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Modern Poetry of Pakistan: An Introduction

April 30th, 2011 | 4 Comments

By Waqas Khwaja

Modern Poetry of Pakistan offers many offshoots of the classical tradition of Muslim poetry in India. Although Amir Khusrau (1253-1325), considered by some to be the first poet writing in a recognizable Urdu diction (Hindvi, as it was then called), wrote geet (songs), in addition to poems in many classical forms like the Mathnavi, ghazal, rubai, and riddles.

Nazm, or an integrated rhymed poem on a single subject, did not become a regular part of the repertoire of Urdu poetry until the second half of the 18th century with Nazeer Akbarabadi. Whereas classical poetry was often highly stylized in its language, imagery and symbolism, and romantic and mystical, or metaphysical, in its themes, Nazeer Akbarabadi introduced everyday subjects, images, and concerns in his nazms. He also wrote political and social satires.

Akbarabadi’s influence, through Altaf Husain Hali and Muhammad Husain Azad in the 19th century, has continued in Urdu poetry to this day. One of the great beneficiaries of this influence was Allama Iqbal, the poet with whom Modern Poetry of Pakistan opens, widely considered the visionary who first conceived the idea of a Muslim state in India. Iqbal wrote in a great variety of forms and learned deeply from both Western and Eastern traditions. In the vein of Goethe and Shelley, his poetry includes philosophical reflections steeped in spiritual idealism in a quest for self-realization geared toward community- or nation-building.

At the same time, classical images and symbols of Islamic poetry from Persian and Arabic traditions are also incorporated in Iqbal’s poems, where, in addition to their acquired mystical connotations, they are given a contextual turn that makes them a powerful vehicle to challenge European imperial domination and promote the cause of political liberation as well as social and economic justice and equity.

Faiz Ahmad Faiz, arguably the greatest poetic voice in the sub-continent of India after Iqbal, follows in his footsteps, retaining the political dimension in his poetry but makes two distinct contributions of his own that give a new direction to the current of sub-continental poetry.

On the one hand, he breaks away from the religio-political impetus, shunning high philosophy as well, and gives his poems a decidedly popular Marxist-Socialist character. On the other, he reinterprets the imagery and language of classical Perso-Arabic poetic tradition, to which he reverts, by enlisting it in the cause of the common people. He thus re-imagines and reinvents the connotative field of classical language, imagery, and symbolism within a Marxist ideological worldview. The Beloved of classical tradition no longer signifies God, or Muhammad, the prophet of Islam and the perfect exemplar of a human being, physically and spiritually, or the light of abstract Truth, or the Self, but Revolution — Revolution of the oppressed of the earth, against economic exploitation, colonization, and all forms of imperial domination.

Iqbal’s will to revive the ideal Muslim community and resurrect the perfect “Man of God” in each individual Muslim consciousness is replaced by an unflagging hope for the success of the revolution everywhere against injustice. “Workers of the world unite” is reconceived to exhort the oppressed everywhere to keep the faith against all odds, to continue the struggle, for their efforts will indeed bring about an upheaval that will redress the wrongs and crown the reviled, the despised, the rejected, the robbed and impoverished with success and surcease from their pain. Ironically, in reinterpreting the idiom and imagery of old, Faiz ends up reinterpreting Islamic values in secular, physical, material (Marxist) terms.

Source: http://asiasociety.org/arts-culture/literature/modern-poetry-pakistan-introduction

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Filed under: Pakistan, poetry · Tags: Allama Iqbal, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Nazeer Akbarabadi, Pakistan

4 Responses to "Modern Poetry of Pakistan: An Introduction"

1. Modern Poetry of Pakistan: An Introduction | Tea Break says:

   April 30, 2011 at 6:46 pm

   [...] Modern Poetry of Pakistan: An Introduction [...]
2. Hayyer says:

   April 30, 2011 at 8:14 pm

   That’s it?
   Modern Pakistani poetry ended with Faiz-was he modern? The article promised, and promptly shut down.
3. Waqas Khwaja says:

   May 9, 2011 at 7:42 am

   This piece was written in response to a question about the context within which the poems included in the recently published anthology “Modern Poetry of Pakistan” were to be read. Pak Tea House has excerpted only the first half of it. The rest of the response is given below. Of course, the web source from which this is excerpted is provided by Pak Tea House at the bottom of the part it has reproduced.

   Waqas Khwaja

   Here’s the rest of the response piece:

   This history and this background is necessary to appreciate what the various poets from the seven language traditions of Pakistan are attempting to do in their own respective ways in the poems that are included in Modern Poetry of Pakistan. Yes, there are individual motivations, local traditions, legends, and history, topical details, regional, and often shared, folklore, political tensions, social and cultural enticements and anxieties, that provide inspiration. But all the poets share the context that is sketched out above. Within this context, it will be a little easier, perhaps, to see thematic modulations and departures, formal revisions and innovations, and the differentiated imageries, idioms, sensibilities that the poets have brought to their work.

   The poems are not to be read within some abstract notion of a universal poetic practice, which often means today whatever the Western world considers familiar and appealing on its own terms. They cannot be assessed either on the basis of Western or European ideas of Modernism, Postmodernism, and other academic labels that have been devised on the basis of literature and art forms familiar to this part of the world.

   These poems have to be read and appraised within the rich traditions that they originate and grow from. Only then can translation truly serve its purpose. For it is not the objective of the translators to render the original in such a way that it becomes indistinguishable from the idea of a poem as generally understood in the language of translation. The movements, the timing, the formal shadow, the sensibility of the original language must somehow continue to show itself in the translated version.
4. Moyer says:

   September 18, 2012 at 5:21 am

   Waqas Khwaja’s Introduction and Response above and in the book are a puzzle. If the diverse poetic traditions are in need of homogenizing, in this case, the material is rightly placed with government agencies on both sides and their editors and translators. The modern poetry of Pakistan certainly is a good question, to which this anthology provides its own answer. What is “modern” in the various Pakistani poetic traditions included? Are the poetries excluded, for example, Hindko, Brahvi and English, not modern or Pakistani? Arif’s selection requires an explanation.

   The translation philosophy is intriguing at best. The Translation Editor states: “The sensibility of the original language must somehow… show itself in the translated version” (http://asiasociety.org/arts/literature/modern-poetry-pakistan-introduction). We may appreciate the view expressed here. But there is a further demand on the reader that may be rather difficult to meet, when the Translation Editor says: “These poems have to be read and appraised within the rich traditions that they originate and grow from.” (http://asiasociety.org/arts/literature/modern-poetry-pakistan-introduction?page=0,1)
   Fair enough, but doesn’t this limit the idea and purpose of translation? Let’s hope the translation philosophy and the results here will not limit the uses such a book may have–maybe to encourage more translations and a better understanding of the original works. The poetry is welcome even if it’s a translation. I have been reading lately some other translations of modern Pakistani poetry, and also some Pakistani poetry originally written in English by Pakistan’s marvelous modern poets (not included in Arif’s anthology). Dalkey Archive Press is a brave publisher and should be thanked for providing a glimpse into what the topic may really be like.

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