IQBAL AND THE WESTERN THOUGHT:
A FEW PARALLELS

Mohammad Ahmad Shamsi

These days we often hear of “collective consciousness,” but this term is used in relation to a people rather than to any one of its constituent groups or the people all the world over. There is, however, no reason why it should not be employed, with even greater relevance and force, for creative writers, philosopher-poets and world historians. Separated though they are from one another by time and space—they are born in different cen­turies, they inhabit different countries, follow different religions, belong to different cultures and write in different languages—yet they often happen to think the same thoughts and, strangely enough, they not infrequently express these thoughts in almost the same phraseology. I know of no English word that takes cognizance of this phenomenon in the commonwealth of world literature, but it is fully recognised in Persian and Urdu and is described by the technical word tawārud. Whereas the Persian-English Dictionary compiled by Steingass explains it as “coming together to the watering place,” its technical meaning in Ghiyāth al-Lughāt is given as “two poets composing the same hemistich or couplet, quite independently of each other”. Thus in its broader sense we may use the term tawārud to cover two poets entertaining the same poetic fancy or two writers formulating and presenting the same idea.

Such literary and intellectual phenomena are not difficult to explain if and when they occur. Once we accept the theses that (i) “The proper study of mankind is man”[1]; and that (ii) “Great poetry drops from heaven,” we, in fact, admit that poets and writers who treat of the same subject-matter, that is to say, their fellow-men, and who owe their skill to the same power, viz. Divine inspiration, may sometimes stumble on or come by the same idea and express it in much the same way. As a Persian poet has put it,

یک چراغیست دریں خانہ کۃ از پرتو آں
بر کجا می نگری انجمنے ساختہ اند

 

 “This great mansion of the universe has but one Lamp, and it is all due to its: efracted light

That thou findest so many centres of activity busy in plying their trade here, there and everywhere]

As the source of artistic inspiration, the fountainhead of intellectual light and the mainspring of creative activity all over the world is one and the same, it is little wonder if, in effusions of poetic insight, in pieces of inspired writing and in systems of philosophic thought, we now and then come across instances of similarity in thought and expression of poets and writers of totally different cultures and civilisations. We may, therefore, rightly claim that great minds not only think alike but often cast their thoughts in much the same mould. When such similarities in thought and expression occur in two poets or writers, we may often discover some affinities between their general thinking and particular philosophy of life as well.

In this article I undertake the study of a few of Iqbal's coup-lets which contain thoughts basic to his theory of art and philo­sophy of life, but which have been expressed in no dissimilar words by some Western poets and thinkers as well. These thoughts are so deeply embedded in his own poetic, intellectual and spiritual make-up and are so delicately interwoven with the texture of his message that he cannot be suspected of having picked them up from an external source and grafted them into his own poetry. We can, however, gain deeper understanding of his meaning and better appreciation of his high rank among world thinkers if we pursue this line of study.

William Blake (1757-1827) is outstanding as a mystic and visionary in English literature. His poems are a revolt against the domination of materialism and rationalism of the eighteenth-century England. In the following “Proverb of Hell” from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” is enshrined his final word on how great art is born, prophetic poetry is produced and a true artist works his way to what the world will not willingly let die : “No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.”[2] This very idea which he expresses with the symbol of a bird is embodied by Iqbal with the symbol of a bud:

نفس کے زور سے وہ غنچہ وا ہوا بھی تو کیا
جسے نصیب نہیں آفتا ب کا پرتو[3]

 

The blossoming of a bud as an act of mere volition is but of little avail,

If it has been denied the life-giving kiss of the sun.]

Both the poets emphasise the importance of Divine inspira­tion without which genius is reduced to mere talent and poetry to lifeless versification ; they are at one with each other in declaring that self-conscious efforts, technical skill and mechani­cal virtuosity are of little help to an artist unless he is divinely inspired. Like Iqbal, Blake had the incomparable gift of express­ing the profoundest idea in the simplest of language and he, too, rejected the excessive claims of rationalism on man and did battle against materialism in his own day.

