Zia Mohyeddin column
Post-mortem
As a young undergraduate in the 1940s I spent more time in Lahore's famous Coffee House than in the classrooms. It was the haunt of all intellectuals and it was here that the poet, Riaz Qadir initiated me into TS Eliot.

Adabiyat

Editor: Mohammad Asim Butt

Publisher: Pakistan Academy of Letters

Pages: 312

Price: Rs100

Faiz is one of the major poets of the post-Iqbal era who won an unprecedented applause and recognition. The general influence of his age tended to favour the taste and search for progressive truth in art and literature. By striking a perfect balance between the literary values of poetry and the revolutionary intellectual stance, he created with style and class, which nobody else could ever match. There was a time when his birthday celebrations used to be a memorable literary and socio-political event attracting huge crowds showering their love generously on him. The sweet, mellow penetrating voice of his enlivening poetry and the charisma of his personality overwhelmed the entire literary scene and he still haunts the serious readers of Urdu poetry and would do so in times to come.

Adabiyat has recently published a special issue on Faiz -- a worthy serious work. Asim Butt is the editor while Fakhar Zaman, the Chief Editor/Chairman Academy of Letters writes on the editorial page:

"Faiz is the most modern ghazal poet who not only influenced the generations to follow but also left lasting impact on the contemporary literature too."

Pakistani Tehzib Ka Mustaqbil by Faiz is the opening chapter which in fact is his address to the students of Government College Muzaffarabad 1969, followed by an interview. It helps us understand his perceptions and reservations about the future of Pakistan. One finds him a bit defensive and compromising while replying to some penetrating questions about his ideology -- reflective of the typical mild attitude he kept throughout his life.

Valuable contributions are made by the eminent critics and authors including Wazir Agha, Shams-u-Rehman Farooqi, Gopi Chand Narang, Salim Akhtar, Mohammad Ali Siddiqi, Kishwar Naheed and others attempting to unfold the phenomenon called Faiz.

Wazir Agha offers a comparison between Ghalib and Faiz -- hardly a tribute to Faiz. He observes that both of them harboured an omnipresent restlessness and lived in the grip of intense sense of non-belonging but Ghalib couldn't move due to financial constraints while Faiz conveniently travelled across the world. Both remained complex and Persian-oriented during their early period -- easing out in the later years. Both remained imprisoned on the "same" charges but for Ghalib it became stigmatic while it glorified Faiz's image. Agha writes that Ghalib maintained the sublimity in his poetry till death while Faiz declined as a poet during the last decades of his life – owing to the disproportionate recognition he got.

Farooqi has raised some basic questions about the claims made about Faiz. He contests these claims and by citing a few couplets as example concludes that these offerings neither prove that Faiz was a progressive poet not that he infused new meanings to some obsolete ancient words and metaphors. But one finds him quoting only a few, best suited to his argument while ignoring the entire rest. We may note here that both Agha and Farooqi are the essential "modernists" and can't endorse the credibility of Faiz as a major poet of progressive background, easily.

Gopi Chand Narang has examined Faiz's poems in detail and in a sympathetic but objective manner. He begins with the opinion that all great poetry is itself a parameter of excellence. A great poet is either the greatest of any tradition or an inventor of a new one. Either he is ahead of his time or becomes the most forceful representative of his own time. He has to be a rebel.

And he finds none of these aspects in Faiz. He doesn't define "rebellion" in poetry while claiming, referring to Faiz's own confession, that he was dragged into the Leftist ideology by Dr Rasheed Jahan, an inference too simplistic and unconvincing. About his diction, Narang concludes that he is nothing but the extension of Ghalib and Iqbal. But after saying all this, he explores the impressive works and discovers some really new brilliant spots in Faiz's poetry. He doesn't deny the significance of the poet but stresses the need to re-visit him with different and more intent critical parameters.

Mohammad Ali Siddiqi seems in perfect harmony with Faiz. He points out that Faiz harboured on exceptional quality of utilizing and exploiting his command over Urdu poetic tradition to the extreme advantage of placing his ideology in poetry and did succeed tremendously in giving a totally different face to the traditional vocabulary attaining the status of the most valuable poet todate.

Kishwar Naheed candidly recalls the days and nights spent in Faiz's company while Zafar Iqbal insists that Faiz was a 'Ghair Mazahamati Shair' (non-resistance poet). Dr Anwar Sadeed quotes some incidents. Bano Qudsia once asked Faiz, "what's the most difficult task?" Faiz replied, "To love." "And the easiest?" "To be loved," replied Faiz.

