Introduction to Jaun Elia
By MUHAMMAD IMRAN
Jaun Elia believed that poets were mere jesters; entertainers at the best. He never liked them much. He never aspired to be one. In his preface to ‘Shaayad’, his first poetic anthology, and the only one which came out during his lifetime, he makes clear that he would not compromise on anything less than prophethood. Hence, he loved pre-Islamic pagan-Arabia, and took inspiration from Kahins. He lived a life of a pagan, and he died as one. Therefore, calling Jaun Elia a poet, or comparing him with other Urdu poets, is actually belittling Jaun.
Jaun’s knowledge and understanding of eastern and western philosophies, history of religions, logic, global literature and politics was so vast and deep that poets like Majaz and Jigar could only amuse him for a short period of time. It is therefore no surprise that his beloved poets hailed from the Arabian peninsula, Babylon, and Persia, with an exception of Meer Taqi Meer, whom he considered the most underrated Urdu poet of all times. He criticised Ghalib endlessly. He used to say ‘Mian Ghalib to pachchees sheroN ka shaa’ir tha’ (Ghalib had only 25 good couplets). By that he meant that Ghalib had no usloob (no peculiar style of his own) unlike Urfi, Khusro, or Meer. Before Jaun, only Yaganah had the courage to make such a comment about Ghalib.
Jaun Elia was an aalim in the true sense of the word. He had a command over many languages including Arabic and Persian, and like his father he could also read Sanskrit and Hebrew. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of philosophy, religion, Islamic mysticism, and even Kabbalah, the mystical aspect of Judaism. Therefore, you will find in his poetry and prose traces from the Old Testament, the Bible, and the Quran; philosophical discourses of the Mutazilite theologians, pre-Islamic Arabian poets, as well as references from Kant, Nietzsche and Sartre. There is hardly any modern Urdu poet who can claim to have fused such diversified knowledge systems with blood expectorating Romanticism and passion. No wonder Jaun Elia inspired people like Baba-i-Urdu, Maulvi Abdul Haq, to stand up in his honour when he was only in his late 20s.
Jaun Elia’s first collection of poems ‘Shaayad’ was published when he was 58. He has written in the preface to ‘Shaayad’ that he procrastinated publishing his first book for nearly 30 years. According to Jaun Elia, he promised his father Allama Shafique Hasan Elia, a scholar of the highest order, that he would publish his works when he grew up. Jaun didn’t publish them. Jaun didn’t grow up. Somehow all manuscripts of Allama Elia’s writings got lost and Jaun suffered from a guilty-conscience so bad that he loathed the idea of publishing his own works, which he considered inferior in comparison to his father’s writings. While Jaun’s nazms and ghazals became hugely popular among the literary and intellectual circles of Pakistan soon after his migration from Amroha in 1957, there was no collection of his poems that could reach out to the masses. Jaun, therefore, remained mostly in oblivion till the late 1980s.
According to Jaun Elia, it was the late Saleem Jaffri who forced him to publish his first book. ‘Shaayad’ (1989) became immensely popular with intellectuals as well as the masses. But Jaun always despised the idea of publishing his work. ‘Yaani’, his second book, came posthumously in 2003, which Jaun Elia had delayed again for several years. It was Khalid Ahmed Ansari, who, after Jaun Elia’s death, published the main corpus of his works.
Khalid Ahmed Ansari to Jaun Elia is what Max Brod was to Kafka. The world of Urdu literature will remain forever indebted to Mr. Ansari for his services to Jaun Elia in particular and Urdu literature in general. ‘Gumaan’, ‘Lekin’, and ‘Goya’, were published by Mr. Ansari in the span of eight years, which was never an easy task. Jaun’s writings were scattered and hardly legible. Mr. Ansari had to go through each and every poem before making it public. It also involved a great deal of research work on Jaun. Jaun was a bohemian poet, and he never cared to compile his poems in a proper manner. These days Khalid Ansari is working on Jaun’s new collections, ‘KuooN’, and ‘Nai Aag Ka Ehadnaama’, Jaun’s epic historical poem comprised of alwaah. Jaun’s prose work is also being compiled by Mr. Ansari. ‘Farnood’, a collection of Jaun’s essays is about to hit the stores.