Another instance of similarity in the ideas and expressions of the two poets is provided by the following “Proverb of 1-Tell”: “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees”[4] and Iqbal's couplet:

پرواز ہے دونوں کی اسی ایک فضا میں
کرگس کا جہاں اور ہے شاہیں کا جہاںاور ہے[5]

 

[Both the eagle and the vulture take to their wings in the same air, But they wing their way to regions totally different from each other's]

In almost an identical style the two poets here express the same idea, viz. that the objects of a man's sight vary in their appearance no less than in their essence in direct proportion to the sum total of the knowledge, the wealth of experience and the sharp­ness of intellect which he brings to bear upon them. It is, there-fore, the richness or triviality of his character, the soundness or shallowness of his outlook on life and the sublimity or depravity of his ambitions that determine his function and his place in society and set the direction of his achievements and failures. Even when two men look at the same object, even when they find themselves in the same situation and breathe in the same atmosphere, they perceive the object, react to the situation and are affected by the atmosphere differently simply because their perceptions, reactions and emotions are conditioned by their antecedents, preoccupations and aspirations which in themselves are of different complexion and origin.

In his poem “Elegiac Stanzas,” suggested by a picture of Peele Castle in a storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) praises the painter's hand be-cause it “adds” to what he paints:

“the gleam,

The light that never was, on sea or land,

The consecration, and the Poet's dream.”[6]

These lines exquisitely describe how the magic touch of the artist's brush transforms common things and everyday experi­ences into pieces of immortal beauty. Iqbal expresses the same idea in the following couplet, though he shifts the scene from the world of painting to that of poetry:

جمیل تر ہیں گل و لالہ فیض سے اس کے
نگاہ شاعر رنگین نوا میں ہے جادو[7]

 

[Thanks to the poet's sensibility, roses and tulips look fresher,

brighter and lovelier still,

As and when the vision of the melodious singer—the poet –lends

them a charm and radiance, all his own]

The fact of the matter is that all artists

“(Whether the instruments of words they use

Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues)”[8]

bring us a heightened awareness of the visible world, and this is the gist of the quotations from the two poets. Wordsworth is avowedly the poet of Nature and the poet of Man, which titles are seldom conferred on Iqbal, although quite an appreciable number of his verses and poems, particularly in the earlier part of his poetic career, are devoted to holding the mirror up to Nature. Nevertheless, the great artists that these two poets are, they know the function, the demands and the niceties of their “high calling,” and the lines quoted from them comprise their authentic pronouncements on the glory and the greatness of their art.

Expressing himself with the exuberance of young men—he was only twenty-two when he wrote these words in a letter to B.R. Haydon—John Keats (1795-1821) touches upon the goal a poet sets before himself to achieve and, in fact, does achieve:

“the looking upon the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth and its contents as material to form greater things, that is to say, ethereal things—but here I am talking like a mad man, greater things than our Creator himself made.”[9]

This may appear to be too ambitious a plan to execute but, shorn of its youthful lavishness and extravagance, though without any diminution in its broad outlines and inner spirit, it takes on this sedater, soberer and saner form in Iqbal:

بے ذوق نہیں ہے اگرچہ فطرت
جو اس سے نہ ہو سکا، وہ تو کر[10]

 

[Even though Nature herself is not without a fine taste

in the matter of creation,

[Thou shouldest do what even she has failed to accomplish.]

With all their God given gifts of great sensibility and crea­tive power, artists are but men of flesh and blood and, like any other mortal of common clay with whom they spend their daily life, they may at times misunderstand the nature of their own impulses. Hence they have to exercise the greatest vigilance at the time when they are engaged in creative work lest they should be swept off their feet by a false emotion or a weak moment—an emotion and a moment which do not involve the whole of their being. Whatever they compose or create under these sham stimuli shall be lacking in conviction and may result in emotion-al anarchy or mental chaos. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) takes note of this pitfall and warns authors against “false hands that reach at one who is writing”. Like much that comes from the pen of this German novelist and essayist, the words of precaution are not very clear, but their obscure meaning leaps into the fullest clarity when they are read in the light of the following couplet of Bāl-i Jabrīl:

صاحب ساز کو لازم ہے کہ غافل نہ رہے
گاہے گاہے غلط آہنگ بھی ہوتا ہے سروش![11]

 

[It is incumbent upon a musician not to be oft his guard

for a single moment when he is composing music,

For there are times when the Muses themselves

are false in their notes.]

