Mah-i-Uryaan
By Sarmad Sehbai
Aks Publications
ISBN: 9789697312177
176pp.

Visual arts faced a monumental challenge in Abrahamic milieus. The Divine was now hidden in the unfathomable realm of utter transcendence — a phenomenon known among Sufis as tanzeeh (literally, disconnection from created forms); God was unseen; veiled from sight; lying beyond the net of sense perception; He was the Wholly Other, for… “there is nothing like unto Him.”

Then, all of this was further complicated by a deep paradox: the Divine was present everywhere and yet, could be localised nowhere, and this creates a polar tension between “everywhere” and “nowhere” — hence Naz Khayalvi’s famous cry in mystical surrender, “Tum ek gorakh-dhanda ho [O Divine, You are a riddle!].”

All of this sounds rather abstract and arcane. But in concrete terms, the real results are all around us. Note that, unlike the artistic treatments of the fully visualised pagan gods — whether on the canvas as figurative paintings or as plastic arts expressed in stone or bronze sculptures — unavailable to the visual artist now was the depiction of the highest truth of his faith, namely, the representation of the Deity.

This yielded decisive historical consequences in the world of creative expression. First, it became in the Byzantine Church a theological transgression to construct perceptible images/representations of the deity — for it was deemed idolatrous. Then, this priestly determination developed into a rather blood-stained iconoclastic movement whose tides spilled over in the world of Islam.

Like Ghalib and Faiz before him, Sarmad Sehbai is a master of visual image construction in Urdu poetry and his new collection is further proof of it

But the vicissitudes of iconoclasm unfolded on an adventurous and intriguing trajectory in the civilisation of Muslim societies. While the movement to smash representational icons could not have happened here, it took the form of an aversion, an aversion to figural art, something that may be described as iconophobia. One monumental consequence of this aversion was that symbolic figural art now shifted to the world of poetry.

In a sense, then — and here I am making a daring pronouncement — Urdu and Persian poetry are visual arts. The evidence is overwhelming: for a defining characteristic of this poetic tradition is its graphic visuality.

This visuality often manifests itself in the description of the beloved (face like the moon, eyes like a deep lake in a green valley, hair like the dark night of a thick forest, etc), something called saraapa nigaari and paikar saazi [visual image construction].

Sarmad Sehbai is a champion of paikar saazi. He does not have a chisel and a hammer for his sculptures, nor does he possess a brush for his paintings; his implements are words, rhythms, beats and visual metaphors. Given this, one can say that Sarmad’s poetry embodies a civilisational moment; and so he stands out as a firmly grounded historical phenomenon in the Urdu literary world, as opposed to an incidental episode, fleeting and flashy.

We recall that in the Urdu literary tradition, Ghalib is a master craftsman of visual constructions. This giant of the tradition revels in his visual art indulgence — going as far as sacrificing sound at the altar of sight. Who else has the creative “audacity”, the courage and prowess to make taqwaa a rhyme word for tasallee/ma’nee?

This is an ocular decision, for these words end in different sounds but “look” identical in their ending when written down. Indeed, Ghalib revels in his visual art adventures, for who else can set up the eminent paradox of making the very faculty of sight a hindrance to sight? Recall, “Ghair az nigah ab koi haa’il nahin raha [Nothing hinders the sight except the sight itself].”

In our post-Ghalib modern period, this visuality was imbibed in its full glory by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. In fact, Faiz Sahib is, in my view, one of the greatest image-makers, paikar saaz, in the entire history of Urdu poetry: Do we not, for example, keep hearing the echoes of the “manzar” — rahguzar, saaey, shajar, manzil-o-dar, halqa-i-baam [walkway, shadows, trees, dwellings and doors, edge of the roof]?

Sarmad Sehbai is a champion of paikar saazi. He does not have a chisel and a hammer for his sculptures, nor does he possess a brush for his paintings; his implements are words, rhythms, beats and visual metaphors.

In its luxuriant fecundity, this Ghalibesque thrust of image construction has reached the imaginative soil of Sarmad Sehbai. The very title of his recent collection is there to see — Mah-i-Uryaan [The Unveiled Moon], and the first poem in the collection, a ghazal, has the radeef [word(s) repeated at the end of each verse] uryaan, unveiled, fully exposed, visually manifest.

What’s more, Sarmad thievishly — but gracefully — exploits the erotic possibilities of this expression:

O, how I lost my eyes in the intimacy of exposure
At the moment of wonder, it was not clear who was unveiled — I or you?

And here is a verse from another ghazal:

At the half-turn of the chest, a scarf dangling
And the hair tied at a short distance from the forehead

This is practically a detailed formula (a tarh) for the instruction of a portraiture maker. And again, the graphic nature of this verse is a wonderful instance of graceful eroticism.

The visual metaphor of the moon reappears with accurate astronomical beauty.

So we have:

As if around the moon of my poetry, O Sarmad,
There is a halo of ambiguity

In a poem, ‘Gulaab’ [The Rose], one finds a novel play colours and magical animations:

The rose blooms, opening slowly, slowly …
In the twilight of wondrous colours,
Fragrance is opening its fist, it seems
From the mantle of lush trees
Peeks an angel
The rose blooms, opening slowly, ever so slowly
In the hand of the green branch
Is held the cup of the morning

This seems like a verbal transmutation of a painting. Yes, Sarmad’s iconography marks a historical moment.

The reviewer is a scholar of history.
All translations are by the reviewer

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 14th, 2024