|
|
|
| April 28, 2003 | Monday | Safar 25, 1424 |
Searching for reality ‘on beaches of ancient waters’
ISLAMABAD, April 27: Various aspects of modern poetry were discussed at the meeting of Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq on Saturday which was dedicated to exchanging views on the collection of poems Aab-e-Qadeem kay Sahiloon par (On the beaches of the ancient waters) by poet Anwar Fitrat.
Poet Ehsan Akbar, who presided over the function, spoke of the possibilities that his poetry provides, and the varying nature of diction, both familiar and unfamiliar, that allows him a vast canvass to splash in words, as it were, the varying colours of his modern sensibility.
Poet Aftab Iqbal Shamim thought that the poet seems to be standing at the meeting point of the ancient and the modern man. This made one examine his poetry at two levels from the point of view of thematic treatment. One belonged to his geets or songs, his dream, and the feelings arising out of a state of hijr and wisal (the separation and the union); and the feelings arising out of other internal dilemmas. On the other hand is the awareness of the tragedy of the modern man, and this understanding provides a full treatment of modern sensibility in his verse.
He lives, from moment to moment in the contemporary civilization, writing a biographical account, as it were, of the hypocrisy and the oppression of the times. There is no deviation from the tradition, either.
According to Prof Shamim his style of writing seems to make to narrow the distance between the poetry written under perfect rules of prosody and the present day prose-poem.
In his well-written paper Ali Mohammad Farshi said these poems, written from 1990 to 2003, saw the best works written by his contemporaries. It was also the period when a crowd of “verse makers” had also entered the field. He thought that the poet raised agitated vital themes and raised important questions. Discussing the first poem which is also the name given to the collection, he said the poem reveals a situation where both man and God have been taken out of the scene of the twenty-first century.
Prof Parveen Tahir in her paper spoke of the symbolism, the metaphor and the imagery that are supposed to be important characteristic of modern poetry, but she thought that these do not become an obsession in the poetry of Anwar Fitrat. She said his narrative poems are as delightful as his symbolic poetry. Prof Jalil Aali spoke of the basic agony, the anguish of the marginal man illustrated by Fitrat that is standing at the cross- roads of what he termed as globalization.
Short-story writer Hamid Shahid thought that his poetry often reflected the way humanity was being pushed round the corner, and the way it results in breaking the dreams; the way man seems to be marginalized.
Poet Ikram Jamaali spoke of what he called the “modern mysticism” which has deleted both God and man, a point of amazement where a feeling of nothingness accompanies the insoluble questions of modern times. Poet Akbar Hameedi thought of a wave of fear, an element of death - the collective death of humanity that surrounds his words. Rafiq Sandelvi thought that in Fitrat’s poetry one finds the dream viewing the dreamer.
The question was also asked about the overwhelming effect of Western literature, especially English literature, since after the two world wars which has idealized the disappointment, the frustration, the enjoyment of a kind of urban negativity seen at its “morbid heights” in poets like T.S. Eliot, which somehow does not seem to leave our modern Urdu poet. Some one quoted Prof Karrar Hussain that we have been living under the influence of a Western culture for so long, that these themes are bound to be reflected in our creative effort. — Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad
|
|
|
|
