THE SONNETS AND THE RUBAIYAT OF MOHAMMED FAKHRUDDIN

“The Sonnets and The Rubaiyat of Mohammed Fakhruddin”, Published by Poets International Society, No. 51 Ground Floor, Khazi Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore-560004. INDIA. Publisher: Fazila Banu,  2006.  292 pp.  ISBN 81-89345-03-6.  Price: US$10.00.

Reviewed by Patricia Prime (Auckland, New Zealand)

     The name of the poet Mohammed Fakhruddin is one that is well known.  This is scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that he is a journalist, poet, film scriptwriter and film director.  He has also authored 25 books on poetry and poetics in English.  Fakhruddin also teaches the art of writing poetry in English in various structured forms including the Japanese short forms of verse and edits the journal Poets International.

     Wherever literary value is regarded as a relevant consideration, Fakhruddin’s stature as a poet usually receives its due tribute of acknowledgement.  His poetic voice is a strongly individual one, expressing the distinctive vision and sensibility of a writer of congenial spirit.

    In introducing the book The Sonnets & The Rubaiyat of Mohammed Fakhruddin, I would first like to point out some of the salient features of the sonnet and the rubai.

      The sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, usually rhymed, usually written in iambic pentameter; a song usurped by ideas.

     A sonnet often presents an argument, perhaps a romantic plea in the guise of a legal  brief.  But it may also contain a description of a memorable scene, or a meditation, or a miniature story, or a portrait, or a list.  The rhyme scheme and stanza breaks (if any) often determine the structure of the thoughts.

     In English there are two principal kinds of sonnet: the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean (or English).  They are characterized by different rhyme schemes and different organizing principles.

     The Petrarchan sonnet has a two-part structure; the break between octave and sestet is called the volta or turning point.  It rhymes abbaabba in its first eight lines and variously in the last six: cdcdcd or cdedee or ccdccd or cddcdd or cdecde or cddcee.

     The Shakespearean sonnet, named after William Shakespeare, rhymes ababcdcdefefgg.  Its structure is four-part, based on three quatrains and a couplet, although stanza breaks are optional.  The rhyme is easier, and there are several possible turning points (although the crisis is usually reached with stanza three or the final couplet, which often moralizes or generalizes).

     The rubai (Persian, “quatrain”) is a four-line stanza rhymed aaba; usually an occasional poem, spontaneous and witty, but grounded in the mystical Sufi tradition of Islam. Rubaiyat is the plural form of rubai.

     Edward Fitzgerald’s paraphrase of 101 quatrains from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a twelfth-century work in Persian, is one of the most famous examples of a rubaiyat.

     The main problem for a modern reader, meanwhile, is that he or she encounters in Fakhruddin a poet with major interest in traditional poetic forms who, coming after the poetry of modernism, reverts to classic forms, high seriousness and the assumption that his readers are familiar with these poetics.  He is, of course, capable of tremendous variety.  The poet has had a resounding success with volumes of poetry; he writes lyrics of fluency, accommodating the idiom and syntax of speech to the singing voice.  Yet in all this he remains traditional; and these sonnets and rubai exhibit a poet grand, austere or tender, moving with impressive ease in difficult and even arcane metres.  In the sonnets he dazzles with the freedom of the basic form.  In Sonnet-1, for example, he addresses himself to his readers and expresses the way in which he is obliged to record his own mortality:

Words, words, and words, I write but to what end?
I write of life and death.  What do I know?
The world around me I may comprehend,
And know myself a little.  Even so,
Both rich and poor who, like me, stride this earth,
From vice and virtue offer no respite.
All compromise till they are of small worth,
Unwilling to divide the wrong from right!
The poet in me never is at ease.
I fear the weight of what I do not know.
I fear my sight, and what my mind foresee,
Fills me with terror.  Yes!  But, even so,
I am obliged, by what I am, to be
Recorder of my own mortality!

     The rich musicality of the sonnet form with its corresponding complexity frees the writer from the reproach of arid formalism.  Besides, Fakhruddin’s interest in the mechanics of expression is life, proceeding from a profoundly serious apprehension of the nature and function of poetry.  He has also, it should be remembered, a respectable affiliation: he is the great champion of poetry and writers throughout Indian and the rest of the world.

     We could surmise that Fakhruddin sees himself as living in a period of cultural decline in the use of language and the breakdown of poetic forms.  His response has been to reaffirm the cultural tradition; and he expresses the reason why he writes in Sonnet-30:

The poems I recite and write,
I choose for beauty all can see.
I wish to free that sudden light.
Beauty is honey-sweet, for me!
Where the beauty that I seek?
Is it for me, if it is lost?
The beauty of which I would speak
Cannot be bought at any cost.
To love, a lover must be loved,
Held by the hand in high esteem.
By loneliness what is improved?
Reality becomes a dream.
Let beauty shine!  And let this light
Be in each line I choose to write.