At another occasion Faiz told Ashfaq Ahmad: "Remember – you are writers and you have a lot to write yet. Don't take to giving knowledge to the reader – give him love. Knowledge, he can acquire from anywhere but he would demand love only from you!"

It may be recalled here that during the closing years of his life, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi assumed quite an aggressive tone against Faiz -- an offensive totally unnecessary. It's interesting to find here that the contemporaries of Faiz are quite calculated and a bit miserly in acknowledging his significance while the younger writers like Fakhar Zaman, Anwaar Ahmad, Ashfaq Salim Mirza, Asad Mufti, Ashfaq Hussain, Ehsan Akbar and Hakeem Baloch have quite generously expressed their immense liking for Faiz. In fact, the admiration reveals that many of them idealised him as a poet and person.

It's said that if a man is not ready to die for something, he is not fit to live. Asad Mufti narrates an incident in his article. Faiz was asked by a friend while they gathered at M.D. Taseer's place "Is there anything you are ready to die for?" Faiz responded spontaneously -- "Yes --Inqilaab (revolution.)

One feels that Faiz was every inch a poet -- otherwise it's quite hard to achieve and then maintain a standard in poetry of the highest order especially when you intend to serve an ideological purpose as well. We have seen most such poets staggering badly, only to ultimately fall. Faiz when driven to the pen succeeded in converting his rational impulse into creative invention. This could only be possible due to his deep insight and command over the literary tradition along with an intense sincerity of the themes he intended to express. This success is primarily due to the fact that the deepest foundation of his being rested upon his art and ideology both with a firmness which nothing could ever shake.

He would assuredly survive in every faithful and honest study of Urdu poetry and would never be humbled in any reference.

Irada

By Fayyaz Baqir

Published by Sucheet Kitab Ghar, Lahore

Pages: 352

Price: Rs300

Reviewing Fayyaz Baqir's Irada, a collection of interviews with some of the leading development practitioners in the country, is a difficult task for a number of reasons. First of all, it is almost impossible to give a judgment on the book -- whether it serves the intended purpose or even makes an earnest effort towards this end -- because there are hardly any books on the subject.

Although a few books have been written on the life and work of individuals, such as the late Akhtar Hameed Khan, there remains a dearth of literature in Pakistan that focuses on highlighting the struggle of those people who were able to bring about a positive change in the society against all odds. Perhaps the only other Urdu book that falls under this category is Samaj Kay Rahnuma, which was published by Karachi-based NGO Resource Centre (NGORC) back in 1998.

However, the scope of the earlier book is much wider than the one under review, because it also includes interviews with leading development practitioners and activists from other Asian countries. In fact, only two people have made it to both the books: Shoaib Sultan Khan and Tasneem Ahmed Siddiqui. In addition, while Samaj Kay Rahnuma includes an interview with Akhtar Hameed Khan, Irada includes an essay -- titled Orangi: Zinda Rehnay Ka Saliqa (Orangi: The Art of Living) -- on him as well as an interview with his wife, titled Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan Ki Yaad Mein.

One has to laud the author for venturing into this hitherto unchartered territory, despite some drawbacks.

It includes a letter by Sir Sultan Muhammad Aga Khan III to Zahid Hussain, president of the Arbia Jamiat, Karachi, dated, April 14, 1952, and an address by His Highness Karim Aga Khan to students of Institute of Politics in Paris on June 15, 2007 without offering an explanation. Besides, this collection of interviews starts with two unrelated things.

The interview with the wife of Akhtar Hameed Khan is more of a personal talk. Fortunately, most of the other interviews included in the book are more focussed, in particular those of Shoaib Sultan Khan, Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui, Gulbaz Affaqi and Zafarullah Khan. The answers to the questions share success stories of the interviewees rather than of the projects that made them famous.

Irada is a step in the right direction. The people who have something worthwhile to share should be interviewed for the larger good of the society, so that their work can be replicated by others who are working along similar lines. Therefore, one hopes that the book would pave the way for other publications of similar nature.

Zia Mohyeddin column

As a young undergraduate in the 1940s I spent more time in Lahore's famous Coffee House than in the classrooms. It was the haunt of all intellectuals and it was here that the poet, Riaz Qadir initiated me into TS Eliot.

I was not the only one who entered the Coffee House with a slim volume of his selected poems. Those of us who had a love for literature were, forever, engaged in discussing Eliot. The management of the establishment was extremely generous and didn't mind us sitting at a table for hours without ordering anything more than a cup of coffee. We had learnt by heart the hauntingly beautiful, The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock, and we thought of ourselves as weary travellers measuring out our lives with coffee spoons.

