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review The poets whose works Sang-e-Meel has published are no less than Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Sauda, Momin Khan Momin, Haider Ali Aatish and Shaukat Ali Khan Faani Badayuni. Downpour of
desolation 'Peeli Barish' (The Yellow Rain) is the Urdu translation of a Spanish Novel by Julio Llamazares, published in 1899, its English version appearing in 2003. Ajmal Kamal has translated it into Urdu and done a very good job of it. Zia Mohyeddin column'The malignant and turban'd Turk' Nothing strikes a deeper sense of terror in the hearts of Europeans (and the Americans) more than the sight of a bearded, dark-skinned man, wearing a turban. The atavistic fear of the 'malignant and turban'd Turk' has surfaced once again. The seeds of this phobia were sown centuries ago.
Sang-e-Meel has done a creditable job by republishing the collected works of some of our most outstanding classical poets The poets whose works Sang-e-Meel has published are no less than Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Sauda, Momin Khan Momin, Haider Ali Aatish and Shaukat Ali Khan Faani Badayuni. For the growth of Urdu the
nineteenth century was the most important and crucial period The most popular diwan of our classical poets is probably of Ghalib which is short and sweet after the ruthless critical assessment by the poet himself. His other works from time to time have surfaced on the researcher's horizon with varying degrees of critical apprehension and appreciation. But one wondered about the works of other poets who were much more productive and less ruthless in self-assessment. They were perhaps also not that particular about saving their verses for posterity. The dominance of the ghazal has been such that the other forms in which the poets may have written were placed on the backburner and not given the importance that they may have deserved. Nearly all poets wrote in many forms like the masnavi, ashoob shaher, marsiya, qasida, mussadas, madihaat, rubaaiyaat, musallus, munqabat, qataat, tazmin, fardiyaat, waasookht and hajv but the ones who excelled in ghazal were given top ranking. Very unfair because in some of the other forms the poets being more descriptive gave a more realistic picture of the times that they were living in. This stylised rendering of reality has been criticised for it facilitated transcending the immediate happenings that fed the poets' imagination and promoted otherworldliness. In forms of poetry other than the ghazal the happenings of the time are more apparent or at least the gold dust could be wiped off for a more realistic image of what was going on. And what was going on was not pretty. The foreigners had taken control and the local rulers if any were mere puppets in the hands of those foreigners. Before Mir and Sauda the poets who kept lighted the flame of poetry were Shah Mubarak Aabroo, Sharafuddin Maznoon, Mirza Jane Janaan Mazhar, Sheikh Ahsanullah Biyaan, Shakir Naaji, and Ghulam Mustafa Yakrung. Sauda himself took advice from Suleman Quli Khan and Shah Hatim. Many editions of Mir Taqi Mir have been published -- the first by the Fort William College under the editorship of Kazim Ali Jawan, the second by Niwal Kishore in 1867 .The current publication is a reprint of Abdul Bari Aasi edition. In the 1940s when it was first published Aasi other than Jawan's edition also consulted two incomplete manuscripts. The selection of Masnawis published by Sir Shah Suleman was retained. Since the manuscripts were not in any order, these were placed in some credible order by Abdul Bari Aasi. He tackled the additional difficulty of words and phrases which had become obsolete. Many of the words which were used by Mir had become archaic by 1940. These words were judged and included after much research and prudence. For the axioms and proverbs of Persian which were rare and probably had gone out of everyday expression a dictionary had been added at the end of the text. Mirza Sauda was one of the earlier great Urdu poets involved not only in creating an idiom for poetry but also laying down the rules of the language which was still in its formative phase. Though he initially wrote in Persian -- during his times Persian was being treated as a foreign language with Urdu fast replacing it.-- he chose Urdu as his preferred language of expression on the advice of Khan Arzoo. This reprint too had been edited by Abdul Bari Aasi who in his foreword had mentioned that the present Diwan was based on two previously published collections -- one of Mustafia and the second of Kishori. There was a great deal of variation between the two but care was taken in his edition to retain as much of those two earlier collections. Apparently Sauda's earlier published works were greatly censored versions for there were great chunks of obscene verses in it -- or what was considered to be obscene by the publishers or editors. Aasi claimed that the collected works of Sauda had not been published in this format before for he made them reader friendly and did away with the conventional style of comments on the margins. The edition of Momin which has been republished is the reproduction of an older edition but it has not been mentioned which one it is. The edition has an introduction by Zulfiqar Taabish and it is more about the life and works of the poets rather than a historical survey of his past publications. It would have been most useful if it had been mentioned as to which earlier edition has been reproduced. The editions of Shaukat Ali Khan, Faani Badayuni and Haider Ali Aatish are desktop editions. The fonts are familiar and the text easy to read unlike the reprints of older manuscripts which were penned by katibs and perhaps not overly standardized. It would have been very useful if all the details of the published editions had been given. Though in the case of Mir and Sauda we do get to know some history of the publications, in Momin and Aatish precious little is mentioned. Some information could have led to a better understanding of the times, the state of publishing industry and how people related to the printed word. In a society that was overwhelmingly disposed towards the oral tradition, the printed word especially in literature must have been considered a lifeless intrusion. Peeli
