THE newly-born South Asian writers’ and artists’ network in Lahore has perhaps developed a special liking for major writers belonging to the Western literary tradition. They seem to have chalked out a programme of holding functions meant for paying homage to them. These functions many also serve the purpose of our literary education.
Their first choice was Sartre. They had planned to celebrate his birth anniversary in a big way. But the plan could not materialize and their second choice was Dostoevsky. And this time, with much ado, they succeeded in organizing a function. Some people were seen asking for the reason of this function. But is not the greatness of a writer a reason enough for celebrating him?
My objection is a little different. In this kind of function we expect some scholar or critic to present a paper bearing a critical study of the writer and his works. Here the participants were seen speaking extempore. Of course Qazi Javaid had a written paper to his credit. But this paper was of a different nature. He liked to tell us how Dostoevsky was received among the young leftists in Lahore. He says that it was during the seventies that the Urdu translations of Dostoevsky’s novels such as Idiot and The Insulted and the Injured reached us from Moscow.
They were received warmly in the circles of young intellectuals and students with leftist leanings. As these books were publication from Moscow, these youngsters expected them to be in line with the revolutionary literature being continually issued from there. But they found to their dismay different kind of ideas expressed in these books. The people portrayed here were tired souls with no ray of hope in their eyes. They were defeatist people and were deeply in alone with their defeatism. They rather adored it.
This young lot readily rejected Dostoevsky, calling him a reactionary.
But Qazi Javaid should not be unaware of the fact that this reaction is not very different from that of the early revolutionaries, those belonging to Stalin’s period. Lenin too had reservations about Dostoevsky. “Repulsive but great,” so he remarked about his novel The Possessed, in fact, the officials in Moscow took enough time to acknowledge the greatness of this novelist and accommodate him in their publishing programme. How ironical that Dostoevsky, who was later branded as a reactionary, had made his start as a revolutionary. He, in his early years, joined a group of revolutionaries and enthusiastically participated in their discussions. And when a few of them formed a secret revolutionary society, he joined it. But soon they all, including Dostoevsky, were arrested and sentenced to death. They were lined up for the execution. But it so happened that at the last moment came the order for their reprieve. Dostoevsky’s death sentence was commuted to four years hard labour in Siberia.
When, after all this, he came back to St. Petersburg, he was a changed man. The harrowing experiences he had gone through had left an indelible imprint on his mind and on his psyche. It had entirely changed his world view. And now he was a different kind of writer, very different from his contemporaries. As remarked by a critic “to read Dostoevsky is to descend into an inferno” and that “in his novels the worlds of crime, abnormal psychology and religious mysticism meet and mingle in a manner difficult to define”.
Qazi Javaid had in his article quoted Freud, who has admitted to be indebted to Dostoevsky’s novels for much of his discourse of man’s psyche.
Qazi Javid referred in particular to his novel Brothers Karamazov which has been hailed as his masterpiece, and which has now been translated in Urdu by Shahid Hameed. In fact, we have a history of translations of Russian fiction in Urdu. Perhaps Urdu is more familiar with this fiction for the reason that it has attracted more attention of Urdu writers. Khwaja Manzoor Husain may be regarded as among his early translators. During the same period Prof. Mujeeb cared to compile a history of Russian literature in Urdu.
Much credit for translating Russian fiction goes to Makhmoor Jallundhari. And the Russian author who in particular found favour with Urdu translators was Chekhov, whose short stories were widely translated by different writers in Urdu. His famous play Three Sisters had been translated by Mohammad Salim-ur-Rehman.
In recent years two masterpieces from Russian fiction were translated by Shahid Hameed. The one is Tolstoy’s masterpiece War and Peace, the other being Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. As stated by Qazi Javaid, it was written during his last three years. He completed it in November 1880 when he had only three months more to live. But equally great is his novel Idiot, which was completed in 1869. Apart from those two masterpieces he has a long list of short stories, and long and short novels to his credit.
THE newly-born South Asian writers’ and artists’ network in Lahore has perhaps developed a special liking for major writers belonging to the Western literary tradition. They seem to have chalked out a programme of holding functions meant for paying homage to them. These functions many also serve the purpose of our literary education.
