Page 22 - Pakistan Link - July 2, 2021

P22 – PAKISTAN LINK – JULY 2, 2021 COMMENTARY
n By Dr Ahmed S. Khan Book & Author Whose coffin is moldering still be-
Chicago, IL neath the sod.
Mortgaged to the alien, soul and
llama Dr Muhammed Iqbal V. G. Kiernan: Poems from Iqbal body too,
aka Shair-e-Mashriq (the poet Alas—the dweller vanished with
Aof the East) had emerged as the dwelling—,
the most important poet of Muslim Enslaved to Britain you have
British India in the twentieth centu- kissed the rod:
ry. Today in the twenty-first century, It is not Britain I reproach, but
his fame continues to grow glob- you.
ally as his poetry gets translated into
English and other languages. Poems Civilization’s Clutches
from Iqbal: Renderings in English IQBAL has no doubt of Europe’s
Verse with Comparative Urdu Text by humaneness: she
V.G. Kiernan presents a rendering of Sheds tears for all peoples groaning
over a hundred poems selected from beneath oppression;
the four collections of Iqbal’s poetry: Her reverend churchmen furnish
Bang-e-Dara (The Call of the Bell/ her liberally
Road), Bal-e-Jibril (Gabriel’s Wing), With wiring and bulbs for moral
Zarb-e-Kalim (The Rod of Moses), illumination.
and Armaghan-e-Hejaz (The Gift of And yet, my heart burns for Syria
Hejaz). and Palestine,
Victor Gordon Kiernan (1913- And finds for this knotty puzzle no
2009) was an emeritus professor of explanation—
history at Edinburgh University. He is Enlarged from the ‘savage grasp’ of
recognized as a historian of the left, an the Turks, they pine,
ideological warrior against the British Poor things, in the clutches now of
empire, and a witness to India’s antico- ‘civilization’.
lonial movements. He was born near
Manchester. He attended Manchester To My Poem
Grammar School, and then Trinity I must complain of your self-
College, Cambridge. He then went on flaunting airs—
to undertake research in modern dip- My secrets, when you go unveiled,
lomatic history and won a College Fel- lie bare.
lowship. He stayed in India for eight and fond of discussion. But there were same earth and water, The flower whose perfume is true Instead of floating like a truant
years before the Partition; he worked many others who had known him, and You made Tartaria, Nubia, and love—that flower no garden knows. spark,
as a radio broadcaster and also taught could talk about him. Hence arose Iran. But I have brought this chalice Seek out the fastness of some glow-
at the Aitchison College, Lahore. Dur- these translations, composed in their I forged from dust the iron’s unsul- here to make my sacrifice; ing heart!
ing his stay in Lahore, he got to know first version at the Aitchison College of lied ore, The thing it holds you will not find
Faiz Ahmed Faiz and other Urdu writ- Lahore, where I was teaching during You fashioned sword and arrow- in all your Paradise. Counsel
ers. the War years…I was also kept busy head and gun; See here, oh Lord, the honor of AN eagle full of years to a young
Kiernan was a prolific writer; his with talks and programs about the You shaped the axe to hew the gar- your people brimming up! hawk said—
major books include The Dragon and War and its background, for the newly den tree, The martyred blood of Tripoli, oh Easy your royal wings through
St George: Anglo-Chinese relations established All India Radio, which was You wove the cage to hold the Lord, is in this cup.’ high heaven spread:
1880-1885 (1939); British Diplomacy left a good deal to its own devices. This singing-bird. To burn in the fire of our own
in China, 1880 to 1885 (1939); Trans- work grew more pressing as the Japa- MAN Modern Man veins is youth!
lation (1955), The Lords of Human nese army drew closer to India, and You made the night and I the lamp, LOVE fled, Mind stung him like a Strive, and in strife make honey of
Kind (1969); Marxism and Imperial- public opinion grew more equivocal. I And You the clay and I the cup; snake; he could not life’s gall;
ism: Studies (1974); America, The New was getting to know a variety of peo- You—desert, mountain-peak, and Force it to vision’s will. Maybe the blood of the pigeon you
Imperialism: From White Settlement To ple, a good many of them active social- vale: He tracked the orbits of the stars, destroy,
World Hegemony (1978); State & Soci- ists, pro-British since 1941 because of I—flower-bed, park, and orchard; yet could not My son, is not what makes your
ety in Europe, 1550-1650 (1980); Eu- the growing pro-Russia trend…” I Travel his own thoughts’ world; swooping joy!
ropean Empires from Conquest to Col- In the preface of the 1955 edi- Who grind a mirror out of stone, Entangled in the labyrinth of his
lapse, 1815-1960 (1982); The Duel in tion, referring to Iqbal’s work, Kiernan Who brew from poison honey- science Lost count of good and ill; Eastern Nations
European History: Honor and the Reign observes: “Apart from a handful of drink. Took captive the sun’s rays, and yet REALITY grows blurred to eyes
of Aristocracy (1988), Shakespeare, Persian poems the verse chosen here no sunrise whose vision
Poet and Citizen (1993); and Eight for translation is taken from Iqbal’s Before the Prophet’s [PBUH] On life’s thick night unfurled. Servility and parrot-ways abridge.
