Word power to the poet

Sumit Paul

Thomas Stearns Eliot, the English poet and critic, is credited to have resuscitated metaphysical poet John Donne's poetry after 300 years of oblivion. The same can be said about Rakhshanda Jalil who has revived, resuscitated and re-established Shahryar as a poet and person in her splendid book Shahryar. 

The book is not exactly a eulogy. It’s a dispassionate attempt to understand the craftsmanship of a poet, who penned exquisite poetry, but never got the kind of recognition in his lifetime as his contemporaries. Shahryar is predominantly an academic poet, masses couldn’t relate to though his ghazals in  the film Umrao Jaan are still a favourite with many.

Jalil must have been aware of the fact, but didn't mention that Muhammad Zahoor Khayyam Hashmi's music for Shahryar's exquisite creations in Umrao Jaan couldn't actually highlight the multifaceted calibre of Shahryar, especially of his resounding poetry. The compositions are a tad too monotonous and Shahryar didn't even really like the musical rendition of Khayyam's admirable compositions! 

In spite of being a professor of Urdu at Aligarh Muslim University, Shahryar was never unnecessarily in love with high-sounding Urdu and lush wordiness. His poetry wasn't ornate. He believed in expressing his poetic thoughts in a language that was devoid of rhetoric. Shahryar chimed in with the Bard of Avon that ‘Brevity is the soul of wit.’ In his case, the soul of poetry. 

I once met the man at his residence in Aligarh along with my professor and mentor Dr Zaifa Ashraf.  My professor asked him, ‘Aap maslehatan goshanasheen hain ya ye aapki fitrat hai?’ (Are you deliberately self-effacing or is it your nature?). The taciturn Shahryar smiled and said nothing. I found him enigmatic. 

One has to read between the lines to conclude that he was never vociferous in his life and poetry. Jalil has beautifully brought out the experimental streak in Shahryar's poetic consciousness. He broke the set patterns of ghazals and nazms. He never associated himself with any specific movement and wrote freely. In other words, you can't pigeonhole him. 

He once said about himself: ‘Main kisi saanche mein na dhal saka/Isliye musalsal khud ko badal saka' (I never moulded myself in a particular way/ I, therefore, could continuously change myself). This lent novelty and freshness to his poetry. He didn't write recondite poetry for the heck of it. He never alienated himself from life’s myriad experiences and voiced them eloquently through his layered poetry. 

In 215 pages, Rakhshanda has tried to present Shahryar's poetic sojourn quite comprehensively. This book must be translated into Hindi and Urdu so that more readers can know the man and his poetry. Finally, it deserves to be mentioned that Jalil’s English translations of Shahryar's Urdu poetry are succinct and admirable and they give ample evidence of her command over both languages.