New Mountain-diggers, New Axes

New Mountain-diggers, New Axes

“New Mountain-Diggers, New Axes” was the opening essay in the first issue of Shabḳhūn (or Night-Attack), dated June 1966. Shabḳhūn was a modernist literary and intellectual venture that saw itself as a caretaker of Urdu culture. The writer and literary critic Shamsurrahman Faruqi founded the journal with the support of his wife Jameela. The magazine would publish nearly three hundred issues over the next four decades before shutting down in 2005. 

Despite its strong modernist bent, Shabḳhūn was not entirely averse to creating space for writers who were Progressive or Marxist in orientation. Given the journal’s legacy as the standard-bearer of Urdu modernism, it is striking that this opening essay is so critical of certain kinds of modernists, and that it searches for a middle ground with Urdu’s Progressive writers. Its author, Ehtisham Hussain, is still considered one of the premier Marxist literary critics to have graced Urdu literature over the past century. 

– Zain Mian

New Mountain-Diggers, New Axes

By Ehtisham Hussain

(translated by Zain Mian)

A poet is nothing if not a mountain-digger, but we should not forget that it is impossible to imagine the mountain-digger without Shirin, the axe, the rivulet of milk, Behistun, and Khusrow Parvez. If I may continue the metaphor, Shirin is the aim of creation, the rivulet is creative work, and the axe is its means. Behistun is the ground on which creative work occurs and Khusrow, by relation, is the one who incites the work. To be more precise, if the poet or artist is the mountain-digger, Shirin can rightly be considered his passion (jazba-ye ‘ishq), his real aim, or what drives him to the verse. The result of his art, or his verse, is the rivulet. The axe is the means of expression, the medium, or language. And Behistun, that lump of stone, is the raw material out of which Shirin will be sculpted and the rivulet of milk will flow. 

In the whole process Khusrow becomes an oppositional spirit, a negative inciter who has no significance once the rivulet emerges. In the same way, poetry is mountain-digging within its own boundaries. Both axe and rivulet are necessary even as their exact form changes over time. Even Behistun and Shirin may differ in nature but both are crucial for creative practice. After all, why would any mountain-digger make the rivulet flow without some conception of Shirin? And how will he, without knowing how to wield his axe, gain mastery over Behistun? Through its metaphor, the tale of the mountain-digger and the rivulet reveals a truth that colours every artist’s life and practice. 

The question of artistic excellence inevitably evokes Milton’s “life-blood” (khūn-e ḥayāt) and Iqbal’s “blood of the heart” (khūn-e jigar). Creative practice can take place only after a melancholic (rūḥ farsā) and near-fatal (jān-gudāz) anguish, one that does not guarantee organization and coherence in the work. Questions about the axe’s sharpness, and the struggle over Shirin, complicate our evaluation of art. Since allegory and metaphor may create misunderstanding, I must clarify right at the beginning that Shirin and the mountain-digger change along with the transformations of life and society, as do indeed our axes and rivulets. Mount Behistun’s hardness and softness, its very dimensions, also change. But the spirit of all these elements, their fundamental nature remains constant as long as the artist commits to mountain-digging, as long as Shirin demands her rivulet and the mountain-digger knows the art of his axe. Each era produces a “mountain-digger” and a “Shirin” in line with its vision of beauty. Each supplies its own axes and demands its particular rivulets. The notion of “new mountain-diggers, new axes” arises from this logic of history, and I will try to say a few words with them in mind.

Regardless of the weak, lifeless, or hyperbolic language with which we say it, this is an age of grand experiences and provocative assumptions. Our passions struggle to match the racing transformations in our mental horizons and the material circumstances of our lives. Our attempt at comprehension does not create harmony but opens the door to suspicion and incredulity; we are rather besieged by feelings of fear and anxiety, backwardness and worthlessness, which result in a confusion of identity. On an intellectual level man appears to have conquered nature and God, yet in his heart he feels a terrifying loneliness from which there is no escape. Most sensitive souls today confront precisely this struggle. The heart of a person who wants to believe in external progress is assailed by many spectres: war, poverty, the commerce of death, the headiness of power, emotional indifference, merciless competition, supremacy, and military might. And if he peers into the depths of his heart in search of peace, there too he hears the voice of an individualism that entirely negates the external world, but also strange, unknown beckonings with no connection to consciousness. This utter lack of harmony between external and internal worlds is proving fatal for humanity today. The only way to bridge this gulf is to accept the truth of both sides, but in such a way that the difference between health and sickness, consciousness and unconsciousness, life and death, philanthropy and misanthropy, and independence and servitude remains clear. It has taken thousands of years of culture and (both conscious and unconscious) struggle for humankind to distinguish between beauty and ugliness, good and evil, truth and falsehood, and to create an ethical system around these categories. The open rejection of this system—whether on the basis of material developments or mere emotions—is condemnable. It is only in this way that a personal desire for emotional serenity can hold steady its connection to a shared human growth.  

