Interview: Athar Tahir
‘Less, well conceptualised, is invariably more’
M Athar Tahir is a senior ex-bureaucrat, poet, writer and translator with many prize-winning publications to his name, some of which have been translated into Urdu and Chinese.
Educated at Government College, Lahore, he was selected in 1974 for the prestigious Rhodes Scholar for Pakistan at Oriel College, Oxford where he read English Language and Literature. Twice winner of the country’s highest national prize for literature in English, the Patras Bokhari Award, he is also the author of the award winning Qadir Yar: A critical Introduction.
Q: Would you elaborate your literary creed in the framework of your creative fecundity?
A: Creed? That sounds rather religious. Rather solemn. I would prefer to say, the simple principle: S of 3Cs. Sincerity of concept, sincerity of craft and sincerity of conception.
The first deals with the idea, the thought, the emotion, the event, the description that one wishes to share. The second is the techniques and mechanics of the poet’s repertoire. A music composer knows how each instrument in the orchestra speaks. So the poet must know how words work, must be well-stocked and well-equipped, know and practise the range of forms available to him. Unfortunately this is the weakest aspect of contemporary poetry in English. Few wrestle with traditional constructs because they challenge. How many serious poets, for example, tackle the sonnet, or distil to essentials of the haiku or mahiya? How many have shaken the sonnet of its “love” connection to make it relevant to contemporary concerns? Or employed the lyric to sing of God and the good in the sceptic post-Modern era?
Vers libre or free verse, as distinct from blank verse, has opened the “magic casement” to vomit, to garbage poetry. The shallow, “tender-minded”, pretentious “poets” – and the world abounds in them – prefer to take the lazy way out. Some do not even know grammatical, let alone idiomatic, English. Just the shock of the new seems to be enough. The “concept” is preferred over the other two, craft and conception. This may garner attention in the short term because it is easy to understand. But poetry makes demands on the reader if it is informed by literary excellence. The more techniques one knows the greater the range of matching the concept with the conception.
The last is the crucible of alchemy. Here the first two, concept and craft, meet, melt, mix and merge seamlessly to create a symphonic whole, T.S. Eliot’s “complete consort”. Here the poet, knowing his many voices and nuances, begins “finding the right/Language for thirst and fear”, (W.H. Auden). Here is the unity, not unifying combination, of experience and its best possible poetic articulation. It is like Oxygen and Hydrogen interacting or “reacting” in the poet’s mind to produce the final, related but separate, entity.
Q: How would you react to the dictum that in some of your ‘personal’ poems, the tension between articulation and the temperamental inclination towards restraint comes across as the most potent impulse?
A: Once a work of art is in the public domain, the reader-audience has a right to see it as it wishes. The success of a work is its intrinsic worth. And how many discriminating, knowledgeable people it ignites to respond in their various ways.
As regards my “reaction”, tension is what makes any work of art. Architectural tension accords stability to an arch. It is the silence between notes that makes the music most compelling. Juxtaposition of negative areas accords potency to the worked sections in a painting. What is not said behind the articulated help the poem pulsate with multiple layers. Not resolution but balance. Restraint modulated, is inevitably more evocative. Less, well conceptualised, is invariably, more.
Q: Comment on the statement: “The collection’s (The Gift of Possession) pre-occupation with death and loss and the transitory nature of time and life itself challenges tacitly, but persistently, the idea of possession.”
A: The Gift of Possession is, largely, about ambiguity. Advancing years yield such intimations of mortality, such consciousness and confrontation. And it is about slipping life and tenuous immortality. The “possession”, as Prof Ayesha Fatima Barque in her “Introduction” perceptively infers, has multiple interpretations. As indeed does “gift”. The irony is that worldly possessions, or who the world possesses, are in the final analysis just “sound and fury” signify little, if nothing. That is the human dilemma, if not tragedy.
Evocative poetry does precisely this. It suggests more than the obvious. It takes on imaginative authority wherein previous strands are embedded. Like Sufi Tabassum’s 1965 Punjabi composition, “Eh putar hattan te” which was sung as a “War Song” but in reality is an anti-war poem. Poetry should, like the title of my first volume of poems, be “just beyond the physical”, perceptible, even apprehendable, but, tantalisingly, beyond immediate reach. A successful poem generates ripples which provoke the reader into pleasure and thought, to sense more than the visible, turbulent surface. It must have unstated suggestions, implications, correspondences.
Q: Would you subscribe to the view held by Taufiq Rafat that only that writing can survive which has deep and firm roots?
