July 16, 2012
Poetry in Translation II: Iqbal
by Rafiq Kathwari
HIMALAYA
After Iqbal
O Himalaya, tell of that time when man first lay
in your lap. O let me imagine that dawn
unstained by red. Run backward, circle of
day and night, ancient eras a moment in your lifetime.
You are a poem whose first verse is the sky.
Your bright turbans dazzle the Pleiades.
Lightning across your peaks sends black tents wandering
above the valley. The wind polishes the trembling mirrors
at your hem. Streams cascade down your forehead,
your cheeks quiver. As morning air cradles intoxicated
roses and the leaves are silenced by the rose-gatherer's wrists,
so speech is silenced in the roar of falling water.
Mohammed Iqbal (1877 -1938) one of the two great South Asian poets of the 20th Century (the other was Faiz Ahmed Faiz) advocated ceaseless endeavor, writing with equal ease in Persian, Urdu, and English. He was knighted by the British but is rarely called Sir Mohammed.
Translated from the Urdu by Rafiq Kathwari, guest poet at 3Quarks Daily.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 12:20 AM | Permalink
Comments
Nicely done, Rafiq! Thanks.
And I agree that there were two great Urdu 20th century poets, but they were Josh Malihabadi and Faiz Ahmad Faiz. :-)
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jul 16, 2012 8:22:00 AM
More! More! We want more!
Posted by: Raza | Jul 16, 2012 8:35:39 AM
Mohammed Iqbal (1877 -1938) one of the two great South Asian poets of the 20th Century (the other was Faiz Ahmed Faiz) : Rafiq Kathwari
I agree that there were two great Urdu, 20th century poets, but they were Josh Malihabadi and Faiz Ahmad Faiz. :-) : Abbas Raza
Lovely poem but a minor quibble with the translator's note. There is much more to South Asian poetry and literature than just Urdu which makes Abbas' observation more accurate. After all the only Nobel Prize in literature (for poetry, specifically) was awarded to a South Asian poet who wrote in Bengali.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 16, 2012 10:59:15 AM
Thanks for the poem!
Have to agree with Ruchira.
Only _two_ great 20th century South Asian poets seems to relate to a poverty of imagination.
I'm not endorsing these lists, but wikipedia's are slightly longer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_poets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Urdu_language_poets
Posted by: Hektor bim | Jul 16, 2012 1:33:56 PM
Ruchira, I am almost certain that Rafiq meant to write "South Asian Urdu poets" just as I explicitly did. It would be ungenerous to think that he believes that Iqbal and Faiz are the two greatest poets of ANY subcontinental language, especially as he would have no way of knowing this. Only someone who knew all the languages of that area could make such a claim, and even then it would be as arbitrary as saying Shakespeare was the greatest writer ever in English.
But good of you to point out the oversight.
We were both being a bit tongue-in-cheek in those remarks, I think.
Hector, please try to be less patronizing than to post lists of Urdu poets from Wikipedia for Rafiq and me. And don't take everything (especially of the "here are the 5 best x of y" variety) so seriously, will you? :-)
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jul 16, 2012 1:46:56 PM
thanks for this. could someone post the original please?
Posted by: nusrat | Jul 17, 2012 11:16:48 AM
Abbas,
Not meant to be patronizing at all. I'm certain you've forgotten more about Urdu poetry than I'll ever know.
I was just interested in who would be considered the greatest, and was gratified to see a fairly long, easily accessible list on wikipedia, which I thought others might be interested in.
Just to pick out one I had never heard of before who died tragically young: Parveen Shakir.
Posted by: Hektor Bim | Jul 17, 2012 3:05:43 PM
Abbas Raza is right: I meant to write, Two Great South Asian Poets Of The 20th Century Who Wrote in Urdu. Thanks all for showering my poverty-stricken imagination with an embarrassment of riches. You live; you learn.
Posted by: rafiq kathwari | Jul 18, 2012 7:55:02 AM
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