The purpose of sharing these general thoughts is to reflect on new poetry and the new poet’s “mountain-digging” practice. We need to see whether the poet conceives of a Shirin, whether he knows how to wield the axe, and from what kind of Behistun his rivulet flows. Behind these questions lies the issue of tradition and individual expression, which previous generations did not consciously consider. They followed tradition because they thought it the immutable, holy heritage of their elders, or because they couldn’t see another path. Those who glimpsed this path diverged from the “religion of the elders” on the strength of their ability, but they could not get very far because the intellectual ground was flat. In centuries of Indian history there were no intellectual revolutions worth mentioning. Individual emotions were forced into the limits of proper expression and language use. 

If we look closely, it will be apparent that other genres erupted from the centrally important ghazal and masnavi, and yet the bounds of neither form nor of thought were much expanded. The likes of Mir, Ghalib, Atish, and Anis nuanced poetry through their striving, but by the mid-nineteenth century there was no major transformation in the links between subject, material, language, and style. Then, once the transformation began, it progressed quickly. The motivations behind it were neither individual nor spiritual, nor internal or merely emotional, but rather external and communal, or purposive and conceptual. Here I am not concerned with the aesthetics of this transformation, nor with its virtues and faults. I only wish to clarify that this transformation began to break our art and thought’s connection to the past, a move later made artificial by our impassioned desire for change. Because the impact of the West found little correspondence in India’s real material conditions—here we had no major Renaissance, no industrial revolution, nor any intellectual transformation whose roots sunk deeply into communal life—these transformations may have had a very visible external expression in literature and art, but their mental and emotional expression remained insignificant. 

Sir Syed, Hali, and Nazir Ahmad were all unique characters, each with his own manifest individuality. Yet the changes to their dispositions, which emerged from fast-changing conditions, were evident mostly on the surface. Compromise played a greater role in making them than did revolution, and there was reconciliation as opposed to complete transformation. That change took this form was natural because external pressures far exceeded any visceral passions. It was as if the heart wasn’t in harmony with a revolution that necessity and the mind compelled it to accept. Still, it is certainly true of those poets and writers that they stressed collective consciousness more than their individualism, because they saw utility in the former. Their individuality was suppressed to serve a purpose, and so the creative aspects of literature and poetry did not become manifest with the same force with which they might otherwise have done. These writers had certainly sharpened their axes for mountain-digging in this respect; they brought language and narration closer to the people so that they became an important part of social life. But these writers gave so much importance to the demands of the time that the tribulations of their hearts were not reflected properly in their works. This might have been because they conceptualized Shirin as a mere temporary infatuation (‘ārẓī lagan). The most important realization this constructive period bequeathed the following generations was the need to understand the link between literature and life, which ths older generation itself had only ever glimpsed from the outside.

The early twentieth century produced a romantic inclination toward interiority that left no deep effects because it was superficial. Only Iqbal touched the depths of real interiority by attending to the many aspects of self-revelation. Those with deep insight know that the self in his works is not merely his, nor does it belong to any particular individual. It is rather the nature of an exemplary human who, in lieu of presenting his own experiences, passions, and tribulations of the heart, represents instead the dreams, wishes, and desires of an exemplary self. To be true, a large part of Iqbal’s interiority reflects the external pressure of his context. This interiority was born from an intense feeling to which his philosophical manner gave specific form. Its expression is subject to his purpose and has a fixed motive. This is why it is not difficult to understand the links between language, narration, expression and purpose in his creative practice. If any difficulty exists, it does so only for those who do not understand the motive and direction of these emotions and thoughts. 

The truth is that in excellent art the separation of exteriority and interiority is meaningless. The relations and relative proportions of thought, passion, expression, and creative means keep changing as they touch the demands of communal (qaumī) life, the new insights of knowledge and consciousness, and the desire to participate in the artistic experiences of others. Sometimes thought dominates emotions in our perception of reality, whereas at other times it is emotion that subjugates thought. One element permeates the other within the complex order of the literary world, sometimes producing alluring forms and at other times an awkwardness that results from a lack of artistic consciousness. This is why it is not correct to see mental states, experiences, and emotions as completely independent realities in their own right. 

