“I CONFESS I owe a great deal to Hegel, Goethe, Mirza Ghalib, Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil and Wordsworth. The first two led me into the ‘inside’ of things; the third and fourth taught me how to remain oriental in spirit and expression after having assimilated foreign ideals of poetry, and the last saved me from atheism in my student days,” says Allama Iqbal in his Stray Reflections (Iqbal Academy, 2008, page 53).

Quoting — and translating — these and some other reflections of Iqbal on Goethe and Germans, Prof Tehseen Firaqi says these quotes explain quite well how deeply had Iqbal studied the German nation’s philosophy of life and, especially, the writings of Goethe (1749-1832) and Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). In fact Payam-i-Mashriq, a collection of Iqbal’s Persian poetry, was inspired — as acknowledged by Iqbal himself in his preface to the book — by Goethe’s West-Ostlicher Divan, or West-Eastern Divan, which, in turn, was inspired by Persian’s great poet Hafiz Sherazi’s poetry. The title page of Payam-i-Mashriq said that it was in reply to the German poet Goethe’s divan.

Prof Firaqi, as director of Lahore’s Bazm-i-Iqbal, is also the co-publisher of the deluxe edition of Iqbal’s Payam-i-Mashriq that has just come out. Firaqi in his erudite foreword to the new edition has elaborated on Iqbal’s message presented in Payam-i-Mashriq or the ‘Message from the East’. The befitting edition, printed on art paper, has been published in collaboration with Urdu Manzil, Mandi Bahauddin, and marks the 100 years of Payam-i-Mashriq’s second, revised edition.

Payam-i-Mashriq, first appeared in May 1923 from Lahore. Its second edition was published in March 1924. Iqbal not only added some poems (nazms), ghazals and quatrains but had also amended some verses. He also deleted quite a few verses and footnotes. When compared with the first edition, the second one has 48 more pages. Iqbal was preparing the third edition and the calligraphic works were almost ready to be sent to the press when Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia requested Iqbal to let them publish the third edition. Iqbal acceded to the request and sent them the handwritten material. So Payam-i-Mashriq’s third edition appeared from Delhi in July 1929. This third edition, with corrections, was handwritten by Abdul Majeed Parveen Raqm, Iqbal’s favourite calligrapher. But a few errors had crept into the third edition, too.

The new, just-published edition, which may well be called century edition, is in fact a facsimile of the third edition published by Jamia Millia Islamia. But Prof Firaqi, known for his meticulousness and scholarship, was so careful as ever and got the errors corrected. So this is Payam-i-Mashriq’s definitive text and has been published along with a few images from Payam-i-Mashriq’s manuscript, written in Iqbal’s own hand. Another commendable feature is a Persian translation of Iqbal’s Urdu preface. It has been rendered into Persian by Dr Muhammad Saleem Akhter.

In his detailed foreword, Prof Firaqi begins with the question: what does it mean to write a reply to Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan 104 years after its publication? It does not mean, he replies, that Iqbal was trying to write a reply to the contents of Goethe’s divan page by page, but it rather means that Payam-i-Mashriq has the same importance as does Goethe’s divan when it comes to charm of style, universalism and sympathetic approach, says Firaqi. Goethe was truly a sage and his Faust is indeed a masterpiece. In Faust, Goethe has revealed the final words of wisdom as he tries to convey the message that “any individual does not have a right to life and freedom who does not obtain them every day with the rising sun,” adds Firaqi.

So Iqbal and Goethe share several notions, including that of striving for a better tomorrow, conquering the universe, conflict between good and evil and a hope that the virtuous would finally defeat the malevolent in this conflict. Goethe’s meliorism, or the philosophy that human efforts can make the world a better place, can be found in Iqbal’s message. Goethe rued, says Firaqi, that Europe was increasingly coming under the influence of emotional patriotism and nationalistic views, something that Iqbal, too, opposed. Both believed in universalism and transcendence.

Payam-i-Mashriq has been translated into several languages, partially or wholly, including Arabic, Bosniak (Bosnian language), Czech, English, French, German, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Pashtu, Punjabi, Turkish, Romanian and Urdu.

As put by S.A. Vahid, West-Eastern Divan was a work of sublime beauty by a great master and it “challenged Iqbal and evoked a response in him, which gave the world a masterpiece in the Persian language. It was apparent from the divan that according to the German sage the West was seeking spiritual sustenance from the East, and Iqbal most generously offered it. In Payam-i-Mashriq his creative genius offered spiritual warmth as well as strength”.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2024