“THIS book contains essays on Ghalib, but not the kind of essays read out at university seminars,” writes Asif Farrukhi in introduction to the book Tabeer-i-Ghalib. “Neither does it contain the kind of articles written to fill up the pages of literary magazines’ special issues,” he adds.
He was referring to the trite, platitudinous articles that we have become so used to and that would better serve us if consigned to the waste bin. This may sound a bit harsh, but it is a fact that now undergrad assignments are presumed fit to be read out at universities’ Urdu conferences. And it is his surgical precision that Asif Farrukhi is known for while commenting on the hackneyed literary pieces. On such occasions, which may not be sparse, his tongue-in-cheek style peppers the comments. And why not, especially if one is editing a book by an equally no-nonsense kind of critic and researcher: Nayyar Masood.
Nayyar Masood (1936-2017) was a professor of Persian at Lucknow University, just as was his eminent father, Prof Masood Hasan Rizvi Adeeb. But Nayyar was also known and respected for his works on Urdu literature. A fine researcher, critic and short story writer, Nayyar Masood did not strictly follow any particular school of critical theory and preferred his own set of rules for evaluating literary texts. As he was a scholar not only well-read but also well-versed with Persian and our classical literary traditions and treasures, he knew how to approach a text and his interpretations sometimes caused some uproar, too. But he was immersed in Urdu and Persian literature and knew what he was talking about.
Nayyar Masood began writing with deeper interest on Ghalib and Ghalib’s interpretation when Shamsur Rahman Farooqi launched Shabkhoon, an Urdu literary magazine, and began a series of articles aimed at rediscovering Ghalib, says Farrukhi in his intro. Nayyar re-evaluated Ghalib’s poetry and drew some quite unique conclusions with an eye on Persian and Urdu critical theories, albeit not necessarily abiding by or limiting himself to them. In this book, Nayyar does not stress too much on poetry’s or a couplet’s social or intellectual backdrop, as has become the mainstay of Urdu criticism in recent past. He intentionally, but in a subtle and subdued manner, deviates from the traditional ways of expounding and explaining Ghalib’s poetry with more emphasis on the lexical and metaphorical body of the couplet and its imagery, says Farrukhi.
Nayyar Masood’s book had first appeared in 1973 and bore the stamp of the author’s originality and peculiar style. He then, on Asif Farrukhi’s insistence, amended the text, added something, rewrote some portions and axed some parts of the text. He also altered the sequence of the articles and added three new articles. So the new edition, revised and recomposed, published by Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu Pakistan, is quite different from the first one.
The most striking feature of the book is the first section, wherein explanations of Ghalib’s different couplets are gathered. Nayyar has posited some new aspects of some 14 of Ghalib’s couplets. These explanations are totally different from what our many critics and Ghalib scholars have so far written. These 14 couplets are among Ghalib’s most loved and oft-quoted couplets and some of the explanations by Nayyar are so unique that one would rarely find them in ‘sharhs’, or the books that explain and expound Ghalib’s poetry. And there are at least 60 of such books, interpreting Ghalib’s poetry in their own way.
This new approach had indeed stirred a controversy among the readers of Shabkhoon and scholars. Several issues of the magazine carried articles and letters from the lovers of Ghalib, both for and against Nayyar’s innovative commentaries. Nayyar has mostly emphasised the wordings and metaphors in Ghalib’s couplets also taking into account the imagery they create, rather than philosophic or social aspects of Ghalib’s poetry.
The second part of the book too discusses some plausible interpretation of Ghalib’s couplets, but with a wider scope, analysing Ghalib’s poetry, viz-a-viz some other great poets of Urdu and Persian. The third and last portion of the book is titled “appendices” and it includes a discussion on the interpretation of Ghalib’s poetry by Shamsur Rahman Farooqi, Nayyar and some other readers. The discussion was earlier published in Shabkhoon. Also, it has two articles by Masood critically evaluating the notions of Rajab Ali Big Suroor and Mirza Yas Yagana Chengezi towards Ghalib.
The book is a must-read both for the students and scholars of Urdu.
Nayyar Masood died in Lucknow on July 24, 2017.
Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2018
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