PROF Dr Qazi Afzaal Hussain is a veteran scholar from India. He is known for his critical works and when it comes to new critical theories, Qazi sahib’s analysis is something to reckon with. His deep study has given him an insight that is quite refreshing and only a few among his peers can match it.

So when I received the special annual issue of Mukalma, an Urdu literary magazine published from Karachi, the first article I began reading was ‘Bazari Bayaniya’, or ‘vulgar narrative’, an article by Prof Qazi Afzaal Hussain, analysing new trends in novel and new narrative that novelists have been presenting in their works, especially in recent times.

Though the word narrative can be defined in different ways, from fiction’s point of view narrative is the method a writer uses to tell a story. The word narrative may also denote the writer’s philosophy reflected in fiction. Narrative is the process of presenting a situation in such a way that it conforms to a set of values and ideas. Hence, narratology is a branch of literary criticism and deals with the themes, structures and symbols of narrative.

Qazi Afzaal begins his article with a question about the process of creation: How does a person use a language in such a way that it deeply affects his fellow beings? Aristotle was the first to have tried to solve the mystery, writes Qazi Afzaal. A popular term of criticism is catharsis and it was Aristotle who proffered the theory of catharsis. By catharsis he meant the purgation of emotions — especially pity and horror — through art and literature. Tragedies cause catharsis and have humanizing effects on readers or spectators, said Aristotle in his Poetics. Having described the Aristotle’s theory, Qazi sahib turns to some new narratives.

Interestingly, some of the modern-day critics spoof at Aristotle’s theory of catharsis. Leslie Fiedler (1917-2003) was one of them. The Jewish American critic, who wrote fiction as well, is sometimes dubbed as the critic who “turned American criticism on its head”. He is credited with being the first person to have used the term postmodernism to literature. Fiedler termed Aristotle’s theory of catharsis as “a pious fraud”. Fiedler says, as Qazi Afzaal has quoted him, “Greek tragedy as a matter of fact aimed at evoking precisely the responses stirred by sentimental and horror porn in all ages”. He thinks these were the responses which Aristotle euphemistically called ‘pity’ and ‘horror’. Fiedler says that we should insist that the plays of Sophocles and Euripides are quite like the forms of pornography. An iconoclast, as Fiedler was, says that “traditional novel is dead” and, by extension, it means modernism is also dead.

Elaborating Fiedler’s point of view, Qazi sahib says that now writing a novel is not a manifestation of a writer’s creativity or a purpose unto itself, but a way of benefitting from the exploiting gimmicks of marketplace. And the easiest formula to be popular and get a foothold in the market is portraying sexual acts, writes Qazi sahib. The “tall, dark and handsome” narrative of “formula fiction” — for instance Mills and Boons, the escapist fiction with happy ending for women, which remained favourite of teenage girls for quite long — later on gave rise to adventurous novel, usually set in ranch life and portraying the bravery of men and their contacts with women quite abundantly (though they never take any of the women as wife). All these novels, actually romance fiction, are replete with description of sexual act since it sells quite well, writes Qazi sahib.

So the stimuli, which the Aristotle innocently thought was the emotions of pity and horror, purged through catharsis, have simply been replaced with explicit sex. As a result, the writers of popular fiction in the western world have become millionaires. Sometimes even the publisher tells the writers of these novels as to what to write. Novel is now, in a way, a mode of “democratization”, Qazi sahib says in tongue-in-cheek style, so the popularity of such fiction has turned the aesthetics into “democratic aesthetics”.

Lamenting in the end, he says that most of the literary theories postulated during the 2,500 years of literary history were based on social, economic and intellectual stimulations and humanity has always been among the common values. But now one feels that in the new market economy the exploitation of humanity’s emotions has become the best business.

Edited by Mubeen Mirza, a well-known fiction writer and critic, Mukalma is indeed one of the few literary magazines that always have some food for thought. His editorials too are usually reflective of the socio-literary and intellectual environment of the day. The current issue offers, as usual, creative and critical writings by some of the most prominent writers and poets of Urdu today, both from India and Pakistan.

Mubeen Mirza has been doing a great job all along and his endeavours become even more valuable when we realise that everything, including aesthetics, literature and philosophy, has now become subservient to market economy.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2019

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