Urdu
language and literature, beyond their spatial confines, have been more
heard of than read. With the publication of some notable translations,
some of them in the recent past, a new literary culture seems to be emerging
from the canons of the old. Modern Urdu poetry, of which this is the first
comprehensive selection, has its own tradition of the new. It has developed
through stages of a variegated literary history. This history has absorbed
both the native and non- native elements of writing in Arabic and Persian,
and the Urdu language has survived through several crises and controversies.
Some of these are related to its growth and development, its use by the
British to divide the Hindus and the Muslims. it estrangement in the land
of its birth following the Partition of India and its interaction with
Hindi once akin but now an alien counterpart. Even with the extinction
of those generations of Sikhs in Punjab, Muslims in Bengal and Hindus elsewhere,
who nurtured the language with love and for whom it was the mark of a cultivated
man, the language has survived and developed. It is now the cultural
legacy of India and the adopted national identity of Pakistan, and significant
new literature has emerged in both countries.
Literary centre : Deccan, Delhi
and Lucknow
Literature
in Urdu grew at three different centres: Deccan, Delhi and Lucknow. As
it happened, the Deccan emerged as the earliest centre, even though the
language had first developed in northern India, as a result of an interesting
linguistic interaction between the natives and the Muslim conquerors from
Central Asia, who settled there in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
The period stretching roughly from the middle of the fourteenth centuries
to the middle of the eighteenth produce a number of poets. They are claimed
both by Urdu and Hindi literary historians, but Quli Qutub Shah (1565-1611)
is generally acknowledged as the first notable poet, like Chaucer is English,
with a volume of significant poetry in a language later named Urdu. He
was followed by several others, among whom Wali Deccani (1635-1707) and
Siraj Aurangabadi ( 1715-1763) deserves special mention. Delhi emerged
as another significant centre with Mirza Mohammad Rafi Sauda (1713-80),
Khwaja Mir Dard (1721-85), Mir Taqi Mir (1722-1810), Mirza Asadullah Khan
Ghalib (1797-1869) and Nawab Mirza Khan Dagh (1831-1905). It reached its
height of excellence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lucknow
made its way as the third important centre with Ghulam Hamdani Mushafi
(1725-1824), Inshallah Khan Insha (1757-1817), Khwaja Haidar Ali Atish
(1778-1846), Iman Baksh Nasikh (1787-1838), Mir Babr Ali Anis (1802-74)
and Mirza Salamat Ali Dabir (1803-1875). These literary capitals, where
the classical tradition developed, had their individual stylistic and thematic
identities, but broadly it may be said that the
ghazal (love
lyric) reached its zenith with Mir and Ghalib,
qasida (panegyric)
with Sauda, mathnawi (romance) with Mir Hasan and marthiya (elegy)
with Anis and Dabir.
Hali and Iqbal : new poetry
in Urdu
In the period
that followed, and before the launching of the Progressive Writers Movement
in the 30s, mention should be made of Altaf Husain Hali (1837-1914) and
Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938). Hali was a poet of the newer socio-cultural
concerns and advocated 'natural poetry' that had an ameliorative purpose.
His Musaddas is an important example of this. He was also a theorist
who opened new frontiers in Urdu criticism with his Moqaddama-e-Sher-o-Shairi
(Preface
to Poetry) which equals Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads in
importance, and even surpasses it in certain respects. He realized that
with the impact of the West a new perspective was required. He, along with
Mohammad Husain Azad (1830-1910), laid the foundations of a new poetry
in 1867 under the auspices of Anjuman-e-Punjab, Lahore. Azad had asserted
in the same year that Urdu poets should come out of the grooves of responses
conditioned by Persian culture and root their works in the ethos of the
land. Seeing no response to his pleas, he reiterated the same point seven
years later on May 8, 1874 during his address on the occasion of the first
mushaira
of the Anjuman. These appeals failed to make and impact
as sensibilities rooted in particular tradition are not easily altered
even by impassioned pleas. Hali, creating a new taste for his age.
Iqbal, with his remarkable religio-philosphical vision, and Josh Malihabadi
(1838-1982), with his nationalistic and political fervour, produced
exceptionally eloquent kinds of poetry that continue to reverberate over
the years. Iqbal remained the most influential poet to achieve artistic
excellence while putting forward a philosophical point of view, and his
poetry, quite often, acquired the status of the accepted truth. A host
of others Urdu poets and translators of English poetry who appeared
on the literary scene during the first quarter of this century experimented
with non-traditional poetic forms but they ultimately echoed sentiments
and adopted forms that were more or less tradition-bound. They also looked
towards the West, the traditional source of literary influence, but that
was a world apart and too far to seek, They could reach only the Romantics
who had already become outmoded in an age identified with Ezra Pound and
T. S. Eliot. A characteristically modern poem in form and value, tone and
tenor, remained at best an intriguing possibility.
