With the publication of Sukhan Aur Ahle Sukhan a vacuum in the literary annals of Pakistan has been filled. Muzaffar Ali Syed emerges from the shadow of his well-known friends’ reputations to take his own rightful place. It’s a pity that this well-deserved recognition comes years after the writer’s death, but then, this was part of the enigma of Syed. Until now his reputation rested on a single volume of essays collected in his twilight years and a large cache of scattered writings. It is due to the efforts of Intizar Hussain that this book saw the light of day and he has also contributed an essay in his inimitable style, describing the writer and how he was a perfectionist to a fault. Syed seemingly treated his writings as working drafts and many of his projects remained unfinished, yet what he managed to write and publish is important in itself.

An active member of the group of young writers and poets who appeared on the literary scene in the early days of Pakistan and called themselves the ‘New Generation’, Syed was connected to literary criticism in the same way as his friend Nasir Kazmi was to the ghazal and Hussain to the afsana. Rubbing shoulders with these giants in terms of friendship and camaraderie was not all he did, his was a formidable critical sensibility; Syed was an invaluable critic in his own right. A polyglot and scholar well versed in the Urdu and Persian literary traditions, he was equally at home in English and French literature. An aficionado in the best sense of the word, he was very well-read, as is apparent from his writings. He was inquisitive and intelligent in his critical application, combining learning with insight, scholarship and analytical judgement. This demeanour marks him as one of the truly perceptive critics of the day.

Hussain’s introductory article is brief to the point of being tantalising. One would have expected him to reminisce in more detail and describe the kind of person Syed was as distinct from the critic, but then Hussain has also portrayed him at various instances in his memoirs. Here, he confines himself to recounting that although the author shied away from publication, his works were retrieved with the help of his son and some old friends.

Years after his death, Muzaffar Ali Syed is reintroduced to the realm of Urdu literary criticism with a collection of works that were hitherto published in various journals

There are more essays from this fine critic which need to be pulled out from old magazines and republished. Hussain has referred to a fine study of Mir Anis, and I recall a detailed analysis of Muhammad Mansha Yad’s fictional world, which referred to Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay, ‘The Storyteller’. I was privileged to read it before its publication and it was here that I first encountered Benjamin’s name.

Syed was a great conversationalist and a majlisi aadmi in the classical sense. He enjoyed sharing his enthusiasm for writers and books. In a series of unforgettable conversations, he urged me to invest time and effort in Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, an amazingly rich study of the modes of narration. I can now understand that his critical method was closer in spirit to that of such erudite men. While I am certainly grateful that Sukhan Aur Ahle Sukhan has seen the light of day, providing easy access to Syed’s critical practice, I do hope that this will lead to further compilation of his work.

The book opens with general essays, akin to those collected in the previous volume of his writings. These take up such diverse themes as the overall situation of Urdu literature, the role of literature in contemporary society, literature and historical consciousness, the dynamics of translation and rules of grammar and spelling. However, it is his approach which makes these essays unique. In a fine essay, setting the rules of Urdu grammar and standardisation of spelling is informed with verses of Mir and Mushafi. Similarly, the very useful essay on translations explores the nuances of root words and their origins in Arabic and the Holy Quran. It is the writer’s knowledge which illuminates his critical insights.

In addition to these highly readable essays, the bulk of the book consists of analytical studies of individual writers. Syed is equally at home with fiction writers as with poets, contemporary writers as well as those from the classical era. Detailed studies of Manto, Bedi and Ghulam Abbas are enough to establish his credentials as one of the finest critics of fiction in Pakistan in a rather fallow period in which poetry hogged all the critical attention.

In addition to these highly readable essays, the bulk of the book consists of analytical studies of individual writers. Syed is equally at home with fiction writers as with poets, contemporary writers, as well as those from the classical era. Detailed studies of Manto, Bedi and Ghulam Abbas are enough to establish his credentials as one of the finest critics of fiction in Pakistan in a rather fallow period in which poetry hogged all the critical attention. Like Manto, he has a special affinity for Hussain and has penned two detailed studies of his short fiction as well as a long article on Basti. Written in various stages of his own development as a critic, these essays show a maturing and deepening of his own analytical methods. He is not fixated on one or two books but displays a thorough understanding of his own maturity and the many journeys he went on. It is a pity that life did not permit him a long and conclusive essay in which he could have summarised the writer’s entire trajectory the way he has written about Manto and Bedi.

Among poets, Akhtarul Iman and Miraji are the subject of many insightful essays. However, it is in the remarkable analysis of the much neglected Hafeez Hoshiarpuri and the unjustly overlooked Mukhtar Siddiqi that Syed’s critical acumen is best. The poet Majeed Amjad was later to enter into a second period of creativity yet his output did not merit another critic like Syed till the revival of his reputation many years after his death. The most detailed and finest essay is the one on Mir’s Persian diwan which reveals the extent of his knowledge of the classics and his understanding of the contemporary world. Here, he has covered new ground since he has written about the unknown and undiscovered aspects of the Urdu poet who is otherwise known as Khuda-i-Sukhan. This essay becomes even more useful as Mir’s largely unknown Persian diwan has since then been published and also rendered into Urdu.

The range of interest displays how Syed was truly a man of his times, and this is also perhaps his major limitation as a critic. He appeared on the literary scene when adherence to specific ideologies and other non-literary considerations determined the worth of a critic. Syed steered clear of such considerations and made literature his primary interest, although he tends to lose his critical acumen in places where a barely concealed nationalism takes over. He did not confine himself to the text and would sometimes use it as a take off point. Moreover, Syed is remarkable for the breadth of his interests rather than as an innovator of critical methods. While this is not ground-breaking criticism like that of later-day critics such as the important but rather different Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Nasir Abbas Nayyar, it helps establish Muzaffar Ali Syed as the forerunner of modern-day critics and in a league of his own. To read his essays is to get a better and clear-sighted understanding of some of the finest poets and fiction writers in Urdu literature.

The reviewer is a fiction writer and critic who teaches humanities and Urdu literature at a private university. His first book appeared in 1982 with a recommendatory note by Muzaffar Ali Syed.

Sukhan Aur Ahle Sukhan
(ESSAYS)
By Muzaffar Ali Syed
Edited by Intizar Hussain
Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore
ISBN: 978-969352916-6
286pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 14th, 2016