We debated over the real meaning of The Waste Land. Riaz Qadir, who had received all his schooling in England, helped us with certain Biblical references, but we didn't always have the benefit of his company. Together, we shook our heads in ecstasy over

line like:

"Son of man

You cannot say or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images where the sun beats

And the dead trees gives no shelter.."

We did not fully comprehend the density of quotations and symbols (which range from Greek mythology to Catholic scriptures). His poetry, however still communicated something to us, and we certainly understood that the poem portrayed the sterility and unreality of the modern world, a spiritually empty world in which life -- and history -- had lost its meaning. The subtlety with which Eliot took an item from one context and shifted it to another thrilled us and we marvelled at the way in which he ended the poem with Data, Dayadhavam and Damyanta.

Eliot was a shy conservative who rarely appeared publicly without his bowler hat. Some years ago he was declared to be anti-Semitic which, coupled with the accusation that he had treated his first wife cruelly and had her confined to a mental asylum, sent shockwaves throughout the literary world.

Scholars and critics were not entirely convinced that he was a Jew-hater. The evidence offered, they felt, did not justify the accusation. Researchers who have been digging into Eliot's written and spoken words contend that he was anti-Semitic. They refer to his lectures delivered in 1934 and later published under the title of After Strange Gods. The book was never republished.

The lectures contained the bluntest public statement he ever made about Jews: "Where two or more cultures exist in the same place they are likely to be either fiercely self-conscious or both to become adulterate. What is still more important is unity of religious backgrounds; and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable."

It is only through a writer's intimate letters that we glean some information about his personal relationships, his passions, his likes and dislikes. Eliot wrote hundreds of letters but they are all locked up in a massive archive out of which has come just one volume of his private papers and letters. The book was edited by his widow and it covered a twenty five year period, from 1898 to 1922, when he published his monumental work, The Waste Land.

The custodians of Eliot's papers are a miserly lot. They do not allow access to his letters. Peter Ackroyd, one of the most esteemed critics and biographers, who wrote a definitive book about Eliot, was denied permission even to quote his poetry.

From the evidence that has turned up so far we know that Eliot's views on race and politics were those of a die-hard conservative. His great friend and mentor, Ezra Pound was a propagandist for fascism who avoided trial for treason after the second World War by pleading insanity. Some of Pound's political philosophy must have rubbed off on Eliot, for when he took the job as a lecturer way back in 1933, he added to his syllabus the works of the French philosopher, Maurres, who was the founder of Action Françoise, the prototype for the 20th century fascist movements.

Pornographic poetry in English is mostly confined to the form known as limerick. Limericks are usually full of jokes about genitals and scatological puns. Like many other great poets Eliot too, indulged in this form. In his early days he frequently wrote pornographic doggerel in his note book. He used to rip the pages off and send them to Ezra Pound, who was an avowed admirer of risqué poetry.

Eliot sold some of these poems to a New York lawyer for a little over a hundred dollars with a plea. "I am sure you will agree that these verses never ought to be printed," he wrote, "and in putting them in your hands I beg you fervently to keep them to yourself and see that they are never printed".

No one knows whether the book that Faber and Faber brought out contained any of the verses that were sold to the New York lawyer. My guess is that it is not likely, because the letters that Eliot wrote after 1923 are still being dug out.

When Faber and Faber, the publishing house, which employed Eliot for years as their literary editor, published Inventions of a March Hare, a collection of Eliot's risqué some would say pornographic -- poetry, there was a hue and cry. Critics winced at the violent obscenity of some of the lines. Some critics wrote that the pornographic verses underlined the misogyny behind much of Eliot's writing. Anthony Julius who had published a book accusing Eliot of racism and misogyny "characterised the coarse verse as drawing on puerile racist ideas about sexual superiority." Eliot claimed that the verses were merely an attempt to make fun of the pompous tone struck by early anthropologists.

The appearance of Inventions of a March Hare once again brought up the controversy surrounding Eliot's dislike of women. Faber and Faber defended it vehemently, saying that it was a wonderful book, that some of the poems were extremely beautiful and that it was certainly not possible to establish Eliot's misogyny from the bawdy lines because Eliot was equally critical of all human beings.

Was Eliot a homosexual? Perhaps the letters which are now being unearthed would shed some light on it. It has already been suggested. A biographer of Bertrand Russell has written that Eliot tolerated his wife's affair with Russell only because he fancied Russell himself.

Eliot's personal life is now being scrutinised minutely. Faber and Faber have announced that they are preparing a seven-volume collection of his prose. They claim that this collection will change the way Eliot has been read and understood. This is a tall claim which will no doubt be refuted by some scholars in Wynona, Minnesota. Shakespeare's post-mortem still continues. Eliot's has just begun.