Progressive Writers Movement
The 1930s
emerged as the archway for entry into a new world and achieve the unachieved.
Some young Indians-- Sajjad Zaheer, Mulk Raj Anand, and Mohammad Deen Taseer--
who wee then studying in London, musing on the role of literature in a
fast-changing world, came up with a manifesto for what came to be known
as the Progressive Writers Movement. Even before this, Sajjad Zaheer, during
his stay in India had published Angare (Embers), an anthology of
short stories, with explicit sexual references and an attack on the decadent
moral order. The book had to be banned, like Lady Chatterley's Lover,
but
the stories had an impact, as they were thematically interesting and technically
innovative. The reader had suddenly become exposed to the worlds of Freud,
Lawrence, Joyce and Woolf. There was a world of new values waiting to be
explored by an emotionally charged and intellectually agile reader. the
Progressive Writers Movement was launched at the right time. This was the
precise hour to shed the age-old traditions, take leave to the clichés,
proposed new theories, and explore a new world order.
Akhter
Husain Raipuri, in his well-timed
Adab aur Inqilab (Literature and
Revolution) published in 1934, discarded the classical Urdu poets, including
Mir and Ghalib, as degenerate representative of a feudalistic culture.
This rejection was, however, based on extra-critical considerations as
he was more intent on popularizing Marxist thought in literature. Premchand's
famous presidential address to the conference of Progressive Writers Association
in Lucknow two years later in 1936, came as a more precise call to relate
literature to social reality. ' We will have to change the standards of
beauty, ' he had said, and beauty of him was that which Eliot identified
as ' boredom and horror' in his own context. The movement focussed on poverty,
social backwardness, decadent morality, political exploitation; it dreamt
of an ideal society and a just political system.
Every
rebel was, therefore, a progressive writer and vice-versa during those
exhilarating days. He was basically wedded to the idea of political and
social revolution. He drew his inspiration from Marx. He rejected the striving
for individual signatures, new modes of expression and new experiments
in form. It was important for the poet to denote rather than connote, and
to appeal to the larger humanity rather than to the individual. Falling
victim of these errors before long, the movement alienated some noted poets,
the most important of them being N. M. Rashed (1910-75) and Miraji (1912-49),
who came together to lead a group called Halqa-e-Arbab-e-Zauq (Circle
of Connoisseurs) in 1939. The progressive writers insistence on ideology
and the impatience of those who cared more for art are reminiscent of the
British poets of the 1930s and the later stance of W. H. Auden.
Faiz
Ahmad Faiz (1911-84) is the most prominent and the finest of the poets
who subscribed to the progressive ideology. he was singularly successful
in striking a balance between art an ideas. He was drew upon sources other
than Urdu and Persian and imparted an individual tone to his poetry. he
did not raise slogans; he only uttered soft notes of expostulation. he
was inspired more by the spirit of liberation than by slogans raised elsewhere.
Prominent among other progressive poets were Asrarul Haq Majaz (1908-56),
Makhdoom Mohiuddin (1908-69), Ali Sardar jafri (b.1913), Jan Nisar Akhter
(1914-76), Kaifi Azmi (b.1918) and Sahir Ludhianawi (1921-80). They are
mentioned here not only for the individual qualities of their poetry by
also for their importance in this movement at a particular juncture in
literary history. Despite the deep political complexion of the Progressive
Writers Movement, it prominence was a short-lived affair. The next generation
of poets expressed certain misgivings about their emphasis on class struggle
in a materialistic and scientific world. The new poet wished to shake off
all external shackles and apprehend his own experience for himself.
The modernism
N. M. Rashed
and Miraji are the two most remarkable poets in this group.They along with
Faiz, represent in the Urdu language what Eliot and the Symbolists do in
English and French. They appeared later but also showed a unique resilience
and vitality. Faiz was a poet with a message, one woven artistically into
a pattern of symbols and delivered in a mellifluous tones. Rashed treated
the Urdu language in a fresh way and created complex symbiotic fusion.
Faiz appeals alike to the philanthropist and the philanderer, the pious
and profane, the music makers and dreamers of dreams, but Rashed appeals
only to a select readership. Faiz emerged as a myth in his own lifetime
while Rashed and Miraji are yet to be fully appreciated. Rashed's resources
are immense. The merging to the eastern and western influences accounts
for the richness of his verse enhanced by linguistic innovation and poetic
skill. Miraji, who reminds one of Tristan Corbiere in his bohemianism,
drew upon Oriental, American and French sources, meditated upon time, death,
the mystery if human desires, the raptures of sex and wrote in a variety
of verse forms -- regular, free, and prose-like. He opted for esoteric
symbolism, resorted to the stream-of-consciousness method and emerged as
a unique modernist movement in Urdu poetry.
