IT was only in recent years that I found myself among the lucky recipients of Naqd-o-Nazar, a prestigious critical journal published from Aligarh under the editorship of Prof Asloob Ahmad Ansari. I had just begun to appreciate the significance of the kind of literary criticism this distinguished critic was trying to promote through this journal when I came to know that its publication has come to a stop. It gives me a feeling of loss in more than one ways. In personal terms, it is a loss in the sense that the living relationship I was slowly developing with this respectable literary personality through this journal has been disturbed. In general, it is a loss to Urdu literature as with the closure of this journal, the distinctive contribution it was making to our critical tradition has been cut short. That brings me to say a few words about the nature of this contribution.
Urdu critics are mostly engaged in discussing literary theories and ideologies. Next comes in their list of priorities literary trends developing under certain influences. Particular works, for instance a poem, a ghazal, or a short story in its particularity very rarely attracts them for an analytical study. So critical tradition in Urdu abounds in theoretical and ideological criticism. But it will be found wanting in practical or applied criticism. Asloob Ansari chose this area for his critical study. Notwithstanding his preoccupation with poetry he has not ignored fiction. Out of the multitude of novels written in Urdu, he selected fifteen for intensive study. Devoting a separate article to the analysis of each, he serialized them in Naqd-o-Nazar. These studies have now been collected in book form.
However, his main thrust is on poetry. And out of all forms of poetry in Urdu he selected the ghazal for practical criticism. A very hard choice, indeed. In case of poems such an attempt had already been made by Miraji in his time. But the ghazal had never been subjected to practical criticism. Asloob Ansari was the first to make such an attempt, decoding the mystic language Siraj Aurangabadi has employed in his famous ghazal. This piece of practical criticism was published in the first issue of Naqd-o-Nazar which had made its appearance in April, 1979. I owe this piece of information to Prof Qazi Afzal Husain, who in his short note on the flap of the collection of these critical pieces tells us that in each of the subsequent 44 issues of the journal two or three ghazals had been subjected to this kind of analysis.
All these analytical studies have now been collected in two volumes, which have been published by Universal Book House, Aligarh, under the title, Ghazal Tanqeed. But as this collection shows, Asloob Ansari is not the sole author of these analytical studies, which go to make a fine example of practical criticism in Urdu. Others share in this critical exercise with Asloob Ansari.
In fact, as the able editor of Naqd-o-Nazar, Asloob Ansari was expected to search for those, who had the potential to write this kind of criticism. He succeeded in finding such people among his colleagues in the Aligarh University and in Jamia Millia. This newly discovered team of critics makes a valuable contribution to the experiment of practical criticism of the ghazals initially published in Naqd-o-Nazar.
This collection of selected ghazals divided into two volumes begins with Wali Dakkani and ends with Iftikhar Arif, thus covering the whole history of the Urdu ghazal. Each ghazal has been followed by an analytical study. Thus it goes to make a collection of ghazals of its own kind, helping the reader in their understanding. A concession has been made to Iqbal, who appears here along with his Persian ghazal in addition to his Urdu ghazals.
In his learned preface, Asloob Ansari has discussed the ghazal as a poetic form of expression. His profound analysis of the form brings to light in an indirect way the triviality of the charges levelled against the ghazal by hostile critics. What is more ironic is the situation that their very study of English literature on the basis of which they had levelled these charges stands exposed. For instance, their study of English poetry had convinced them that a piece of poetry should be informed by a continuity of thought.
The ghazal is faulty as a mode of expression as it suffers from a lack of continuity of thought. Asloob Ansari refutes this argument by saying that the idea of continuity was cultivated as a literary value by the nineteenth century literary tradition of Europe. The changed literary thinking of the twentieth century dismissed it outright. Poetry as well as fiction of the twentieth century is, according to him, based on the negation of the concept of continuity.
How ironic that the critics who had developed a sense of superiority because of their study of English literature had no awareness of the changes literary trends of the twentieth century had brought with them.
IT was only in recent years that I found myself among the lucky recipients of Naqd-o-Nazar, a prestigious critical journal published from Aligarh under the editorship of Prof Asloob Ahmad Ansari. I had just begun to appreciate the significance of the kind of literary criticism this distinguished critic was trying to promote through this journal when I came to know that its publication has come to a stop. It gives me a feeling of loss in more than one ways. In personal terms, it is a loss in the sense that the living relationship I was slowly developing with this respectable literary personality through this journal has been disturbed. In general, it is a loss to Urdu literature as with the closure of this journal, the distinctive contribution it was making to our critical tradition has been cut short. That brings me to say a few words about the nature of this contribution.
