Poet of the East, learn obsession and heartache. The new world is but a brittle glass palace Remove the bishops from the church they are fakeīuild me a simple house with sand, for I hate Signs of the old order I bid thee to breakīurn every ear of wheat of that field from whichĭistance between God and humans is futile Sparrows should challenge eagles, make no mistake Roil the blood of slaves with the pain of belief The foundations of elite palaces should quake Tahzeeb-e-naveen kaar-gah-e-sheesha-garaan haiĪadab-e-junoon shaayar-e-mashriq ko sikha do Main naakhush-o-bezaar hoon marmar ke silon se Kyun khaaliq-o-makhlooq mein haayal rahen parde Us khet ke har khosha-e-gandum ko jala do Jis khet se dah-qaan ko mayassar nahi rozi Jo naqsh-e-kuhan tum ko nazar aaye mita do Kunjishk-e-phiromaayaa ko shaheen se lada do Uthho meri dunya ke ghareebon ko jagaa do Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall during that exchange? Thanks to Iqbal, you are. Instead, in the third poem, ‘Farmaan-e-Khuda Farishton Se’ (God’s Command to the Angels), He calls upon his angels to effect a few changes in the organisation of the world at large. While Lenin holds his ground, accusing God of being ineffectual, God is not at all upset with Lenin’s impertinence. The second poem ‘Farishton ka Geet’ (Song of the Angels) is a highly rhythmic recitation by angels of what they have witnessed on earth, corroborating Lenin’s complaints. (The hours of the worker are very bitter in your world) ‘Hain talkh bahut banda-e-mazdur ke auqat’ This poem includes a line which has now achieved the status of an aphorism: ‘Lenin, Khuda ke Huzoor Mein’ is the first of this trilogy, where Lenin complains to God about injustice. Already 40 when the Bolsheviks seized control of Moscow, Iqbal’s trilogy of poems in his collection Baal-e-Gibreel (Gabriel’s Wing) is the clearest indication of his admiration of Lenin and the Bolshevik experiment. Iqbal was among the first Urdu writers to be influenced by the world’s first socialist revolution. Perhaps the most celebrated poem on the founder of the Russian revolutionary state was Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s ‘Lenin, Khuda ke Huzoor Mein’ (Lenin in God’s Presence) written soon after the revolution took place in Russia, in the form of an imagined dialogue, comparable to Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky’s ‘Conversation with Comrade Lenin’ (1929). Thus, on the occasion of Lenin’s 150th birth anniversary today, it would be both useful and instructive to survey, by no means exhaustively, Urdu writings on Lenin. While Lenin’s signal achievement – the Bolshevik Revolution, whose centennial was celebrated in 2017 – is richly represented in Urdu literature, writings on Lenin himself, whether poems or fiction, are few and far between. The figure of Vladimir Lenin – born 150 years ago today – exercises a talismanic hold on revolutionaries everywhere, across time and space.
0 kommentar(er)
