Into and Out of English Literature

Into and Out of English Literature

Maryam Sakeenah

“God is dead,” Nietzsche had said_ a nihilist and rebel’s outspoken exclamation. As a starry-eyed teen, I loved the sheer guts of him_ the boldness, the defiance, the rebelliousness. Notwithstanding my conceptual disagreement, secretly I admired the spirit.

I found the same spirit running through the works of a number of moderns. Too naïve to objectively analyze the ideas propounded, the streak of loudmouthed rebellion and brazenness had its own exclusive glam and glitz, a rare appeal that got me interested_ rather, hooked. One wouldn’t find ‘cool’ daredevils and rebels in any of those prosaic, fact-studded subjects. Western Literature, man, was cool.

This image was associated with anyone who had a thing for English Literature. Being a student of English Literature set you apart from the common lot. You talked the talk and walked the walk of intellectually enlightened and English-speaking ‘elite’ of the college. Here, we studied people who wrote poetry in drugged stupors, who’d rather commit suicide than ignobly succumb to Fate, drank to drown all reality and womanised unabashedly. We didn’t study those dully pious and all too straight stereotypes of Pakistan Studies and Islamiyat.

And so, I sailed into my Masters in English Literature.

I delighted in words, especially those that were high-sounding. I revelled in the passion of the Metaphysicals_ the passion of Donne, the blind trust, hope, courage and faith of Milton _ ‘justifying the ways of God to man.’

Enter Darwin and the materialists. Life is a struggle for survival in the primordial jungle, no more. Morality and society evolves. This was an age of spiritual, ideological turmoil. Industrialization, after the initial blissfulness, played havoc in society, turning it all too complex for a naïve, toothless Christian spirituality to grapple with. It didn’t figure effectively any more. Had to be dragged on, conscientiously. The Romantics defended well, but spoke of another world, a forgotten dimension that was easy to obviate and ignore in a world taken over by machines and mechanization. The slow poisoning of the spirit was reflected in the literature portraying the decadence of a society shaken at the core, where universal values and religion lived on as masques.

Nations armed to the teeth with the deadly products of Industrialization. Thriving munition industries, overblown nationalism, maniacal wrangling for territory, exploitation of the weak. The war-mongering of power-hungry nations spurred on the descent further, as nations prided themselves for material formidability: An evolution backwards, man to ape- the primordial instinct of ape-man indulging in brawls for possession of caves magnified onto the world map. Darwin, perhaps, was right. Back to the jungles went man as he killed his own kind for territory, or dollars, possession, power, wealth, national ego. Quickly, the symptoms made their presence felt_ godlessness. Despair, nihilism, agnosticism, agnostic existentialism, absurdism_ hallmarks of modern literature. It was modern to be confused about life and God, hopeless or fashionably agnostic. Confused about God and couldn’t care less. He doesn’t figure any more. God packed away in a carton and put into disuse. 

But modern literature, on a more insightful look, is an ironic protest against all that went wrong. As students of English Literature, colonized in the mind, we were never taught to think that these writers were presenting before us the horrible sepulchre of Western society, and were protesting, asking why, groping for a solution but tragically never finding it… The norm here was to admire the choice words, the images, the philosophies of agnosticism and atheistic existentialism, to admire the West’s achievement of a secular milieu, its ‘freedom’ of permissivism and ‘laissez faire’; We were not encouraged to analyze why it was that these writers wrote thus, what was going wrong that these people were showing through ironic contrast and crying out for; that in this emptiness lay hidden an irony_ a protest against the empty soul of the Western mindset, an appeal to find the way out which had eluded them. We trivialized these writers by not recognizing their immense dilemma, we sinned against their true unspoken message and their piteous appeal.

By the time we reached modern and post-modern literature, we had undergone rigorous training in literature. We fitted perfectly into the stereotype of the ideal English Literature student. The training was complete. We could appropriately nod away at words of irrefutable 'wisdom' that came with the authority of some celebrated name. It was stifling. And out of those two years, all 16 of us in the batch emerged as clones_ the triumph of our education system. A whole breed of talk-alike, act-alike young ladies with polished English. Labelled Masters in English Literature. Equipped to sweep anyone off their feet with a well-worded phrase or a wise cynicism_ all borrowed. We learned to imitate, and imitate well.
We thought that we were growing into great analysts and critics, and yet we ended up saying 'yes', and 'no' just when and where we were expected to. And it happened so insidiously that we did not even know we were brain-controlled, that our minds had become colonies of borrowed ideas. We were taught to be uncritical, to admire and appreciate all the great ideas of all the great writers with remarkable indiscrimination. The indiscrimination that Literature teaches you for whatever is English, and whatever is Literature. We don't study these writers, we learn to admire them, flatly.