Jaun’s life cannot be summarised in few paragraphs. He was too enigmatic, too larger-than-life to be narrated in words. Perhaps, Jaun’s life and his poetry can be better understood through his portrait on Shaayad’s cover, immortalised by renowned artist and Jaun’s nephew Iqbal Mehdi. The portrait is reminiscent of John Milton’s magnum opus ‘Paradise Lost’. It captures the moment when Lucifer rises up against the authority of God. Jaun always looked down upon creation, despised authority–both worldly and divine. His poetry, therefore, is not a love song or an elegy; it is a chant of a rebel. By reading Jaun Elia you will embark upon the odyssey to sceptical knowledge, Agnosticism, and Nihilism. It will make you perpetually disturbed, for this was something Jaun wanted his readers to be—remain thirsty for knowledge. Therefore, Jaun will continue to inspire those who challenge, who doubt, and who dare to fight against orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
As all would die, so did Jon Elia. During the last 40 years Death stared in his face many a time but he kept on eluding it. A chronic TB patient in the mid-50s, he escaped from the clutches of Death due to sheer will power. May be his fervent faith in the immortality of his poetry overcame the frequent summons of Death. Finally he bowed out on 7th November, leaving behind thousands of his fans to mourn his loss.
I saw, over five decades of close association with him, numerous batches of young poets locking in to him for inspiration and guidance but it is an irony of fact that not many of them proved constancy to be their main virtue. One saw them vanishing in thin air thinking that they had reaped the harvest and could survive on their own. I do not want to name numerous poets and writers who benefited from Jon Elia’s Greek Academy like discourses on philosophy and
poetry.
Some of his pupils have acknowledged their indebtedness to him, some died before committing themselves to Jon’s contribution to their upbringing as poets and writers and some still cherish the day when Jon Elia, along with his two illustrious brothers Raees Amrohvi and Syed Muhammad Taqi, contributed a great deal to the cause of a serious intellectual culture in this country, the way Voltaire’s old man did in the Candide – not carrying about the harvest. The sowing of seeds was more important than the thought of reaping the resultant harvest.
The way Karachiites – in fact Pakistani writers – have received the news of Jon Elia’s death – is quite reassuring to all those who thought that poetry and literature had ceased to enjoy any priority in our scheme of things. I have seen some of those writers who never came out of their houses for years thronging the condolence meetings held to pay homage to Jon Elia. To tell you the truth some of them appeared to have come from their graves!
It appeared that a lifetime of active participation in literary and cultural life of the City had made Jon Elia an icon – a symbol of our literary legacy – and the City intellectuals rose like one monolithic body – to mourn Jon Elia’s death as a loss of some very precious possession which could have been taken for granted while Jon was alive. However it become when it became a certainty that Jon Elia was no more to keep us unaware of his worth as a gift of Providence.
His first collection of poetry, brought as part of the Duabi Jashn 1990 was not a representative selection of Jon Elia’s poetry. It was not the selection which his Mahram – a phrase formed with the initial letters of the group of friends comprising Mumtaz Saeed, Hasan Abid, Rashid Saeed and I – had compiled keeping in viewing the gradual development of Jon Elia’s poetry but a collection of some Mushaira stuff interspersed with the real 22-carat Jon Elia poetry – sparkling, penetrating and highly innovative. Any how his next collection Yaani, soon to be published, is going to be quite representative of Jon Elia’s poetry.
I have written a number of articles on Jon Elia’s poetry in English and Urdu – in fact a monograph of my writings on Jon Elia could be brought out and, perhaps, it will appear in due course of time but Jon Elia deserved a lot more. I believe that there are many writers among the mourners who could share their impressions about him. Jon Elia was not only a brilliant
poet. He invented scores of new metrical schemes in his poetry – more than many classical poets of Urdu. He also gave birth to hundreds of unusual phrases – similes and metaphors – which no other poet of his age has done so far.
Besides Jon Elia has use well-rhymed Nazms and free-verse poems with an unusual command over the form and content. There is no doubt that he has no peer in the area of innovative form of creativity. As a Mushaira poet he dominated the Mushairas and quite a few popular poets feel compelled to refrain from participating in Mushairas fearing that they would be eclipsed by Jon Elia. I have seen the audiences he bewitched as a magician overseas and the least that could be said bordered on the superlative: he was amply dazzling. He had the unusual gift of turning a Mushaira into a great event.
