Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature by Octavio Paz brings together three decades of his musings and reflections. Paz was not simply a prominent Mexican poet and essayist who also had the distinction of serving as a diplomat for his country. He was one of those Latin American literary giants of the 20th century — alongside Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Neruda — who influenced the way creative arts and writing are perceived, understood, critiqued, and practised across the world.

If one says that there is uniqueness in the Latin American mind and expression, a counter-argument can hold that experiences in other parts of the world are also dissimilar and unique to each other. Different peoples have their distinctive experiences over centuries that form and affect their feelings and dreams, and their view of the world. But not all literary corpuses manifest that ingenuity which would make them enjoy universal appeal. Latin American writing is like a tree firmly rooted in its habitat, but whose branches have grown far and wide, providing shade to people across continents. In my humble view, it is not just the art of storytelling, the fanciful poignancy of poetry, and insightful critical appreciation of both creative and real worlds that make the Latin American experience of writing popular among readers and thinkers in both developed and developing countries. It is the concurrence of civilisational and intellectual history of Europe with the native political and social experience of Latin America that has evolved naturally over a few hundred years.

In any culture, language sets the backdrop of imagination. Although France played an important political role in emphasising that Latin America is an extension of the Romance cultures of Europe, it is the use of the Spanish language as the principal medium for cultural discourse and creative writing — followed by Portuguese in Brazil and some French elsewhere in the continent — that brought Western philosophy, theories of criticism, a particular linguistic sensibility, and the rich literary tradition from Europe to set the backdrop of Latin American feeling and expression in art and creative writing. Hence, we see the genius of Latin American poets and writers from Paz to Neruda and from Borges to Márquez mould the native clay on the European wheel.

We see a similar genius at work in Indo-Gangetic verse. The cosmos of our poetry, which is spread over almost one millennium, is the concurrence of Vedic and Perso-Arabic civilisations. From Baba Farid to Guru Nanak, and from Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai to Nazir Akbarabadi, a galaxy of poets bring forms, idiom, sensibilities, and imaginations of two distinct civilisations seamlessly together. In fact, what I call Perso-Arabic is an amalgamated civilisation in itself to start with. When it comes in contact with the rich and powerful Vedic civilisation, wonders of poetic expression emerge.

Paz says that poetry and history complete each other, provided the poet knows how to keep his distance. He appreciates his contemporary Latin American poets writing in Spanish by saying that the best of them have not forgotten that poetry is dissidence, even within coincidence. Meaning, thereby, poetry is disagreement even if there is an agreement. It is the ‘other voice.’ It is neither the word of history nor of anti-history, but the voice that, in history, always says something else.

One such ‘other voice’ is Maulana Hasrat Mohani. Being a devout Muslim doesn’t prevent him from muddling the lines and spaces between faith and humanity. Let me end here with a few of his lines from a poem written in veneration for Krishna. See how it subverts the understanding of communal relations in South Asia while fusing two civilisational idioms and sensibilities.

Aankhon mein noor-i-jalwa-i-bey-kaif-o-kam hai khaas/ Jab se nazar pe un ki nigah-i-karam hai khaas/ Kuchh hum ko bhi ata ho ke ai hazrat-i-Krishn/ Iqlim-i-ishq aap ke zair-i-qadam hai khaas/ Hasrat ki bhi qubool ho Mathura mein haaziri/ Suntay hain aashiqon pe tumhara karam hai khaas.

[When he cast at me his especially kind glance/ My eyes lit up with a nameless unending vision/ Revered Krishna, bestow something on me too/ For at your feet lies the entire realm of love/ May that you accept Hasrat too at Mathura/ I hear you are especially kind to lovers.]

The columnist is a poet and essayist based in Islamabad

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, March 5th, 2017