     Fakhruddin sees his conservatism as a solution, pointing the way to a future beyond the present crisis and reserved from disintegration.  Hence the creation of a substantial oeuvre embodying tradition, the insistence on formal definition being felt as a resource against dissolution.  The examples he offers illustrate an adherence to strict metrical patterns and strophes for the purpose of achieving energy and dynamic thrust.  Predominantly Shakespearean sonnets, they additionally preserve formality by observing a grand style in their diction, as we see in these lines from the beautiful love poem Sonnet-32:

You live for me to see I live for you.
Made for each other to make our love true
Mere love does not make life meaningful,
Mutual trust and work make life peaceful
Zeal for work earns all comfort and pleasure,

     The sonnets in The Sonnets & The Rubaiyat are presented as a vision of life as it should be lived, with love, passion and the creative urge envisioned as a compulsive quest against a background of fathomless eternity.  It is not dream, but reality that pervades this collection and keeps it on track.  Fakhruddin’s tone: observant, witty, self-appraising, is clear sighted and without illusion, but strangely reassuring in its ability to get to the core of life and love, and to place them among so much that is unknown.  In these lines from Sonnet-20 we see the poet frozen in time, waiting for the present sour time to pass and for God to give him some refreshment from his anguish:

Tomorrow, like today and yesterday
Life will surge forward like an endless breeze
Upon some artic waste: I left to freeze
As if a frozen statue of this may.

     Throughout the sonnets we have the enduring presence of Fakhruddin himself, with what might seem an optimistic approach to life, both recording and questioning, as if commuting between different impulses, in a life of constant passing through, pausing, consolidating, moving on.  He writes about what he knows, ranging from his writing, poems about despair, hurt and anger

My anger spreads all over, I go mad:
I do not know; nor know the good from bad,
Not right from wrong; nor recognise the true
Time and again, I feel that I am damned

to sonnets about his dreams, miracles and love.  Often, these more tender poems inspire some of his most striking images –

Sea without shore, the sun without moon,
The sky without stars, a rose without thorn,
Rain without thunder, an eve without morn?
Everything is well set in its own place.

     Fahkruddin’s approach to the sonnet is discreet.  Not in-your-face striving to be modern, but always trying things out – a different viewpoint, a new verbal strategy, but always with his own recognisable voice.

     The ambience of Fakhruddin’s rubai is that of a poetry of contradictions, of doubt and divisions, reflecting a contradictory reality and presenting to us the poet “caught” by the facts of his existence.  He has two great realities before him: the grandeur of language and its literature and the greatness of humanity to overcome all obstacles.  In No. 1, for example, we hear the poet express his controlled freedom as he no longer judges others:

That I no longer judge, and reason spins
A thousand tales, and therein each pair wins;
but woe expiation for their actions,
Lovers commit many uncalled for sins.

     Again in No. 3, we sense the passion of this poet and his need to hone his crafts: not only the craft of poetry, but the craft of love:

 

Listen to the sweet music of my heart,
Feel the touch with passion and be a part
of the same body and soul burning fire;
learn the craft of love since life is an art.

     The words the poet leaves behind him at his death will remain forever indelibly part of his reason for living in this world, as he writes in No. 7:

Words are icons of immortality,
Verses composed live as an entity
Of power, lead all from darkness to light,
Bards, through words, attain immortality.

     There is in the rubai a beautiful layering and metaphoric blending of seemingly different realms of experience that reveal an organic unity eluding the casual reader.  There is neither beginning nor end to these poems.  Understanding is, first and foremost: reading, going back and forth to gather up themes, topics, images and suggestions.  But always it allows the speaker to bring knowledge under control and to write about himself and his experiences:

 

Expanse of mind turns as vast as the sky,
When man gets enlightened with ecstasy;
The long search for the truth comes to an end,
The earth’s spin too is a great mystery.

     In the poet’s own opinion, his poetry gives us that organic quality that unifies artistic expression with all other walks of life.  In contrast, the rubai about love, as in 23:

Yes, our love is as true as honeydew,
our heart beats sync to form a song of love;
Words are symbols of deep-rooted pine trees,
Lovebirds exchange eyes and pledge to be true.

have a sincere approach to the joys and vicissitudes of relationships.

     As with many of the rubai in this collection a brief sample does not convey the muscular emotion of the language – the vibrancy, the depth of feeling that Fakhruddin builds up poem by poem.  The power of this collection is definitely in its slow accumulation of feeling.  One of the things I really liked in the book was the movement between personal and impersonal.  I also enjoyed the rhythms of the poems.  In 39 I found it impossible not to savour the rhythm of

My days will end that I do not know when,
Let me pen my burning thoughts until then
Moonshine kisses snow peaks, nightingale sings,
Flowers blossom in spring.  Zephyr is Zen.