In Iqbal's couplet “musician” stands for all creative artists and sarosh which I have translated as the Muses—the patron goddesses of all fine arts—is used for the inspirational stimulus which, due to slackness on the part of these artists, may put them off the track of artistic integrity. The world can be spared much third-class writing by first-class writers only if this warn­ing is heeded.

In his autobiography Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washing-ton (1859-1915), an American negro, the first among his race to break free from the shackles of illiteracy and poverty and to rise to a high position in the United States, expresses his belief in the highly educative and deeply ennobling influence a man receives by living in close company of and comingin to constant contact with persons of exemplary character. He writes:[12]

“The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.”

The conviction grew upon him as a result of his personal experi­ence, but Iqbal illustrates the superiority of education by example to education by precept with an allusion to the Qur'ānic story of Abraham and Ishmael:

یہ فیضان نظر تھا یا کہ مکتب کی کرامت تھی
سکھائے کس نے اسماعیل کو آداب فرزندی؟[13]

 

[Was it the training he received from his illustrious father,

or was it any formal education he got at a centre of instruction;

What was it that made Ishmael a model of filial obedience?]

To be satisfied is to cease from struggle and to stagnate. What drives a man onward and goads him into striving for greater progress and higher attainments is an inner feeling of discontent with his present achievements. Walter Pater (1839-1894) overstates the case when he claims that “The way to per­fection is through a series of discontent,”[14] and John Galsworthy (1859 1933) talks like a doctor when he says: “I'm glad you are dissatisfied--it is very healthy to be dissatisfied.” E.M. Forster (1879-1970) presents the same idea more convincingly in his epigram that “There are stirrings of life in discontent.” The moment you read this pithy saying of Forster the following coup-let of Iqbal flashes through your memory, so great is the unison of thought and expression between the two, barring, of course,

the obvious difference that the one is from a prose writer and the other from a poet ;

نا صبوری ہے زندگی دل کی
آہ! وہ دل کہ ناصبور نہیں[15]

 

[Discontent is the very life-blood of the heart.

Ah! pity the heart which is not discontent.]

What Forster and Iqbal have said is a psychological truth and not a poetic fancy. Generally speaking, it is the idealists who are discontented, and this discontent is, strangely enough, a great motive power. So long as their ideal is not realised, they con­tinue putting in their best efforts for its realisation: their hearts are inflamed with the desire and their struggles are animated with the hope of attaining their ideal. But the moment it is attained, the joy of endeavour is gone and a feeling of satiety takes its place. A.C. Ward illustrates this very situation with a concrete example in these words:

“The climber whose eyes are on the peak while his feet are distant from it, is moved by that joy of endeavour which is lost in achievement and is gone. . . . The spirit at length embraced by Beauty is made one with Beauty and the joy of contempla­tion and desire is conditional upon our present distance from Beauty.”

Making a brilliant use of two traditional terms of our roman-tic poetry—separation from one's beloved and reunion with her—Iqbal proves how the former is far superior to the latter, or, to quote from Ward, how the joy of endeavour is lost in achieve­ment:

عالم ساز و ساز میں وصل سے بڑھ کے ہے فراق
وصل میں مرگ آرزو! ہجر میں لذت طلب[16]

 

 [In the matter of sweet inflammation of the heart and the joy of future

possession of the beloved, reunion with her yields the palm to

separation from her:

In reunion the glow of desire is extinguished but in separation it is

always there.]

Time is common to all human experience, though it is baffl­ing in its significance. What it is, few of us understand, but one thing about it is quite clear : our life is made or marred by the way in which we utilise or waste our time, act cautiously or incautiously and react or fail to react promptly, properly and adequately to its exigencies. In his story Markheim, R.L. Steven-son (1850-1894) makes the following comments on this aspect of Time :

“Every second is a cliff—if you think upon it--a cliff a mile high—high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of humanity.”[17]

Although the whole of the first stanza of “Masjid-i Qartabah” is devoted to a philosophical exposition of the reality and signifi­cance of Time, the third and the fourth couplets in it deal with Time as arbiter of men and remind us of what Stevenson says about our being put on trial every moment of our life :

تجھ کو پرکھتا ہے یہ، مجھ کو پرکھتا ہے یہ
سلسلۂ روز و شب، صیرفیئ کائنات
تو ہوا اگر کم عیار، میں ہوں اگر کم عیار
موت ہے تیری برات، موت ہے میری برات[18]

[Thou art being tested by it, I am being tested by it

This succession of night and day is the umpire of the universe.

