The Illusion of Form and the Power of Tradition

Abstract

Askari was affected by the issues and consequences associated with Partition and concerned about the impact it would have on South Asian Muslim culture, Urdu language, and literature. After becoming settled in an academic position in Karachi by 1950, he launched into another energetic phase during which he wrote many of his most provocative and speculative articles on the state and theory of Urdu literature.² From the titles themselves, one can readily grasp the energy and vigor in Askari’s intellectual agenda: “The Consequences of Imitating the West,” “If the Benefit of Translation Is Concealment,” “Some Thoughts on Urdu Prose,” “Fear of Metaphor,” and “A Famine of Verbs.” He was clearly attempting to describe and discuss the literary critical issues and questions that he had tried to address in his own creative writing, albeit problematically.

Maulana Rum has said that when love enters the heart, it drives out the worship of the self. The same is the case with metaphor. Self-idolatry and metaphor are diametrically opposed, because metaphor is another name for discovering a connection between personal experience and outside objects.

—Muhammad Hasan Askari, “Isti‘are ka Khauf”¹