memory, thus becomes a metaphor for a poetry that neither conceals violence nor allows it to dominate. In a world where colonization threatens to destroy not only land but also imagination, Kattan counters this with a poetics of connection: between memory and future, myth and body, Bethlehem and Avalon.

In Kattan's poetry, the enclosed garden is a utopia that does not consist of an external, tangible perfection, but rather of the resilience of the human spirit, the boundless power of imagination, and the preserving role of poetry. It is a utopia of the inner world, defying the "assèchement" (drying up) and "dévastation" (devastation) of the outer world, thus representing a counterpoint to the oppressive reality of Palestine. "This land is where the journey and the imagination are," Kattan writes. In a world where everything threatens to disappear, the poem endures as an enclosed garden—a place where, through the power of language, what has been lost finds a new existence. It is a poetic echo of resilience that teaches us to seek and preserve beauty and connection even in the face of deepest despair. Reading Kattan's works is thus itself an entry into this fenced garden of possibilities, an invitation to feel the presence of the absent and to experience the power of imagination as an act of survival.