I read Hardy, Brecht, Beckett, Hemingway, O’Neill and the absurdists. Modern literature_ literature evolved, chiselled, perfected to its high point_ at its most deep, philosophical, stirring, complex, rich; at its most obscure and elusive, and that lent it an even greater appeal. “I love ‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf”’, meant I ain’t thick_ I know what it’s all about. So I loved Sartre, Pinter, Joyce, Woolf, Albee with that characteristic indiscrimination_had to.

To think of it, it would be interesting to be an objective observer in a class of English Literature. When you enter a world where the ‘wisdom’ of nihilism is discussed and admired, where Hedonism and Agnosticism are appreciated for the artistry with which they have been rendered, when you reject a standard of morality as uninsightful and unsympathetic, a kind of ‘group psychology’ sets to work. Conventions are overturned with recklessness, nothing holds ground_ and, encouraged by the juvenile spirit of rebellious all-embracing scepticism, it becomes pressing to give vent to the long-muffled uncertainties, doubts and confusions within, masked in the jargon of intelligent, bold questions.

Western nations with their amoral adventurism, stumbled into the World Wars, did away with a religion that had been reduced to religiosity after having been consigned to the clergy_ and ended up in an absurd, meaningless, chaotic vacuum of a world where there's 'Nothing to be done' except wait for a remote, supercilious 'Godot'.

Reading plays of the absurdist school the way we did was like being taught to close your eyes, grope in the dark and pity yourself for being a poor blindman consigned to the darkness. And the great 'enlightenment' left to us at the end was to pity ourselves, to rant about a meaningless, unfair life, to hate it and say how bad everything is, how unliveable life is. But the core message that cried out from within went entirely unheard, ‘We perverted the meaning of our lives thus… do not sin against life, discover it, live it!’ But we universalized the 'wisdom' of nihilism the postmodern world had reached after all its adventuring; we universalized the 'wisdom' of 'Nothing you can do about it', of 'The essential doesn't change', of 'No use struggling'. (quoted from Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’).

But in my honest moments I reflected_ what was amiss? I could criticize, analyze, dissect, debate_ but there was no clarity, no anchor to hold on to… “Here there was rock and no water…” (T.S Eliot). The bigwigs of literary criticism took me around labyrinths, never pointing Homewards. They had everything to offer, everything to satiate the intellect, they led you to question, to doubt, to complain, to rebel, to cry out, to search_ but never pointed towards the solution, the answer that could loosen up those knots. It was like a long, arduous travelling with nothing but a dead end for a destination. And that directionlessness made the whole journey futile, absurd, pointless. Something blocked out the way out, making the road a blind alley. With all their seasoned wisdom, these men were pitiable. Why was it that Hemingway committed suicide, Brecht couldn’t bear to get out of his drugged, drunken stupors, O’Neill couldn’t ever come to face himself, Tennessee Williams left a suffering family behind as he walked out, Nietzsche shut himself up in his room madly striking the piano keys? Despairing, shattered, groping in the dark, screaming inside, running away from the Nothingness that haunted them. Something was very, very wrong. Surah Shu’ara spoke loud in my ears: “As for poets, the erring follow them.

Hast thou not seen how they stray in every valley,

and how they say that which they do not?

Save those who believe and do good works, and remember Allah much!”

Iqbal had said that what was wrong with Nietzsche was that he had said ‘No God!’ but couldn’t take the next step to say ‘Except Allah.’ The vacuum had to be filled, hence the ‘Overman’ he invented_ the human self ruggedly individualist, unhindered by morality; deified. Chesterton was right: “When you don’t believe in God, you don’t believe in Nothing_ you believe in Anything.” But that Anything is merely a cheap substitute. It does not truly, deeply fill up the inner spaces, never satiates. Eyeless Western Literature never satiated.