Tragedies of Shakespeare: A Marxist work in Urdu, which consists of short Throne Can Persia or Arabia suck new life
Study (1996). Kiernan loved classical and medium-length pieces only. The (Huzur e Ris’salat Maab (PBUH) Life and Strife From Europe’s culture, itself at the
poetry, especially of Shakespeare and selection extends over the whole of maiN) (In reply to a poem of Heine) grave’s edge?
Horace; he also appreciated Urdu po- his working life, and may serve to il- SICK of this world and all this `LONG years were mine’, said the
etry and translated works of Ghalib, lustrate its main phases; it includes a world’s tumult sea-shattered cliff, A Student
Faiz and Iqbal. good proportion of those poems that I who had lived fettered to dawn `Yet never taught me what is this GOD bring you acquainted with
In the preface of the 2004 edition, have been most admired by the judi- and sunset, called I.’ some storm!
Kiernan observes: “The three-quarters cious. …In Urdu, lqbal is allowed to Yet never fathomed the planet’s A headlong-hurrying wave cried: No billows in your sea break in
of a century since Muhammad Iqbal’s have been far the greatest poet of this hoary laws, ‘Only if foam,
death he has lost none of his stature as century, and by most critics to be the Taking provision for my way set I move I live, for if I halt I die.’ And never from books can you be
one of the last great poets of his part of only equal of Ghalib (1797-1869). He out weaned
the world. We must hope that he will was the first prominent Urdu poet who From earth, and angels led me East and West Which you declaim, not compre-
not prove to have been the last great was a native of the Punjab, and his where the Prophet [PBUH] SLAVERY, slavishness, the root of hend.
poet bred by his native soil, a fad- emergence marked a shift of Muslim Holds audience, and before the our
ing away too frequent in some other Indian culture away from the Deccan mercy-seat. Disease; of theirs, that Demos Solitude
latitudes or longitudes. This selection and the United Provinces towards the holds all power; SOLITUDE, night—what pang is
from his poems, translated into Eng- north. In Persian, in which he pub- `Nightingale of the gardens of He- Heart-malady or brain-malady here?
lish verse, was as its second edition, lished six volumes of mainly long po- jaz! each bud has oppressed Are not the stars your comrades?
revised and brought out in London ems between 1915 and 1936, his rank Is melting’, said those Lips, ‘in Man’s whole world, sparing nei- Clear
in 1955… His Urdu poems are even is less easy to determine…. Iqbal, like your song’s passion-flood; ther East nor West. Majesty of those silent skies,
today still vibrant with the spirit of a Shakespeare or Goethe in other modes Your heart forever steeped in the Drowsed earth, deep silence of the
new age, of hurrying movement, of dy- and degrees, belonged to a stage in wine of ecstasy, Psychology of Power world,
namic effort. His message was that the which society had begun but not yet Your reeling feet nobler than any (The ‘Reforms’) That moon, that wilderness and
time had come for action; that India, finished crystallizing into exclusive suppliant knee. THIS pity is the pitiless fowler’s hill—
especially Muslim India—the com- sections, and emotion had not yet fully But since, taught by these Sera- mask; White rose-beds all creation fill.
manding force during the many years crystallized into thought. Iqbal hated phim to mount so high, All the fresh notes I sang—of no Sweet are the teardrops that have
of the Mughal era—had sunk for too injustice; his protest, first made in the You have soared up from nether avail! pearled
long into sleepy routine. It was a mes- name of India, continued in the name realms towards the sky Now he drops withered flowers in Like gleaming gems, like stars,
sage welcomed by the. aspiring youth of Islam; in this form it was reinforced, And like a scent come here from our cage, as though your eyes;
of all the communities. But in what- rather than superseded, by a protest in the orchards of the earth— To reconcile his jailbirds to their But what thing do you crave? All
ever manner the call for action might the name of the common man, the dis- What do you bring for us, what is jail. Nature,
be hailed, the direction it was to take inherited of all lands...” your offering worth?’ Oh my heart, is your fellow-crea-
was much harder to foresee…” The following renderings of se- Reproach ture.
Commenting on his arrival in lected poems of Iqbal represent Kier- `Master! there is no quiet in that YOUR fate, poor helpless India,
Lahore, Kiernan recalls: “Iqbal died nan’s craft: land of time and space, there’s no telling— Slavery
shortly before my arrival in his his- Where the existence that we crave Always the brightest jewel in MAN let himself, dull thing, be
toric city of Lahore. I had therefore no God and Man hides and still hides its face; someone’s crown; wooed
chance to meet him; a great pity for GOD Though all creation’s flowerbeds Your peasant a carcass spewed up By his own kind to servitude,
me—he was said to be very accessible I MADE this world, from one teem with tulip and red rose, from the grave, KIERNAN, P24
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