Jon Elia was a scholar of great merit. He translated numerous classics of Arabic and Persian e.g. Masih-i-Baghdad Hallaj, Jometria, Tawasin, Isaghoji, Rahaish-o-Kushaish, Farnod, Tajrid, Masail-i-Tajrid, Rasail Akhwan-us-Safa – perhaps the kind of work which no single person could ever think of attempting – and Akhbar-ul-Hallaj etc. He has also authored four works Ismailiat, Sham-o-Iraq Mein, Ismailiat, Jazair Arab Mein, Ismailiat, Yemen Mein and Hasan Bin Sabbah.
Since the above works were translated or authored for Ismailiat Association and Islamic Cultural Centre, Karachi, it is expected that these learned bodies will make arrangements to publish these works. I know that the financial resources of the above named organizations were quite adequate and they could really ensure that these works of one of the most important writers of his age would enrich Islamic studies as well as Urdu.
Tajrid is one of the most difficult works and so is the Rasail-i-Akhwan-us-Safa. Only one or two Rasails of the Akhwan-us-Safa (thefamous work of the Brethren of Purity of the Abbasid period) could only strengthen the modern generation’s perspective of a grand intellectual legacy. I believe that Jon Elia could have a place for him in the annals of our intellectual history if his translations, compilations and original works in prose were published. They could prove to be a landmark.
Jon Elia, it has not been often conceded, is an important stylist of Urdu prose as well. He had a peculiar stamp of originality deriving its strength from the modern Arabic stalwarts of prose and he excelled in the prose – style characteristic of the revealed or inspired Semitic classics. Perhaps he was the Khalil Jibran of Urdu. In fact his Mushaira image never allowed him to turn to these areas of accomplishments. He thought that his labour of love in prose will be looked after by the organizations he worked for. But this has not come to pass.
I believe it is about time his editorials in Monthly Insha, Alami Digest and other periodicals are compiled so that the pieces of vibrant, yet reflective, prose are available for those who did not
have the opportunity of going through his ‘stray reflections.’ I hope that these writings will open the door of perceptions about a writer who has been intellectually active for over five decades.
Jon Elia is dead but he will live on because his poetry touches the chords of our intimate but unusual feelings so often that he emerges as the most intimate stranger
Recently, Franz Kafka’s unpublished documents have been unearthed. They have been found from Kafka’s friend and literary executor Max Brod’s secretary Esther Hoffe’s apartment in Tel Aviv. The documents were locked away in Esther Hoffe’s apartment and throughout his life he refused to release them. Esther Hoffe is now dead and Kafka’s unpublished documents are soon to be made public. Hoffe’s reluctance to publish Kafka’s manuscripts was contrary to what Max Brod did with Kafka’s writings. Despite Kafka’s decree that all his works should be put to fire after his death, Brod chose to publish them. And that is how the world got to know about Franz Kafka, who went on to become one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.
Jaun Elia’s first collection of poems Shaayad was published when the poet was 58. He has written in the preface to Shaayad that he procrastinated publishing his first book for nearly 30 years. There must be some reasons why he did not want to publish his works, some of which he quotes in his work while some are known only to his true friends and companions, who actually knew him.
Jaun Elia writes in the Preface that he promised his father, Allama Shafique Hasan Elia, a scholar of the highest order, that he would publish his works when he grew up. Jaun didn’t. Somehow all documents of Allama Elia got lost and Jaun suffered from a guilty-conscience such that he loathed the idea of publishing his own works, which he considered mediocre in comparison to his father’s writings. While Jaun’s nazms and ghazals became hugely popular among the literary and intellectual circles of Pakistan soon after his migration from Amroha in 1957, there was no collection of his poems that could reach out to the masses. Jaun, therefore, remained mostly in oblivion till the late 1980s.
According to Jaun Elia, it was the late Saleem Jaffri who forced him to publish his first book. Shaayad (1989) became equally popular with intellectuals as well as the masses. But Jaun always despised the idea of publishing his work. Yaani, his second book, came posthumously in 2003 which Jaun Elia had delayed again for several years.