If thou failest to come up to the standard, or if I fail to come

up to the standard,

Death shall come to thee as thy lot, Death shall come to me

as my lot]

Dealing with the march of time, Oswald Schwarz, the Austri­an psychologist, says: “Time is the greatest power in man's life; it moves on relentlessly, completely indifferent to man's wishes and fears, and those who fall out of step are left on the roadside.”[19] Iqbal's poem “Time” is a monologue in which Time itself expatiates on its own characteristics, much in the vein of the spirit of the quotation from Schwarz. The poem is original both in thought and expression, but its fourth couplet is not dissimilar from what the Austrian psychologist says about Time in the lines quoted above:

نہ تھا اگر تو شریک محفل، قصور میرا ہے یا کہ تیرا؟
مرا طریقہ نہیں کہ رکھ لوں کسی کی خاطر مئےشبانہ[20]

 [If thou vast absent from my cocktail party last night,

who is to blame for'it—thou or I

I don't believe in laying by the drink of the previous night

for an absentee.]

There is another world where time does not exist in the form in which we experience and know it here on this side of the grave. Islam urges' its followers never to forget that other world and to look upon their worldly life as a probationary period. If they lead it properly, discharging all their duties to God and man as best as they can, they are promised great reward and brilliant success in the Hereafter. Dwelling upon the impact of Islam on the very earliest generations of Muslims in all parts of the Islamic world, H.A.R. Gibb writes that Islam

“... bade every man go about his work with the fear of eternal punishment before his eyes, remembering that this world is but a temporary habitation, and that every gift it has to offer —power, riches, pleasure, learning, the joy of parenthood—is vanity and temptation, not indeed to be rejected, but to be used with a deep sense of the awful responsibilities which they entail.”[21]

This is a very objective and precise summary of Islam's view of man's life in the material world and Iqbal presents its quintes­sence in the following couplets:

کھو نہ جا اس سحر و شام میں اےصاحب ہوش
اک جہاںاور بھی ہے جس میں نہ فردا ہے نہ دوش[22]

[You man of wisdom ! do not lose yourself in this world of

alternating day and night.

Be mindful of that other world, too, in which there are neither

any tomorrows nor any yesterdays.]

یہ مال و دولت دنیا، یہ رشتہ و پیوند
بتان وہم و گماں لا الہ الا اللہ[23]

[All these riches of the world and all these bonds of

blood relationship

They are but idle images of our fancy. There is no god but God.]

What happens to us when we are wholly absorbed in the material world? Wordsworth answers the question in his well-known sonnet wherein he says:

“Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.”[24]

In his sonnet “October 1803” he further elaborates upon this very theme and concludes that

…virtues and faculties within

Are vital . . . riches are akin

To fear, to change, to cowardice and death.”[25]

These lines put one in mind of Iqbal's following couplet in which he has surpassed himself in felicity of expression, lucidity of language and music of thought:

من کی دنیا؟ من کی دنیا، سوز و مستی جذب و شوق
تن کی دنیا؟ تن کی دنیا سود و سودا مکر و من[26]

 [The world of the spirit. What is the world of the spirit ? It is all

ecstasy of delight and desire, incandescence of passion and fervour.

The world of matter. What is the world of matter ? It is all parsimoni‑

ousness about profit and loss and addiction to sharp practices.]

The Theory of Ego and the name of Iqbal are so closely asso­ciated with each other that we cannot think of the one without thinking of the other. Although its philosophical development and poetic application are all his own, there are writers belong­ing to other times and climes who emphasise the importance of one's being true to oneself and of believing in one's own worth in an objective way. For instance, this is how N.V. Peale advises his readers to lead a rich and successful life: “The first step is to plant in your mind the seed of a wholesome self-appreciation. You must cultivate a genuine understanding of the worth and significance of yourself.” The following couplet of Iqbal says much the same thing but in a poetic way:

غافل نہ ہو خودی سے، کر اپنی پاسبانی
شاید کسی مرحوم کاتو بھی ہے آستانہ![27]

[Do not neglect the development of your ego ; take good care

of ourself.

