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Kahani Aik Nazm Ki
By Safdar Rasheed
National Book Foundation
ISBN: 978-969-37-1621-4
164pp.
S. Eliot was not only a poet of genius but a many-faceted man of letters as well. When his poem The Waste Land appeared over a century ago, in the early 1920s, it shook the literary scene of Europe and soon became one of the most talked-about pieces of poetry ever written.
One can approach this poem from a variety of points of view and Safdar Rasheed’s book is the first in Urdu looking at the poem through the lens of its facsimile edition, which includes the text with comments and edits by Ezra Pound.
When Pound read the manuscript of The Waste Land in 1921, he did not like Eliot’s epigraph from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Pound convinced Eliot about Conrad’s lack of ‘weightiness’ that could match an epigraph by Eliot. Initially Eliot resisted but then had to capitulate to a more erudite argumentation by Pound.
Eliot replaced the quotation with another one by Petronius’ Satyricon, which was indeed much weightier, as it contains references to imprisonment and the desire for death, and its connection to Greece and Rome as the pioneers of European civilisation.
Over 100 years after the first publication of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, an Urdu book delves into the poem’s journey and myriad allusions, and in particular how Eliot’s mentor Ezra Pound shaped its final version
Those who have read The Waste Land would recall that the prophetess Sibyl’s wish to escape her living death of immortality through a real death is more appropriate to the poem than what Conrad had to offer. Still, the story of the Sibyl adds to the puzzle of the poem. Eliot was immersed in the seriousness of classical scholarship and Safdar in his book takes into account that seriousness.
The Waste Land has a recurring theme of surrender and temptation and, of course, their tragic consequences. Safdar Rasheed in his book discusses in detail the poem’s lack of thematic clarity and absence of connections between images and scenes that make the poem open to different interpretations.
When you read the poem for the first time, you feel that it is nearly impossible to digest. It is rather challenging to conclude whether the poem is just conservative and meaningless or merely a radical piece of writing full of contradictions that, at the same time, adheres to traditional values.
The many allusions in the poem are also likely to bewilder new readers who have to figure out where the shifting tones of the poem are coming from. Themes and voices in the poem are not easy to decipher but Safdar Rasheed makes good efforts to make sense of them, so that readers can feel the full potential of Eliot’s imagery in the poem. Some critics consider the poem as the exemplar of a kind of high modernism, simultaneously depicting and rejecting modern life, where history relegates itself to a lesser pedestal than mythology.
Safdar Rasheed begins his book with a narration of Eliot’s life and times in the aftermath of the first World War that ended in 1918, leaving in its wake a devastated Europe. The book under review mainly deals with how The Waste Land shrank to just 434 lines under the razor’s edge of Ezra Pound’s editing.
Pound was just three years older than Eliot but Eliot held him in high esteem. Nearly half a century after the publication of the poem, Eliot’s second wife, Valerie Fletcher, had got access to the manuscript that had comments and edits by Pound strewn all over the pages. The facsimile edition that was subsequently published is the version Rasheed uses.
Safdar Rasheed’s book takes us through the journey of the poem, as it traversed from the editing by Pound to the acceptance by Eliot of all the bruises and cuts inflicted on the poem. Kahani Aik Nazm Ki does full justice to the startling comparison of the published poem with its unedited version.
Pound appears to be ruthless in his incisions and excisions. The book also contains the correspondence between Eliot and Pound before the publication of the final draft that both had agreed on, with Pound having an upper hand, nearly always.
Safdar Rasheed has taken into account the poem’s unparalleled appreciation at the global level and has also discussed how in Urdu various critics responded to the poem. Rasheed also unfolds the interesting story of how the manuscripts with Pound’s edits remained inaccessible for nearly five decades.
Interestingly, the poem took nearly six years to complete, as Eliot had begun writing it in 1915, when WWI was still in its initial phase. In those six years, Eliot pondered over the concepts that he intended to include in the poem, and many of them Pound expunged mercilessly.
The book under review also contains a foreword by eminent poet Iftikhar Arif, who wonders how, in the same year (ie 1922), both James Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s The Waste Land appeared on the literary firmament and have been shining ever since. Arif highlights the significance of this poem as it attracted both admiration and criticism from both sides of the Atlantic and even from as far as the Indian Subcontinent.
Safdar Rasheed begins by giving some background to the literary modernism prevailing since the early 20th century and then moves on to discussing the manuscripts and sources of the poem. Kahani Aik Nazm Ki also dissects the intricacies of the letters exchanged between the two poets and also dilates upon the allegations of plagiarism. There is one chapter exclusively about the role that various publishing houses have played in the promotion of modernist literature, both in fiction and poetry.
Lastly, Safdar Rasheed also discusses the manuscript with reference to the idea of psychoanalysis by Freud. In short, this brief book is a useful guide to how The Waste Land came into its present shape and how it evolved over the years.
The reviewer is a columnist and educator.
He can be reached at Mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 6th, 2025
