KARACHI: There are many tools which can help readers understand the meaning of meaning of texts, but for that readers have to be familiar with those tools along with cultures and traditions that are often used as references by creators of texts. This was the crux of a lecture titled ‘The meaning of meaning’ delivered by noted scholar and poet Prof Sahar Ansari at the Arts Council on Tuesday evening.

Prof Ansari’s talk, organised by Asaleeb Forum, initially focused on the subject of language. He said language was a relatively easier means of communication for human beings. One of the ways of using language was to write it down in the form of text. He said the divine scriptures told us that language(s) even existed when there was nothing else. If we were all children of Adam and Eve, how could there be so many languages, he asked, and responded that the question didn’t have a definitive answer. He said there was an explanation for it in the Bible which anthropologists did not tend to agree with.

Prof Ansari said linguists had proved that like human beings languages too had families or groups, such as Arian and Mongol. He said linguistics laid stress on the sound system in any language as it studied phonemes (sounds as abstract elements) and morphemes (internal structure of words). For a long time, linguistics was thought to be part of philosophy. Things changed with the emergence of the discipline of Hermeneutics (methodology of text interpretation) which had its origins in the Greek deity of Hermes, the messenger of gods. When it all stretched to philology, linguistics assumed its separate identity.

This led Prof Ansari to discuss the French philosopher Jacques Derrida who developed the concept of deconstruction, stressing that every structure carried meaning. The philosopher believed every text had a nucleus which he called ‘centre’. In that regard Prof Ansari gave the example of a Ghalib line ‘ganjeena-i-maani ka tilism uss ko samajhyey’ where the word ganjeena (treasure) alluded to that ‘centre’. He said there were other aspects of linguistics, such as social aspects, which experts took into consideration in order to achieve the goal of understanding the meaning of meaning, and for that words needed to be peeled off layer by layer. Sometimes even poets couldn’t explain how they felt while composing poems, which made the task of knowing the meaning of meaning all the more difficult, he commented.

Prof Ansari said to some readers William Blake’s ‘The Tiger’ might appear to be a poem about an animal, but it had deeper allegorical meaning. This made him discuss the usage of words and the discipline of semantics. He said the word ‘tez’ in Urdu ostensibly referred to speed or intensity; but the same word could be used in other contexts (tez dhoop — sunny weather) as well.

Prof Ansari then spoke on the cultural and traditional facets of the debate. He said readers should bear in mind the cultural and traditional references used by writers. He gave quite a few examples to drive his point home, one of which was the following couplet by Ghalib:

Naqsh faryadi hai kis ki shokhi-i-tehreer ka
Kaghazi hai pairahan her paikar-i-tasveer ka

(Against whose playfulness the words are complaining

The attire of the face of every image is made of paper)

He told his listeners that Ghalib in one of his letters had mentioned that in ancient Iran certain people used to go before the king wearing dresses made of paper.

Prof Ansari said metaphor (ista’ra) and similes (tashbeeh) were the tools that poets used, of which metaphor had more profundity. It depended on the reader’s curiosity and knowledge to unravel metaphors and similes. He said there was a time when symbols were used to describe diseases, but French poets employed them in their verse, and the trend caught on with English poets like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Symbols, which were extended metaphors, were primarily of three types — universal, local and personal. Iqbal’s poems ‘Khizr-i-Rah’ and ‘Masjid-i-Qartaba’ were fine examples of poems were symbols were used, he claimed. Ambiguity was another thing which creative people used to express themselves, he said.

Prof Ansari pointed out that having your own lehja (one’s own style, diction, articulation) too was important, which today’s poet lacked. He again quoted Ghalib whose phrase ‘na hota main to kya hota’ could be interpreted in three ways only because of the lehja.

After the talk, the floor was opened for a question-and-answer session. Replying to a question, Prof Ansari said every sentence construction had two structures — surface structure and deep structure. And the reader should be familiar with both.

Earlier Mubin Mirza introduced Prof Ansari to the audience and briefly talked about the book ‘The meaning of meaning’ by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards which came out in 1923 and became inspiration for Prof Ansari’s lecture.

Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2015

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