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August 22, 2004
REVIEWS: The defence rests
The title of the book proclaims that it is in support of the short story; but the contents denigrate the short story as a form of literature. From a critic of the stature of Shamsur Rehman Faruqi, one expects an open paradox to be explained with reference to the deeper meaning. Alas as the reader puts down the book, he is left wondering why a book had to be written to run down a genre which has served the Urdu language well.
In his onslaught on the short story, Faruqi is right when he says that there is a hierarchy in literary forms; he is correct when he says that poetry is richer than prose and he is also right when he says that the novel is greater than the short story. The basic argument that emerges from the observations of Shamsur Rehman Faruqi is that the effectiveness of the art form depends on its scale. Shall we deduce from this that poetry is the crown of literature, the longer the poem, the greater it will be; or can we conclude that the short story is a fraction of a novel?
Shamsur Rehman Faruqi justifies the neglect of the Urdu short story by literary critics on the ground that it is not worthy of attention. This implies that the works of Sa’adat Hasan Manto are unworthy of critical appreciation. Faruqi is of the opinion that the Urdu short story was given importance by the progressive writers because it suited them for their propaganda purpose. Faruqi does not stop at attributing the patronage of the short story to ideology, he goes on to claim that the progressives simultaneously tried to banish the ghazal, which, because of its seductive charms would nullify leftist propaganda. In the light of the above arguments how Shamsur Rehman Faruqi computes the importance of ghazal becomes interesting.
“The status of the short story as against the novel is the same as that of the rubayee as against the ghazal.” (p17)
Since Faruqi has made scale the criterion of expression, two fallacies emerge from this observation. Firstly the assumption that the rubayee is a lesser form of poetry than the ghazal. Thematically the rubayee expresses in four lines what the ghazal does in two. The rubayee is a universal art form while the ghazal is not.
Sir Ivor Evans has noted that even those people who read no other poetry, read the Rubayat of Omar Khayyam. To a western critic it would have to be explained that the verses of the ghazal are bound one to another by rhyme and meter and not by theme and topic. Thematically the verses of a ghazal are unconnected, discordant and contradictory. We can explain how, but we cannot explain why. Faruqi’s explanation is that the dynamics of the ghazal give it primacy.
Josh Malihabadi on the other hand has identified nine conventions of the ghazal which have remained static. In other words ghazal is the art form with autism. Further on Faruqi argues, “No game becomes great because the player is a king or a prime minister.” (p 25 ) This is precisely our point. Since Mir and Ghalib are great poets it does not follow that the ghazal is a great literary form. Our emotional attachment to the ghazal is based on the fact that our greatest poets composed ghazals. Again the parallel between the short story and the ghazal is not valid. Even if a short story is constricted, it is coherent. The short story did not evolve out of the novel any more than Tom Jones evolved out of Beowulf. A writer turns to an art form to satisfy a particular type of aspiration.
Faruqi concludes that the short story is a very ordinary literary form and cannot stand up to poetry (p25). Here the equation is not with the ghazal but poetry itself, as though the two are synonymous. Far more convincing than the arguments of Faruqi are the examples of Alexandre Pushkin who wrote The Queen of Spades and Charles Baudelaire who wrote The Hero’s Death. Even in Urdu eminent poets Jameel Mazhari, Hafeez Jalandhari and Akhtar Shirani wrote short stories, some of them memorable. They, at any rate, did not think that the short story was a medium unworthy of their genius.
The proof of the pudding lies in the eating. Consider two articles here. The individual talent of Qamar Ahsan, the genuinely avante-garde fiction writer, remains submerged under theoretical considerations. When Faruqi attempts to eulogize Enver Sajjad, these are the reasons he advances: a) “This means only that in his short stories we do not find the human being who can become a document, neither that human being who can become an allegory nor that human being who can be used as a sign.” (p105) b) “Enver Sajjad’s short stories do not become social histories but become a greater entity because in his stories the man or character becomes a symbol.” (p105) In other words on one hand Enver Sajjad’s characters are praised for not becoming a sign and then praised for becoming a symbol. c) “These writings can hardly be given the name of a short story because they belong to the world of poetry rather than the world of fiction.” (p106) d) “It does not become a short story. Instead of a short story an oceanic, boiling hot and involved poetic form is created. This is the failure of Enver Sajjad.” (p107)
Fiction does not hold a candle to poetry, but where fiction becomes, according to Faruqi’s own reckoning, poetic, it is considered a failure. Now whether this is the writer’s failure, or the critic’s, I leave the reader to judge.
Afsanay ki Himayat Mein
By Shamsur Rehman Faruqi
Scheherzade, B-155, Block 5, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Karachi.
Email: scheherzade@ahmedgraf.com
ISBN 969-8636-23-4
217pp. Rs240
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