Jaun Elia was a master in the true sense of the word — an aalim. He had a command over many languages including Arabic and Persian, and like his father he could also read Sanskrit and Hebrew. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of philosophy, religion, Islamic mysticism and even Kabbalah, the mystical aspect of Judaism. He was the custodian of a tradition, a culture. Therefore, you will find in his poetry and prose traces of the Old Testament, the Bible and the Quran, philosophical discourses of the Mutazilites, pre-Islamic Arabian poets, as well as references from Emmanuel Kant, Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. There is hardly any modern Urdu poet who can claim to have fused such diversified knowledge systems with blood expectorating Romanticism and passion. No wonder Jaun Elia inspired people like Baba-i-Urdu, Maulvi Abdul Haq, to stand up in his honour when he was only in his late 20s. Despite these high standards, Jaun always looked down upon his own poetry.
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Jaun Elia was a master in the true sense of the word — an aalim. He had a command over many languages, including Arabic and Persian, and like his father he could also read Sanskrit and Hebrew. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of philosophy, religion, Islamic mysticism and even Kabbalah, the mystical aspect of Judaism. He was the custodian of a tradition, and a culture. There is hardly any modern Urdu poet who can claim to have fused such diversified knowledge systems with blood (expectorating Romanticism and passion).
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He criticised Ghalib endlessly. He used to say ‘Mian Ghalib to pachchees sheron ka shaa’ir tha’ (Ghalib had only 25 good couplets). By that he meant that Ghalib had no asloob (no peculiar style of his own) unlike Urfi, Khusro, or Meer; he had some good ash’aar though.
In fact Jaun looked down upon poetry and poets almost fanatically. Once he said ‘poets are nothing but mere jesters, clowns’. Not only that, he considered the whole universe an anomaly, an imperfect creation.
So the fact that Kafka or Jaun Elia did not want to publish their works was not an emotional decision on their parts. Writers of Kafka’s or Jaun’s calibre did not require these antics. Jaun was a perfectionist; like all great artists he aspired to perfection yet he failed.
I don’t doubt Khalid Ahmed Ansari’s love and admiration for Jaun Elia. He has done a remarkable service to Jaun Elia and Urdu literature by publishing three collections of Jaun after his death — Guman, Lekin, and Goya (all these titles were rejected by Jaun Elia before Yaani).
Everybody feared that after Jaun Elia’s death, his unpublished works would never see the light of the day, but Khalid Ansari proved everyone wrong. Two more books, Kuoon and Raamoz with his extraordinary long epic poem ‘Nai Aag Ka Ehednaama’, [Testament of the New Fire] are yet to come, as Ansari reveals in Goya’s preface.
What is indeed advisable is that Jaun’s disciples need to be more careful about the selection of his verses. Jaun was a prolific verse-wielder. He was a full-time poet with no other purpose in life other than reading and writing. He handed over a number of registers to Khalid Ansari. But that does not mean that he wanted everything from these registers to be printed. In fact, and as I have debated, he didn’t want anything to be published.
I do not mean that none of Jaun Elia’s works should have been published. But those who have taken upon themselves this Herculean task of selecting from Jaun’s unpublished poetry should think from his perspective. He would not have selected a number of ghazals and nazms that have appeared in Gumaan, Lekin and Goya for the reason that some of them are repetitive in terms of thought and even diction. Only the best should be made public.
We must also understand that Jaun Elia was not competing with Ahmed Faraz or Munir Niazi. He was competing with God. Or he was competing with his own self. He suffered tremendously because of his extreme perfectionism and scepticism. Now, to honour his sufferings, why should anyone compromise on his perfectionism?
Kafka wrote very little. Max Brod did a wise thing publishing his work after his death. But it is necessary to state here that a great deal of meticulous research and vigorous selection had gone into the process of publishing Kafka posthumously —from how and when to make his work public to what title cover suited best for The Castle, for example. Pity, that this kind of intelligent approach has been absent in Jaun Elia’s case.
On the flipside, Jaun’s extraordinary prose is yet to be published in book form, which should have been published by now. His Inshaaiay in Mairaj Rasool’s popular Suspense Digest, which he wrote regularly for decades, is one of a kind — a kind of prose that is non-existent in Urdu literature.
Jaun Elia’s stature in Urdu poetry has largely been determined. Critics and masses have hailed him as one of the finest Urdu poets of all times. The world of literature will get to know more about him as the time passes by. Poor selections of his work (by Jaun Elia’s own high standards) won’t affect his stature. But nonetheless it is advisable that Khalid Ansari and others must respect Jaun’s desires and sufferings.
He also did not want his books to be dedicated to all those who cursed him during his life, and did not want all those to benefit from the royalty of his books who abandoned him during his lifetime and did not bother to console him even in his dying days.
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