Barish By Dr. Abrar Ahmad 'Peeli Barish' (The Yellow Rain) is the Urdu translation of a Spanish Novel by Julio Llamazares, published in 1899, its English version appearing in 2003. Ajmal Kamal has translated it into Urdu and done a very good job of it. 'Peeli Barish' is a short novel, a volume comparable to the French masterpiece 'The Outsider' (Albert Camus). Also because it revolves around a single character and theme -- the Epistemological inferences opposite but overlapping at places. Village is the microcosm of
society, a small setting through which the entire human In the initial pages we are captured by an overwhelmingly agonising recollection of those who left the place. It's a series of soliloquised utterances of a tenderhearted but resolute man who adds his immense power of imagination to recall things. But, at the same time, he realises that "the yellow rain" will ultimately wash away memories to leave him all alone to suffer in silence. His sole companion, his wife, dies soon and now the emptiness around him is complete and painfully hurting. As a matter of commitment and choice, he sticks to his land to face decay and death. Yellow rain emerges as a metaphor of forgetfulness, suffering, infirmity, loneliness and ultimate destiny. This rain keeps falling everywhere, on things living and nonliving. When left unattended, the houses crumble, the walls collapse, the humans perish. This eternal silence is breached when the memory of the son lashes back at the protagonist. His only surviving son had left his parents, people and village for Europe in pursuit of a bright future -- a phenomenon so identical to our situation. Boys from our own villages and small towns leave their places of origin, finding no opportunities around, to return only to bury their dead parents. When the central character of the novel listens helplessly to the footsteps of approaching death, he is overpowered by a strong desire to witness the return of his beloved son to console him and if not so to visit at least to identify the gravestones of his parents and the ruins of the place where he was born and brought up. It is at this point that the narrative takes a categorical tilt towards life. The old man during the slow monotonous days and nights of deepening silence, recalls how lovely his daughter was, who died so young and the son, mercilessly killed in the civil war. The novel apparently pushes the reader to the dark abyss of hopelessness and despair but surprisingly, in the final analysis, the morose state of affairs gives birth to a strong quest for life instead. The brevity and precision found in the work is both a valuable quality and an artistic demand effectively fulfilled to cover such a subtle area of human existence. The reality pronounced by this novel is that the humans cannot survive in isolation. They need social setups to thrive and this is the only way to exist on this cruel hostile planet. When our Hero is bitten by a snake and is convulsive and delirious due to the poison, the author's creative competence touches its peaks, although the entire narrative is captivating and doesn't let the reader go. At philosophical level, the book announces the inevitability of humans to co-exist without which life is unmanageable. It also points towards the human affinity for identity, values, traditions and signs of life present around him. The existentialists reflected, 'Hell is other people' while this fictional piece seems stating 'Hell is the absence of other people!!'
Zia Mohyeddin column 'The malignant and turban'd Turk' Nothing strikes a deeper sense of terror in the hearts of Europeans (and the Americans) more than the sight of a bearded, dark-skinned man, wearing a turban. The atavistic fear of the 'malignant and turban'd Turk' has surfaced once again. The seeds of this phobia were sown centuries ago. In the era we know as Renaissance, the romantic notion of the 'noble savage' spawned countless tales, poems and plays throughout Europe. In England too, stories featuring 'Escape from Turkish pirates' were staple parts of both fiction and drama. If the play was a tragedy the 'savage' was killed off in the end; if it was a tragi-comedy he was converted to Christianity before the play ended. There were numerous Africans present in England in the late 16th century and on special occasions like coronations, they were paraded sitting astride effigies of exotic animals like griffins, camels and unicorns, sometimes stark naked. Shakespeare must have been struck by these pageants for in his very first tragedy 'Titus Andronicus', he introduced a coal-black character called, Aaron, a bestial, lecherous heathen, steeped in devilry. Aaron is a villain as stereotyped as the play itself. Shakespeare's next 'noble savage' is a luxuriant. The Prince of Morocco (another Moor) comes to win the fair lady of Belmont in 'The Merchant of Venice'. Much to the relief of the audience, he is unsuccessful and withdraws without creating a mayhem. Shakespeare, however, remained fascinated by Moors for he gave one of his major tragedies