My infatuation with English literature coincided with my personal discovery of my own religion. As I discovered that God_ nay, Allah_ can be befriended and loved, I developed a relationship with Him and began to hear Him in the Quran, speaking to me, about me. It was fulfilling, and worked wonders in me. I was energized, and felt untapped reserves of spirit and passion rage within.

Faith has great transforming power which I experienced then. Suddenly, Milton didn’t satisfy, Donne didn’t satiate. For what they could give was all but a little droplet of the oceanic vastness the Quran offered. It was Allah speaking, and all human voices drowned in the majesty, the grandeur. Poetry made ideas sound pretty, yes, but I think I began to realize why the Quran scoffs at the Kuffar’s allegation of it being poetry. Mere poetry. The Divine Word doesn’t depend on its charms.

What these wise men could only speak, was so meaningfully magnified in action in the Seerah… Action, they say, has a voice so much louder. Suddenly, the Metaphysical Poets did not count. Dwarfed, dimmed, stripped off all vanity. Was it not Milton who had sung the glory of the Imperialist spree? And Donne who blasphemed a man as universal an epitome of the best in humanity as the Prophet (S.A.W) of Islam?

I remember the day a friend called up and we discussed Beckett over the phone. We discovered we shared the silent sentiment about the man no one could ever say in class. ‘If he says,’ she said, ‘that he isn’t sure about God, or that we wait but He never comes, yar, he’s wrong. No matter what yar, Allah tu hai. He IS. I know it in my bones, and it’s the only thing in life I am absolutely certain about.” We laughed at the sudden self-discovery, and then cried together, for it was the first step out of the blind alley, that first scepticism that defined our real direction towards the ideal lingering in the far distance. It defined the choice we made_ Literature has no more to offer than the fleeting pleasure, the high, the refinement of the senses and the sensitivity to things around. But this sensitivity that Literature arouses seeks its answer, a panacea not to be found in Western Literature. And so, I left my lifelong passion for Literature behind. No more would I go through the mockery of sitting in the evenings reciting long verses or revelling in well-worded passages from James Joyce. It had had its time.

I began to see that modern Western Literature reflects a society’s degeneracy. There has to be something awfully wrong deep inside when your literature stops giving courage and inspiration and the zest for living on more meaningfully, when it fails to leave you with some enlightenment except through ironic contrast. We cannot see that behind the absurdism, the godlessness and despair of post-war Literature is the horrible sepulchre of a system erected on materialism and utilitarian amorality. We cannot see that the ghastly world that Literature of this time depicts is an ironic comment on what that civilization lacked, what it had done to itself as a slow suicide, and what the cost of it has been. And it has taught me to value a faith that animates the universe for us with meaning, with vitality; a faith which resonates in our soul by teaching us to live meaningfully and with courageous acceptance. I began to see with my own eyes. I began to see things from my own perspective, deriving a meaning valuable to me, recognizing through it the value of what we have been blessed with in the form of Islam. I began to put things in perspective, to put in contrast the abject fatalism of 'No use struggling' with the vital, throbbing, courageous submission of Iqbal's 'taqdeer kay paband nabaataat o jamaadaat / Momin faqat ihkaam e ilahi ka hai paband.' And the difference is Faith.

I cherished the learning my experience had afforded. I learnt that Literature and philosophy open the doors of doubt, and Science provides you with material proof_ but none can give the belief that provides certainty, conviction, clarity. The human mind cannot travel beyond a certain limit earmarked for it. Yet at the same time, the very same mind tells that the Truth and the Reality does not stop at this limit. It knows something lies beyond, which is greater. Things unattainable by the mind, if not sorted out through belief, remain a blur_ confused, unclear, dubious_ which is why it becomes subject to so many differences, interpretations and views men futilely wrangle over.

As I weaned myself away from Western Literature, I turned more to the works of Iqbal, Hali, Syed Maudoodi, Azad. The difference was refreshing, rejuvenating. And then, there was the Quran_ that standard, that ideal which had never let me settle for anything lesser than itself; anything merely of the world. It was the spark it had ignited that kept me from conversion to the creed of English Literature. It was, as Yousuf Islam had put it, “As if I were in a dark room, and suddenly the light had been turned on.” That’s the least one can really say.