It was
on this tradition that individual poets later developed their own version
of modernism. Majeed Amjad (1914-74), Akhtarul Iman (b.1915) and Mukhtar
Siddiqi (1917-72) deserves special mention here. A poem for them was a
delicate work of art that succeeded or failed for its artistic worth. Akhtarul
Iman wrote ironic, nostalgic and dramatic poems, while Majeed Amjad
wrote in an inimitable introspective mood and ideas. They served as models
for the younger poets to follow. The impact of Rashed, Miraji and Faiz
was immense and far-reaching. Their successors echoed them, learnt from
them and so came to acquire their own voices in course of time.
The generations
of poets since the 1950s faced new predicaments. The Partition of India
was an experience they had suffered, while the world around was also terribly
alive and eventful. Groups of poets followed on after another; Wazir Agha
(b.1922), Muneer Niyazi (b.1927), Ameeq Hanfi (1922-88), Balraj Komal (b.1928),
Qazi Saleem (b.1930) grappled with the world around in an idiom and form
that were decidedly new and had nothing to do with Progressive aesthetics.
All of them acquired their own individual identities and made their mark
in the development of modern poetry. They looked back at their won masters--
Mir and Ghalib-- and fared forward to Eliot and Empson. Modern literary
and philosophical movements no longer remained alien. Realism, symbolism,
existentialism, and surrealism, were drawn closer home. Kumar Pashi (1935-92),
Zubair Rizvi (b.1935), Shahrayar (b.1936), Nida Fazli (b.1938) and Adil
Mansoori (b.1941), on the one hand, and Gilani Kamran (b.1926), Abbas Ather
(b.1934), Zahid Dar (b.1936), Saqi Farooqi (b.1936), Iftekhar Jalib (b.1936),
Ahmed Hamesh (b.1937), Kishwar Naheed (b.1940) and Fehmida Reyaz (b.1946),
on the other, experimented in form and technique, bringing in new diction
and finding a place for new experiences. The new poem had come into being;
modernism had firmly established itself by the mid-1970s.
Shaabkhoon,
a
literary journal, projected this movement in a big way and identified the
poets of the new order. Ever since its inception in 1966, it has done a
singular job -- especially during the vital 60s and 70s -- of creating
a taste for modernism. Shamsur Rehman Farooqi, the most perceptive of the
modern Urdu critics, played a vital role in helping recognize the contours
of modernism with his critical studies. his studies appraising modern poets,
as well as classical poets who bear upon the modern tradition, developed
sound critical theories and helped in creating an atmosphere for the acceptance
and appreciation of modernism.
Poetry in Pakistan
It may not
seem quite right to speak of Urdu poetry in terms of Indian and Pakistani
poetry, but it would be reasonable to say that the new urdu poetry in Pakistan
is remarkable for its variety and vitality. Emerging from the common sources
and traditions of history and culture, poetry in Pakistan has achieved
its own frames of reference, its own tones of voice, its own notes of protest,
largely because of the socio-political compulsions. Its poetics is characterized
by a healthy adherence to tradition and somewhat virile improvisation of
the traditional modes of expression.
The new
poet in Pakistan has created his own blend of the lyrical with the prosaic,
the manifest with the allegorical. he expressed his own predicament and
that of the world around him which arouse both hope and fear, dreams and
despair. Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Majeed Amjad and Muneer Niyazi, with their vitality
and strength, have led us to the still more varied and vibrant Sermad Sehbai,
Asghar Nadeem Syed, Afzal Ahmad Syed, Zeeshan Sahil and the vital feminine
voices of Kishwar Nahed, Fehmida Reyaz, Nasreen Anjum Bhatti, Sara Shagufta,
Shaista Habib and Azra Abbas. All these and many more form part of a formidable
poetic scene. They are rich in their experience and execution and may well
be placed among the prominent Third World voices that are being heard today
with great curiosity and interest.
Modernism
is an international phenomenon and modern Urdu poetry is a part of it.
It has made its mark with its recognizably individual poetics. The
Urdu poet is now free to make his choice; he has drawn upon sources both
indigenous and foreign, literary and extra-literary, including philosophy,
sociology and mythology. The issues regarding the form of the poem, the
language, experiential capital and aesthetic dimensions have been resolved.
the modern reader has finally identified his poem.
[ From the introduction to the book
' Fire and the Rose ' ]
Rahman, Anisur ; Fire and the Rose;
an anthology of modern Urdu poetry; Rupa & Co. 1995.
related link : urdu
adeeb : urdu writers and poets.