the title of 'Othello, the Moor of Venice.' He could not be expected to know much about the mores and manners of people who lived in the Near or Far East. He, naturally, borrowed freely (as he had, from Holinshed) from such travel literature and accounts that had been published by the later half of the 16th century. In these chronicles, a 'Moor' embodied anyone from Turkey to India and ranged between primitivism and excess. According to some of these chronicles, the people of the New World were cannibals, unlettered, child-like, innocent, pedestrasts, unworldly, decadent and barbaric. Shakespeare's Othello is neither a pederast nor a cannibal. He is a supreme general, a man of stature and the entire Venetian senate pays homage to him. His marriage to the beautiful -- and white -- Desdemona has full approval of the Duke. He is honest and forthright, but he is gullible; and the villain, Iago, (not a black man) begins to work on his weakness. Slowly, but steadily, he poisons Othello's mind about his wife's unfaithfulness. The Moor becomes so incensed that he strangles the devoted and chaste Desdemona. In a normal tragedy, Othello's heroism would have outlived his horrid act. His magnificent, last speech, before he kills himself: "...Then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well, Of one not easily jealous but being wrought Perplexed in the extreme, of one whose hand Like the base Indian threw a pearl away..." still elevates him to the status of a tragic hero, but Othello has scarred Desdemona's skin, "whiter than snow and smooth as alabaster". He was, after all a 'malignant and turban'd Turk' as well as a 'circumcised dog.' Could it be that Shakespeare inserted these lines to please the groundlings and give them the satisfaction that the black heathen had, at last, admitted his base and inferior status? The audience could accept -- indeed laugh at -- lines like "The black ram is tupping your white yew" and "You'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse?" because they knew that the 'Barbary horse' was none other than Richard Burbage, the leading actor of the Globe company. The 18th century which saw a great deal of sentimentalisation of Shakespearean texts (Nahum Tate turned 'Lear' into a 'And they all lived happily ever after' tale) had no time for 'Othello'. Hazlitt and Coleridge -- Coleridge, in particular -- found 'Othello' to be revolting because of its implications of miscegenation. And yet he raved about the genius of Kean, who excelled at playing Othello. Watching Kean makes you understand Shakespeare by flashes of lighting, was his famous remark. What disgusted the 18th century intellectual prudes was not the part of 'Othello' so much as the spectacle of a white woman fawning over a black man and allowing him to get into bed with her. Nearly two hundred and forty year after the play was written, Iran Aldridge, the powerful black American actor, played Othello in London in 1833. This is what one critic wrote: "In the name of propriety and decency we protest against an interesting and lady-like girl, like Miss Ellen Terry being subjected by the manager of the theatre to the indignity of being pawed by a black servant; and finally, in the name of consistency, if this exhibition is to be continued, we protest against acting being any longer dignified by the name of art." (my italics) Here, Aldridge's performance is only viewed as an 'exhibition' as opposed to 'Art'. The critic is merely giving vent to his deep-seated perception that a black man can only represent an exhibition of monstrosity and never tragic humanity. Shakespeare's audience witnessed in Othello and Desdemona the spectacle of two white males: one a boy, his face whitened, and one, old, with his face blackened. Subsequent generations saw the white boy replaced by a white woman. In America too, audiences were happy to accept a black Othello on stage as long as it was a white man (using burnt cork to imitate a Negroid complexion) but not a genuine Negro. When the famous 19th century English actor, Macready played Othello in American South, he recorded in his diary that he was appalled at the way the Negro slaves were treated. Macready played Othello in a native costume; he got a big welcome because he was just like this slave-owning audience. Moors were not differentiated from blackamoor in Elizabethan society. Even if Shakespeare knew that a Moor was a member of Muslim people of mixed Berber and Arab descent he would still have been affected by the Renaissance writings on Islam, which presented the religion as, 'cruel' and 'bloody'. Othello, for all his virtues, is an undisciplined creature, caught between imputations of decadence and bestiality. The spectre of the 'malignant and turban'd Turk' which has haunted Europe for centuries (bedimmed during the 20th century) is looming larger than ever now.
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-- it was also the most creative. The young language which had only blossomed
in the north after its exposure to the poetry of Wali Daccani flowered into
full bloom in the late eighteenth and then nineteenth century, a period
otherwise of great turmoil which saw the end of the Indian Muslim cultural
domination and the loss of political power by the elite that represented this
culture.
situation can be effectively visualised to a lesser or greater extent. The
story of the novel remains confined to the boundaries of a snow covered
desolate village being evacuated by the inhabitants one by one. The process is
unending and finally leaves behind only a couple of families refusing to
abandon their homes, their past and their land. In the end only an ageing
couple is left to mourn.