A: “Deep and firm roots” in what? In this land, its history, its culture, its fauna and flora, its value system its myths and legends? Yes, at the essential, basic level. One would be lost without them. Earlier, Rilke wrote that a poet “must see many cities, and men and things… know animals and the flight of birds”. But a poet is a creature of, and for, creativity. The realm of the mind is a free, limitless space. Farid al-Din Attar’s Mantiq al-Tayr is rooted in an idea, not tied to actual geography. It transcends to speak to humanity, whatever the race or colour, creed or religion. So Sultan Bahu’s Abiyat. And numerous others.
Ultimately it is sincerity, sincerity of purpose, a commitment to calling. No matter what the subject, the context or the location, it is the authentic application of one’s poetic sensibility that matters. And this sensitivity is an amalgam of all that is within oneself. Keats’ “Ode to the Nightingale” is often cited as the perfect poem that demonstrates his “negative capability”, the ability to lose himself and become the singing bird. And Attar becomes the Hoopoe.
Q: What are the predominant themes of your verse? Could one correlate them to the existentialistic realities of modern life?
A: Over the five poetry books, many a theme – private, personal, public and political – has been addressed. The urge is to “remould it nearer to the heart’s desire” (Umar Khayyam). Each volume confronts contemporary issues. This is inevitable, being born in the modern age, exposed to its relentless contradictions and commonalities, its idiosyncrasies and the shrinking of private space. In the individual is the collective, dare one add, all humanity.
The sixth volume due later this year, called The Last Tea, is a meditation. Though largely inspired by several trips to Japan, and using the haiku form for the short and long poems, it is about human expectations and response to nature, to and of friends, to existential realities. In many ways it is a distillation.
Q: Do you agree with the view that Daud Kamal’s sensibility has much in common with the poets of the Ghazal?
A: At places. But Daud Kamal was largely, and by inclination, an Imagist poet. The metaphor, the image, the symbol were central to creative domain.
Q: Do you think that your style is modernist, somewhat complex and oblique?
A: Some critics, like Dr Tariq Rahman, think so. And I respect his opinion as I do of numerous others. Dr Amra Raza, Head of the Department of English, Punjab University, suggests this too. Prof Shaista Sirajuddin sees it in terms of tradition and modernism.
Every reader or critic has a right to his/her views. Like the elephant in Rumi’s Mathnavi, each person will describe it from his own angle. This is what makes works exciting, so challenging, so open to interpretations. Such a process unearths the merits, or otherwise, of the work.
Q: What, in your opinion, is the function of a critic in a socio-cultural milieu dominated by science and technology?
A: That is a big question. But necessary. However, can it be matched with an equally comprehensive and relevant answer? I wonder.
The reality is that science and technology, unfortunately, do dominate contemporary existence. And society is the lesser for it. The balance is heavily weighed against finer, civilising, as distinct from cultural, values. Even in the twentieth century there were times when the ‘critic’ was a guide, a leader, an intermediary, was an inspiration that energised and strengthened. Examples? Allama Iqbal, Mao Tze Tung, Pablo Neruda. And all critics. All poets.
Prodded by the electronic media, and the race of ‘ratings’, the plethora of anchor persons has appropriated the mantle of ‘critics’. They are the new conscience of society. It is an incestuous lot, feeding on each other, prompting and promoting one another, and pontificating on everything. The anchor of one show masquerades as an expert in the other and vice versa. It is becoming like bureaucracy guarding its gains. And in the process holding the common man hostage to their relentless verbiage. They are more influential than a thoughtful columnist or a fulminating mullah. Neither has their advantage of assaulting with the visual and the oral and reaching remote areas simultaneously. And the range of these taste-arbitrators is just not regional, it is the cyber-space.
Q: Who are your favourites amongst your contemporaries?
A: Favourite is a loaded word. At this stage one does not have favourite poets. That would be naive. One has favourite poems. Moniza Alvi’s surreal poems, some poems by Tariq Latif, Mehvish Amin, Ilona Yusuf, and sections of Waqas Khwaja’s long poem, No One Waits for the Train, are well conceived.
Q: What are the recurrent themes of modern poetry? Where would you place yourself in its multi-denominational hierarchy?