Perhaps you, too, in your own right, are worthy of all that

reverence which is the due of a great shrine.]

Iqbal's views on the place of women in society appear to be so much out of step with what is regarded as emancipated think­ing on the subject these days, that even his staunch supporters and sincere admirers sound a little apologetic about them. With-out going into the details of the vexed question, I want to quote first from George Bernard Shaw and then from Andre Maurois on the topic (woman) to which Iqbal devotes one section of nine poems in Ḍarb-i Kalīm. In recent years the pace of social change has been so fast that even the boldest thinkers of yester­day stand discredited today as orthodox and old-fashioned; these two European thinkers, therefore, may not sound very revolutionary to us these days. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to remember that in their own time they did strike terror even in the hearts of their free-thinking readers, so radical were their views on a good many subjects. Shaw was a veritable bull in the china shop of the English society and he turned quite a few applecarts there. He declares that “Man's genius is for art in its various forms, woman's for maternity.” Andre Maurois is even more explicit in his assertion that “Women are excellent assis­tants rather than original creators. Woman's real creation is her child.”[28] The last couplet of Iqbal's poem “Woman” differs from quotations from the two Western writers as much as poetry differs from prose, but in its essentials it makes the same point and strengthens it with an allusion to a historical fact :

مکالمات فلاطوں نہ لکھ سکی لیکن
اسی کی شعلے سے ٹوٹا شرار افلاطون![29]

[She could not produce any monumental work like

“The Dialogues of Plato” ;

[Nevertheless, it was the flame of a woman that emitted

the spark of Plato.]

Iqbal's Qalandar is another name—one out of so many—for the true believer or “Mu'mīn,” and it will not be far amiss if the term “Superman” made current by G.B. Shaw is used as its nearest equivalent in English. But, apart from other differences in finer shades of meaning, Qalandar and “Superman” differ from each other inasmuch as the latter is yet to be born, and if and when he makes his debut in the world, he will be all intel­lect and no emotions, whereas the former stands for the ideal already realised and embodied in the numerous followers of the Holy Prophet in the first era of Islam and afterwards. In fact Iqbal uses the term as a reminder of the historical past as well as a pointer to future possibilities. The most outstanding trait of Iqbal's Qalandar is that he is in charge of his activities; his activities are not in charge of him:

مہر و مہ و انجم کا محاسب ہے قلندر!
ایام کا مرکب نہیں، راکب ہے قلندر![30]

[Qalandar audits the working of the whole of the solar system:

Instead of being ridden by Time, he rides on it.]

If the thought-content of this couplet is paraphrased in the modern English of scientific vintage, it can easily be put in these words of Oswald Schwarz:

“Animals are particles of the stream of life, forming it and being swept along by its currents. . . . Man, on the other hand, has been given the fateful capacity to step out of this stream, to make use of it, and even to divert it if necessary. . . . In short, life happens to animals, but man is the maker of his destiny.”[31]

Discussing the merits of mere persuasion and ability to force issues, Machiavelli (1469-1527) declares: “All armed prophets have conquered and all unarmed prophets come to grief.”[32] Many an eyebrow is likely to be raised when I suggest that, even after making due allowance for the difference of temperament and approach between Machiavelli and Iqbal, I find the following couplet not much different from the quotation from The Prince, for both of them stress the role of power in realising one's goals, howsoever Divine and altruistic they may be:

رشی کے فاقوں سے ٹوٹا نہ برہمن کا طلسم
عصا نہ و تو کلیمی ہے کار بے بنیاد[33]

[No fastings of Mahatmas will destroy the Brahmin's sway;

Vainly, when Moses holds no rod, have all his words resounded]

Of course, one swallow does not make a summer and a soli­tary, stray similarity of thought and expression between two men of letters provides too meagre a ground to take their names in the same breath and to claim any affinity between them. What I have tried to do in this article is to collocate a few quotations from different Western poets and writers with the couplets of Iqbal that have struck me with their being gems of much the same wisdom in thought and felicity of expression. To my mind, this is one of the ways to demonstrate the universality of Iqbal's genius and to gain a deeper understanding of some aspects of his theory of art and philosophy of life.

References