A soothing and yet somehow sad poem, the beautiful images contrasting with the poet’s thoughts of death.

Fakhruddin has more to say for himself than a review will permit.  He knows that he has a moral obligation to himself and to his poetry and if he fails to live up to his poetic office as he conceives it, then he will have failed to live a full life.

     Thus it is not a simple creed that he gives us in these poems; he makes his admissions, backtracks, sidetracks, moves passionately from one theme to another.  Fakhruddin’s view of himself and his moral predicament comprehends the contradictions: it does not cancel them out, nor does it move to judgement.  The man in these poems moves in the mode of verbal music; the yes-and-no, the multi-fariousness of his soul and its experience is here: nothing annulled or reconciled but everything held in taut suspense in the flux of life.

BOOK REVIEW:

BUSY BEE BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY
--- Worth prescribing as a Text Book for Degree Classes All over India!

By Our Literary Critic

Busy Bee Book of Contemporary Indian English Poetry, ISBN 978-81-87619-13-0,
Edited by Dr. P. Raja and Dr. Rita Nath Keshari, Published by Busy Bee Books, D 88, Poincare St., Olandai-Keerapalayam, Pondicherry-605004, India. P.B., 524 Pages, Price: Rs. 495

Here is an edited volume with a difference, perhaps the first of its kind in the History of Indian English Poetry Anthologies. The essential endeavour of the editors of this volume of poetry has been to project the most significant aspects of the achievements of the following 17 poets: Shiela Gujral, R.R.Menon, I.K. Sharma, Baldev Mirza, M.L. Thangappa, D.H. Kabadi, I.H. Rizvi, Ashok Khanna, P.K. Mujumder, Mohammed Fakhruddin, D.C. Chambial, R.K. Singh, P. Raja, B. V. Selvaraj, Manas Bakshi, K.V. Raghupathi and Rita Nath Keshari.

Secondly, the contribution of these poets to Indian English Poetry promises to be a continuous process. Therefore, the editors refrain from pronouncing any final judgment on them.

In this beautifully brought out anthology each poet is presented with a photograph, a detailed CV, twenty poems, and an exclusive analysis of their poems.

In the introduction, the editors say, “ever since its genesis in the mid-nineteenth century Indian English poetry progressed through various stages of imitativeness and originality to emerge as an important literary tradition by the end of the colonial period. In the early50’s Indian English poetry had registered its palpable presence on the national literary scene but it still needed to surmount major hurdles. Diehard critics and intellectuals under the nationalist banner pressed for the revival of pre-colonial heritage and culture. Secondly, Indian English poets were treated as incapable of writing significant poetry in English though they had received formal training in this language.”

Giving a brief sketch of various poets and their contribution to enrich Indian English Literature, the editors say, “With the dawn of the new millennium Indian English poetry has gained a new momentum. Each worthwhile Indian English poet contributes to this literary stream to forge new facets of its remarkable identity. Contemporary Indian English poetry displays a range of subject-matters which have gradually widened to let the actual Indian and international (not always western) experience co exist. While social alienation and existentialist dilemmas continue to dominate much of the poetry, the ecological and social environments draw committed response from the poets. These two diverse aspects reveal that skepticism and fragmentation of the self are often followed by the desire to reintegrate into the rich complexity of one’s poetic identity. This paradox has certainly an aesthetic sanction because it churns out a wide range of ideas, images, metaphors, styles and lexicon than ever before.”

One of the most impressive features of this unique book is that the editors’ style of critical appreciation and presentation of the works of each and every selected poet based on caliber, knowledge, creativity, imagination, visualization, technique know how of writing poetry, skill, melody, rhythm and rhyme scheme, usage of syntax, imagery, metaphor, conceit, alliteration, symbolism, sound effects, simplicity, clarity, brevity of expression and what have you?

The editors have tried their level best to probe into works of selected poets and have tried to unearth the insights in each poet who submitted a bunch of 20 of his best poems on request by the editors, and have highlighted the chemistry of writing poetry in comparison with world literature in general and Indian English Poetry in particular.  In fact, this book is a must for the students of world literature, researchers and teachers of Indian English literature.

The editors have not only analyzed the content in each poem but also thrown light on structure and other ingredients used in making of a poem. It’s really a tremendous job and mind blowing exercise indeed! Incidentally, both the editors are established poets and Professors in English language. The lucidity and simplicity of explanation of each and every poem by the editors forces a literary critic to recommend the book to be prescribed as a text book for Degree students all over India!