Going over Abul Kalam Azad’s ‘Eeman Aur Aqal”, I paused at the following enlightening passages:

“If, in this universe, there are laws even for a single leaf in a tree, and a single rock in the mountain, will there not be a law for a man who is at the central point in all creation, its apex and its zenith? And if all being, all existence and all life exists and goes on because it is submitted to that Truth and its laws, will this submission not be essential to the existence and the elevation of the human being?”

“That final destination, in search of which the seeker of knowledge had set out, is as elusive today as it was 2,500 years ago. The closer we wish to get to it, the farther it moves away…but without a solution, we cannot attain peace in the heart… the simple truth that will get us back to the destination where everything begins to make sense is that a living power, a being exists behind the veil. As soon as this is accepted, the status quo transforms and one feels as if one has come out of darkness, into the light. Now, wherever one turns, there is light. Every question attains its answer. Every need and demand is satisfied, every thirst is quenched. Perhaps, all the tangles were a single seal which gave way at the touch of this Key.”

The darkness, futility and eternal, desperate wanting I had encountered in Western Literature, after all, had an explanation that made a perfect fit:

“If there is no purpose and Will behind it all, then there is nothing except darkness here_ but if a will and a purpose is at work, everywhere is light. In the essence of our natures, there is a need, a desire for light. We are scared of getting lost in darkness, and want to travel towards the light_ and the way towards the light is only reached through the acceptance of that one reality as the solution we need. Clear is the Pattern_ both great and sublime, as well as aesthetic… but are we to believe that this Pattern is without an Intelligence? We pretend that it is so, but in the heart, we feel that believing this to be true will be a psychological and spiritual suicide.”

I learnt that only travelling in search of the Divine, in its direction makes you progress till you reach the zenith of humanity: “To envisage Fate, all clam… that is the height of Freedom” (Keats). If the direction is not there, despite the miles you traverse, the knowledge your head is full of or the words at your command, there’s merely regression into the Black Hole of Nothingness. This, I realized, is an injustice, a crime, a sin against our own nature, our own humanity. As Azad writes:

“Within man lives an instinct that desires elevation and ascent to something higher, some uncharted territory. His vision and sight look upward in their search. The question is, what can be the goal, the target, the ideal of this sublime urge to rise limitlessly? If this Divine Ideal is removed from its goal and vision, the searching spiritual eye that wishes to attain height will have nothing to look up to but blank space. All that exists in the realm of matter is lower than man. It cannot be looked up to by the human self. In the skies are the heavenly bodies_ solid, liquid and gas_ but none among them worthy of being the Ideal and the Aim to be sought_ not the sun, not the stars, not the moon… Everywhere around him is degeneracy and lowliness that take him to a descent from his human plane into the pits of animal desire, though his soul craves to soar above…”

“God, and the need for Him is an instinctual, a natural impulse and a need. Natural needs exist only when the means for their fulfilment exist too.”

If all was matter, why does the material fulfilment of all physical desire never seem enough to truly satisfy? Why has wealth and physical pleasure never blessed the human spirit with contentment?

In my teenage search for answers and shortcuts for happiness, I had once picked up Russell’s ‘The Search for Happiness.’ A very detailed discourse, a great effort to show the way to happiness_ and yet, a failure_ ineffective, incomplete, with loud silences. Many a reader of that philosophical discourse still seeks the attainment of Peace, while the unlettered medieval Arabs of that first Muslim community so consciously relished the blessedness of Peace in their hearts, their lives. No believer in ‘isms’ attained it, or could lead his followers to it. And Islam, I am told, means ‘Peace through complete submission.’

As I turn shut the lock-key of the chest holding my cherished treasuries of English Literature, I feel overcome with a surge of emotions: mixed feelings of old association with those fingered and thumbed pages, like throwing away a childhood toy or growing out of an old habit. Also, a feeling of thankfulness and gratitude for the learning, the clarity and direction gained by throwing it all overboard. But the feeling that lingered as I closed that door shut behind me was sympathy for those lost souls, sensitive and searching, that kept languishing in the dark_ for the light was kept away from them; and a silent protest against all those barriers and facades of prejudice, preconceived notions, plain ugly lies and iron curtains tailored to obtrude the honest man’s journey to the clarifying Light of faith. 

I make a silent prayer, said first by my Prophet (Sallallaho alaihi wa alihi wasallam):

“My Lord! Show me the Truth as the Truth and help me follow it; Show me the falsehood as falsehood, and help me abstain from it.”