A: The recurrent theme is, not Man but, man. No justifying the ways of God to Man in a Miltonic sweep. Instead every poet thinks he is the small centre of his creative universe. If he did not, he would be more gainfully employed elsewhere. The recurrent sub-themes are individual angst and local concerns, alienation and angular observations, reworking of myths and questioning, memory and desire. Amongst the diaspora poets, the personal scream emanating from clash of divergent cultures and the crisis of identity are major sub-themes. This accords the work of such “native aliens”, a peculiar perspective, poignancy, piquancy.
Poetry recognises no hierarchy. It is far more egalitarian than bureaucracy. It speaks affirmation not mutter tiered subservience. A serious poet like a planet swirls along his own orbit, like the dervish whirls on his own axis. He pits himself against himself. He sets his own standard. That is the yardstick he should be measured by.
Q: Bureaucracy and literary writing are apparently antithetical to each other. How would you reconcile the two?
A: Life is an act of balancing. Point counter-point held in manageable equilibrium. Bureaucracy, the much maligned monster, and often rightly so, has enriched the poetic palette. The district management postings provide a range of exposure, and experience if one is open, as no other service does. You can meet the pauper and the President on the same day. The contrasts affect one’s sense and sensibility, sharpen one’s sensitivity to the harsh realities of the human condition. One acts the anvil for the other, hammering home the evil and good that men do, and their active indifference.
Writing is a lonely, lonesome business. And in my case it has been at the cost of networking into the power play and with power groups within the bureaucracy and the political spider-web. But this choice was made consciously at the beginning of my career. Despite mainstream, important postings at home and abroad, the sideward gaze of a self-portrait provided insights into myself as a person and as a public, not government, professional. Whether the two callings reconciled, I do not know. Each took its pound of flesh. But this I know, the challenge was holding both close, one to the head, the other to the heart.
Q: The poet is essentially a pioneer of change in the values of a society. Comment.
A: The poet has been many things, a Greek prophet, an Anglo-Saxon fantasist, a Sufi murshid or guide, an Elizabethan entertainer, Provencal troubadour narrating stories, our own mirasi a preserver of geneology and chronicler in song, a Mughal courtier, Shelley’s “legislator”, Rimbaud’s “seer”, Pound’s “antennae of society”, Ustad Daaman’s “protestor”. The list goes on. Some voice tradition, others advocate change. A rare few challenge to the radiant end.
Each appropriates a role according to the society he live, or refuses to live, in. The role is, in Wallace Steven’s words, to compress “disorder of experience into a memorable and significant whole”. Simply put, to renew perception, to illuminate.
Q: Fulfilment is the hallmark of creativity as of professionalism. Elaborate from your personal experience.
A: Mine has been a divided heart, while remaining, surprisingly, whole. In professional life I felt fulfilled. More than fulfilled. With God’s grace, the highest level in the government service was reached. The Chenab College was founded and operationalised, while posted as Deputy Commissioner, Jhang. It is a thriving institution now in an area much neglected by traditional, feudal power-brokers. Punjab’s only monument to celebrate Pakistan’s Golden Jubilee in 1997, “The Freedom Arches”, was commissioned at the Gaddafi Stadium, when Commissioner Lahore. Final phase of the Daata Durbar Mosque-Complex was radically modified and completed. This was a labour of love and reverence. Unlike the earlier phase engendering a thoughtless monstrosity, this structure is in consonance with the purity, simplicity and openness of a saint. The country’s first Strategy for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Skilling Pakistan, was given in 2009. It remains the roadmap for all initiatives in this field.
At the personal level, I continue to wrestle with writing, despite the “sweat and tears”. Like a Sufi’s struggle, the poet’s challenge is to arrive at a point where the exoteric, the outward transient world, the zahir, and the esoteric, the batin are aligned. For each poem this effort, this mujahidah, is essential. Each poem is a continual self-sacrifice to seek the eternal in the temporal. My peers, and the state, have acknowledged the contribution. However, creativity and fulfilment are antithetical. A poem or a piece of prose may prompt fulfilment. It lasts a moment. Then it is gone like a firefly in the undergrowth. And the next idea, next urge comes beckoning.
Q: How do you manage to evoke ‘the speech of silence through the language of the senses’ in your verse?
A: Ultimate speech is silence. Just as final silence is speech. This seems a Zen conundrum. But it is not. Apart from the meditative disciplines and traditions of mysticism and tasawwuf, this idea pervades all art. When one sees Michelangelo’s “Pieta”, its silence speaks the language of the senses – the visual and the tactile – and simultaneously triggers a feeling, a sentiment, an emotion. That silent marble speaks one to tears. So poetry. Craft enables words of the senses to step into a spectrum of silence, a silence that tugs.
