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DEATH AND LAMENT IN AGHA SHAHID ALI’S POETRY

Adhila Abdul Hameed

Guest Lecturer, Sullamussalam Arabic College, Areekode, Kerala, affiliated to University of Calicut University, Kerala, India. 

Abstract


At present, when Agha Shahid Ali is read widely in the academia, to re-read it in the present scenario and to give meanings to the texts from different angle is necessary. The paper aims to analyze the frequent references of death and lament in his poems. Ali, through his poetry, seeks to bear witness to the tragedy, and through the metaphor of letters and post office, he tries to narrate the tragedy to the world. The paper outlines the concept of “death” in Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry highlighting instances of death, including death of his mother, poets, Kashmiris and of himself, which he predicts in one of the poems. This paper emphasizes the idea of death, conceptualized by Jacques   Derrida as an analytical tool to understand the death as idea the trope of Agha Shahid Ali and the concept of minor literature proposed by Giles Deleuze to delineate the from the image of “popular”. Furthermore discuss the strong philosophical influence of Shia Mystical Tradition in the continuous imagination of “becoming”. The paper underlines the interchange of paradise to hell in his works and on the concept of “home”. Accordingly, the paper throws light on the poet’s lament on the barbarism and violence perpetuated against the people at the time of war, and the brutality of war affecting even the communication, like receiving the mail or listening to the radio.

Keywords


death and lament, agha shahid ali’s poetry, philosophical influence.

 

Works Cited


Agha, Shahid Ali. Bone-Sculpture; Poems. Writers Workshop Publication, 1972. Agha, Shahid Ali. The Veiled Suite: the Collected Poems. Penguin Books, 2010.

Ali, Mohammed Kazim. Mad Heart Be Brave: Essays on the Poetry of Agha Shahid Ali. University Of Michigan Press, 2017.

Cultural Plurality and Revival: A Study of the Poetry of ir.amu.ac.in/ 9548/.

Forché Carolyn. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Kates, Joshua. “A Transcendental Sense of Death? Derrida and the Philosophy of Language.” MLN, vol. 120, no. 5, 2005, pp. 1009–1043. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ stable/3840695. Accessed 29 May 2021.

King, Bruce. “AGHA SHAHID ALI’S TRICULTURAL NOSTALGIA.” Journal of South Asian Literature, vol. 29, no. 2, 1994, pp. 1–20. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25 79 7511. Accessed 29 May 2021.

Izutsu, Toshihiko. The Concept and Reality of Existence. Islamic Book Trust, 2009.

Prasad, Pannian. Edward Said and the Question of Subjectivity. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016.

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. Vintage Books, 2010.

“Separation’s Geography: Agha Shahid Ali’s ‘By the Waters of the Sind’ – Daak: Postcards from the Attic.” Daak, 26 Aug. 2018, daak.co.in/separations-geograph y-agha-shahid-alis- waters-sind/.

Shadows of Past in Shahid Ali’s Poetry – IJELLH. ijellh.com/wp-content/ uploads/2015/07/22.-Bindu-Sha rma-paper-final.pdf.

Teodorescu, Adriana. Death Representations in Literature: Forms and Theories. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.

Zaidi, Nishat. “Karbala as Metaphor in the Poetry of Agha Shahid Ali.” Indian Literature, vol. 51, no. 1 (237), 2007, pp. 154–167. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23347893. Accessed 29 May 2021.

 

To cite this article


Adhila Abdul Hameed.  (2022). Death and Lament in Agha Shahid Ali’s Poetry. John Foundation Journal of EduSpark, 4(2), 19-31.

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