The 1930s saw the thunderous arrival in India of social and psychological movements which tried to harmonize themselves with the national restlessness that had developed. They affected both the means of perceiving reality as well as different artistic phenomena. This meant that, at least at the level of thought, the Indian poet and artist was dominated by a desire to be in step with the West. This period produced creative works of all kinds, from colourless and superficial imitations to profound efforts of consciousness. In a short while, the desire to have poetic experiences that had matured in Europe after centuries of thought evoked the sense of mere mimicry, of an “experience” being had without being understood. At this point, the attempt to redirect poetic and artistic traditions took two forms. On the one hand you had those who searched for truths only inside themselves and forgot that society, of which they were a part, demanded expression for its truths, too. On the other hand, you had those who ignored the world within their hearts and only saw social restlessness. They tried to lose their beating heart and their own personal and individual states of being within this restlessness. These mountain-diggers were not short on sincerity but many had only an incomplete perception of reality. Only some Progressive poets understood the internal connection between interiority and exteriority, and maintained a balanced between them in their expression of truth. Doing so fulfilled the demands of both life and art; it revealed both the self and the universe. This point does not hold true for every Progressive poet, nor for every work they wrote. However, it is true that this created a balanced relationship between art and life. 

Today the situation is completely different. Many modern poets are walking paths only they can see, paths they pursue in the name of some ambiguous, unshapen artistic assumptions. They do not wish for anyone else to accompany them, or to include anyone else in their experiences. They hold no connection to communal (qaumī) life, to their own social and cultural values, to the common problems of human life, or to any particular conception of life itself. They are entirely involved in a conscious search for unconscious symbols as they seek their own self and individuality. They have made the promotion of non-purposiveness (‘adam maqsadiyyat) their purpose. In thinking of new symbols they have ignored whether their reader will even understand their meaning. They think that every poet must be free of any social, philosophical, and intellectual limitation, for it is only then that he will be a free artist. Their fundamental passion is negational (manfī), because they are dissatisfied with every thought of their age. As a result, no connection is established between the poet and their reader. Their ambiguity becomes a veil that conceals the sought-after face. 

The desire for pure expression can make a poem hell to read, but it does not necessarily give it communicative power. Expression pertains only to the poet, while what the reader wants is communication. Pure expression, in psychological terms, is either the creation of neurosis or of an egotistical desire that gives no consideration to the reader. It is also possible that the poet’s expression may be intelligible to only a small circle of readers, but such exclusivity spells death for both artist and art. Older poets also wrote about death, grief, solitude, weariness, and the sorrow of life. But they did not limit themselves to just this nor lent an aesthetic headiness to the tragedy of existence. Right now there is a new kind of romanticism that finds joy in being without direction or cause, and in creating mental complications through highly individuated expression. Such poetry and art produce no magic, inspire no passions, and provoke no impressions. They only create mental stress and do not produce any feeling of beauty. The reach of such art is limited and its future is dark. 

This point holds only for the new poets that refuse to understand the internal connections between exteriority and interiority, the other and the self, the individual and the universe, and who refuse to employ a clear style. They do not use a style whose language, even when creative, is not individual but social, whose symbolism is not subject to mere whim but emerges from shared mental and emotional experiences. The successful poet and artist produces a personal world that bears similarities with the personal worlds of others, or which is in harmony with some aspect of the wider world. His voice makes the auditor feel, “I have this in my heart too”. This is the touchstone of art in every age; it is this communicative power that brings Homer, Dante, Kalidasa, Shakespeare, Mir, Kabir, Ghalib, and Goethe closer to our hearts and minds. Poetry is mountain-cutting only insofar that it keeps its axe sharp, that it believes in the truth of its aim and the sincerity of its intent every time it sculpts a form—Shirin—or when it extracts a rivulet. Working the axe without any real understanding will neither create Shirin nor extract the rivulet. Art demands a certain consciousness of life, a certain linguistic temperament, a command over expression and the capacity to touch other people’s hearts. All this is possible only through devotion and hard work. The poet’s claim that he can write verse is not enough. He must always be prepared to account for what he says and how he says it, and his case will be heard not in the court of his heart but in that of common readers. 

These words are neither a threat nor a sermon. My point is simply that a poet should not neglect the reader. He should not have hollow experiences but should bear in mind both expression and communication as he reveals the secret of life. He should remember, finally, that life is more expansive than art and that art is for life.