Urdu Poetry: Old and New
Faiz Jhinjhanvi (190881) was a poet of a classical temperament. After Partition, he migrated from Delhi to settle down in Lyallpur (latterly Faisalabad) where he lived until the end of his life. Initially he served the Lyallpur Cotton Mills as a Welfare Officer for a short stint whereafter he adopted business as an occupatiion besides philanthropy and social work. ‘Aabshar’ is a collection of his ‘manzoomat’, ‘qita’at’ and ‘ghazaliat’, first published in 1944. The second edition of the book appeared in 1961 followed by the third edition, the present one, brought out by his sons posthumously, in 2017.
Anwar Jamal (b. 1948) lives in Multan. A committed educationist, he is also a poet, critic and painter. With some thirteen books of poetry and prose to his credit, he is widely reputed for his talent and calibre as a poet. Unlike Faiz Jhinjhanvi, Anwar Jamal’s skill and style as a versifier is a mix of both romanticism and modernism. ‘AsmaN Koi Aur’ is his latest verse publication which embodies a couple of hymns, a lyrical mystic ode titled ‘Kaga Nama’ (Cf. ‘Admi Nama’), ghazal (35), a few disparate lines of verse, and some patriotic poems.
‘Aabshar’
The author dedicated the first edition (1944) of this book to Lala Shankar Lal, an industrialist of Delhi and a fervent patron of the literary art, and its second edition (1961) to Sheikh Aziz Ahmad, proprietor of Colony Flour Mills in the then Lyallpur, a vocal enthusiast of the literary and fine arts. And lastly, the author’s sons dedicated the current edition (2017) to their illustrious father.
The preface to the first edition of the collection was written by a renowned writer, litterateur and compere Khawaja Muhammad Shafi Dehlavi. It contains a lucid but scholarly appraisal of Faiz Jhinjhanvi’s poetics in the context of the spirit of the age. He praises the poet’s style and diction albeit the latter’s abstruseness which he justifies by claiming that it is meant for the learned as well as the ones who are duly initiated in the art of versification.
One could conveniently stretch the argument advanced by famed literary writer and editor, John Collings
Squire (18841958), in his appreciation of the poem titled ‘The Testament of Beauty’ by Robert Bridges (18441930), to the poetics of Faiz Jhinjhanvi: ‘The old poet has done triumphantly what none of the juniors have managed to do he has, assisted by courage, a natural sincerity, a belief in the function of poetry, contrived to bring within the borders of a poem, and avoiding flatness, all his feelings, knowledge, speculations, interests, hopes and fears.’
The ‘nazm’ part of the book portrays persons, places and perceptions of how the poet viewed, experienced and suffered life. His tone is emphatic though accent subdued. The diction of the poems is purely classical inasmuch as the vocabulary and usage of the language are concerned. The revolutionary in the poet speaks out in his poem ‘Bhagawat’ seemingly composed in the colonial scenario of the prePartition era. Nostalgia, lament of the lost splendour of Muslim reign in India, a sense of lingering uncertainty in the wake of the changing politicoeconomic situation at home and abroad are the staple themes of these poems.
Likewise, the ‘ghazal’ portion of the book reflects the poet’s existential griefs being voiced in a mellow tone signifying his acute sensitivity to the vacuity of human longings. The verse here abounds in similes, symbols, metaphors and conceits characteristic of classical poetry. Nature is also a favourite theme in his verse. The poet’s quasipantheistic apperception of the phenomena of Nature is attributable to his mystical approbation of values pervading the animate and inanimate worlds both. All said, the book deserves a thoughtful read for its meaningful themes, neat artistic form and accomplished style.
‘AsmaaN Koi Aur’
Anwar Jamal is now a frontliner in the domain of Urdu verse. He has attained this position by virtue of his expansive but sustained literary exercises spanning the past four decades or so. The instant collection is his twelfth publication (lately he has published his 13th book also which is a prose work titled ‘Takhleeq say tanqeed tak’) in a row, the earlier ones include poetry, criticism, pen sketches, and miscellaneous literary and academic material that bespeak his versatility if one would add painting as another dimension of his artistic propensity.
Incidentally this scribe has witnessed the vertical evolution of Anwar Jamal’s creativity ever since the publication of his first work, ‘Laulak Lama’ (a collection of spiritual verse), in the early 1980s. In the intervening period, his literary style, mood and inquisitiveness have undergone a substantial transformation corresponding to the existential exigencies periodically erupting on the transcultural literary horizon.
A closer examination of his verse in the present volume would reveal that he does indeed bring his living interests into his poetry. But methinks, as the colloquy goes, he does not need to withdraw into a dream world either, because he looks like a romantic of love and action on the waking plane. In fact his poetic dilemma turns out to be the universal dilemma of the artist regardless of his ethnic, racial, religious, cultural or geographical moorings. His yearnings sound like cries in the wilderness as it were of a heartless human habitat, euphemistically the world itself, ‘where but to think is to be full of sorrows’.
One hopes that this collection will be avidly read by Anwar Jamal’s readers. They will surely notice a change in his tone and tenor; he seems to have attained greater felicity in voicing his creative upsurge, the element of selfcontemplation having the better of him in the process. The poet’s diction, choice of symbols and the naivete of his romantic stance would seem to strike a vicarious chord of harmony in the discreet reader as these are expressed with new decisiveness, permeated with reflection.