"All changed, changed utterly/ A terrible beauty is born.” These lines from William Butler Yeats were placed by Dr Jameel Jalibi at the opening of the third volume — covering the first half of the 19th century — of his magisterial Tareekh-i-Adab-i-Urdu [History of Urdu Literature] published in 2006. With more than a thousand pages to each volume, this is undoubtedly the largest of such endeavours related to Urdu literature, unsurpassed for its encyclopaedic breadth and the scope of its coverage. Jalibi started working on it around 1967, coming up to four hefty volumes. It seems implausible that this is the single-handed work of one person; in the past even institutions have failed to do something on such a large scale.

Literary history, as its proponents have noted, faces a double challenge since it has to be literary and historical at the same time. ‘Literary evolution’ — which has remained a great favourite of our critics as ‘irtiqa’ — is a limited concept when applied in such a context, but Jalibi managed to find the golden mean. He conveys a sense of the chronological continuity of individual authors, at the same time highlighting the social processes which add layers of meaning to literary works. While some may disagree with details, it is the overall design which remains unique.

The enormity of the task notwithstanding, Jalibi had prepared himself well for it — his writing career began as a literary critic. He contributed a column titled Baatain [Conversations] to the reputed monthly magazine Saqi which appeared alongside Mohammad Hasan Askari’s trend-setting column Jhalkiyan [Highlights]. This marked Jalibi’s long association with Saqi’s editor Shahid Ahmed Dehlvi, which continued till the latter’s death in 1968; Jalibi edited the special issue of Saqi designed as a tribute to its editor. His first compilation of literary essays was titled Tanqeed Aur Tajruba [Criticism and Experience] and was followed by several other collections of essays, which made his mark as a critic.

Dr Jameel Jalibi passed away on April 19. He leaves behind an enormous legacy as a historian of literature, but also as a critic, a linguist and a self-effacing editor

Unlike most other literary critics of the day, Jalibi had larger concerns and this became obvious from his first major independent book, Pakistani Culture, which won an award and was later also rendered into English. Closer in spirit to the point of views upheld by writers such as Karrar Husain, Muhammad Hasan Askari, Saleem Ahmad and Intizar Husain, Jalibi’s view was formulated through his understanding of literature and informed by a close study of Western opinions. Jalibi describes the concept of culture in general terms, highlighting the necessity of imbibing Islamic spirit and values, but his usage is different from the approach which came to dominate the national narrative, especially following the Zia regime. One wonders if he saw an apparent contradiction between his views and the national narrative. Much water has flowed down the Indus and questions of language and ethnicity appear far more complex to us because of the way history has evolved. Not only the flow of history, but contemporary discourses have seriously challenged earlier views.

As an analyst of culture, Jalibi shows strong traces of T.S. Eliot’s influence. I wonder what he would make of a more recent author such as the Latin American novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, the very title of whose book, Notes on the Death of Culture, is a refutation of Eliot. Llosa opens his book in a way which has great contemporary relevance: “It is very likely that never in human history have there been as many treatises, essays, theories and analyses focused on culture as there are today. This fact is even more surprising given that culture, in the meaning traditionally ascribed to the term, is now on the point of disappearing. And perhaps it has already disappeared, discreetly emptied of its content, and replaced by another content that distorts its earlier meaning.”

Literary scholarship was closely linked with translations for Jalibi. His immersion in Eliot led to the remarkable Eliot Ke Mazameen [The Essays of Eliot], the Urdu translation of selected literary criticism of the arch-modernist who prided himself on being a classicist, and laid the foundation of his heavy influence on Urdu critics. A more detailed and systematic effort was Arastoo Say Eliot Tak [From Aristotle to Eliot], the Urdu rendering of the major critical texts from the Western canon. To Jalibi’s credit are also Urdu versions of poet and writer Aziz Ahmad’s two scholarly books on Islamic India. On a different scale, he translated George Orwell’s political fable Animal Farm into Urdu as well.

The scholar in him led him to decipher archaic manuscripts from the Deccan and add the masnavi by Fakhruddin Nizami of Bidar — titled Kadam Rao Padam Rao — and the Divan of Hassan Shauqi to the Urdu canon. While he devoted much attention to classics from the Deccan, I cannot but help wish he had given some attention to classics written in north India during the same period, as these are generally relegated to be outside the canon. Jalibi moved easily from the classic to the contemporary and went on to edit the collected poems of Miraji, the arch-modernist of Urdu verse.

Jalibi’s rapidly growing reputation as a scholar and research writer may have eclipsed his status as an editor. After his association with Saqi, he founded the literary magazine Naya Daur and, with a few issues, it achieved a standard surpassed by no other periodical. The best writers of the day appeared in its pages, with new writings by Noon Meem Rashid, Qurratulain Hyder, Ghulam Abbas, Aziz Ahmad, Abul Fazal Siddiqui and Jameela Hashmi becoming regular features. It also carried the unpublished writings of Miraji and Rafiq Hussain.

In fact, Abul Fazal Siddiqui’s richly detailed stories were a hallmark of the journal. But in spite of its distinction, the editor remained in the shadows. Because of his government service, Jalibi did not allow his name to appear on the cover and, at best, it remained an open secret that he was the moving spirit behind the journal. Among others, Noon Meem Rashid entrusted his new poetry to him and corresponded regularly with him. It was as an editor that Jalibi encouraged my early writings, giving me the opportunity to publish in Naya Daur’s prestigious pages.

Tall and upright, Jalibi was a formidable presence in my boyhood as he remained a close friend of my mother’s uncle, Shahid Ahmed Dehlvi, and through him, of my father Dr Aslam Farrukhi. Literary gatherings were a regular feature at Jalibi sahib’s home in North Nazimabad and I have fond recollections of several such events hosted for visiting dignitaries. His home was a treasure trove of books and papers, which have since been donated to the University of Karachi.

The family friendship deepened when Jalibi took over as vice chancellor of the University of Karachi and invited my father to work with him as the registrar. I was able to see Jalibi working at close quarters. Sometimes he and my father would take off from the office and come to our home to be free of a ceaseless flow of visitors. Cushioned on the sofa and surrounded by papers, we would see Jalibi working tirelessly for hours on end, fortifying himself with paan and green tea. His signatures confirmed the degree I was awarded at the completion of my medical studies. My brother and I would smile when he enquired about our studies with a mouth full of paan, as he would still get to say what he wanted. After a full day at the university, he would devote himself to his writing and would sometime mention to me the various projects he was working on.

Although the Karachi rumour mill did not spare him, I never heard him speak of anybody with rancour, not even the people responsible for maligning him. He was too large-hearted to stoop to such a level. Painstaking and hardworking to a remarkable degree, these were habits acquired from a lifetime of discipline. I saw him working with the same zeal when he moved to Islamabad to head the Muqtadara Qaumi Zaban [National Language Authority]. He supervised the Muqtadara’s English-Urdu Dictionary and, when I complained that his time would have been better utilised working on the Tareekh, he would smile and explain to me how necessary it was to have a good dictionary.

The benign smile — but no paan — was all that I was able to see when I met him in the waiting area of a hospital a few years ago. When I enquired about his health, he told me to pray that he gets to complete the last volume of the Tareekh. The completion of the self-assigned task was more important to him than existence. The last time I saw him, he had already turned into history.

The writer is a critic and fiction writer and teaches literature and the humanities at the Habib University, Karachi

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 28th, 2019