on fantasy, or fiction

[Unbeknown]

from two different corners of the world but complimentary or perhaps identical notions about fantasy. Maybe because they spring from teachings rooted in similar world views or maybe because they have an element of truth - even if strictly relative.

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/essay/rk-laxman-cockeyed-vision

Laxman’s humour grew darker. In an interview given late in his life, he took a deeply pessimistic view of things: “Sense of humour does not give hope. It has nothing to do with it. Hope means what? Tomorrow will be all right?” A lifetime of days spent immersed in bad news—good news rarely produces a good cartoon—did not leave Laxman a sanguine man. His sense of humour was ultimately about the Common Man’s capacity for endurance. As he once said, “You cannot do away with the Common Man.” There is no reason to think this a rousing, or even hopeful, statement.

You cannot do away with that abstraction, “the Common Man,” but—as Laxman well knew—you can do away with common men and women. Innumerable common men and women are done away with everyday, in riots, in police stations, in forest raids, on the streets by people in uniforms with titles and official badges, or in offices by signatures from civil servants’ pens. Sitting at a desk while reports of such things poured in day after day, Laxman knew all this better than most. No, he concluded at the end of it all, tomorrow will not be alright, but it must be lived through nonetheless. A sense of humour cannot give hope, but sometimes, it can provide something more modest: consolation.

The idea of consolation can be misunderstood. A “consolation prize” is, after all, something given out to losers to keep them quiet, to keep them trying, even if the game happens to be rigged against them. But there is another way of thinking of consolation, suggested in a remark by the British writer Penelope Fitzgerald, the daughter and biographer of the satirist Edmund Knox, who edited Punch in the years when Laxman first read it. Consolation, she writes, “is to be made welcome in a different world, where the laws of time are suspended, and yet which is still my own.”

The Common Man in Laxman’s world is always disappointed. But only those can be disappointed who have high expectations. Behind every one of Laxman’s cartoons is a utopian image of a world where those in power keep their promises and the Common Man is not betrayed. This is not the world the Common Man inhabits, but it is the world he dreams of.

http://www.thetolkienist.com/2014/0...te-fantasy-is-escapist-and-that-is-its-glory/

Just so a Party-spokesman might have labelled departure from the misery of the Führer’s or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery. In the same way these critics, to make confusion worse, and so to bring into contempt their opponents, stick their label of scorn not only on to Desertion, but on to real Escape, and what are often its companions, Disgust, Anger, Condemnation, and Revolt. Not only do they confound the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter; but they would seem to prefer the acquiescence of the “quisling” to the resistance of the patriot. To such thinking you have only to say “the land you loved is doomed” to excuse any treachery, indeed to glorify it. [Escape in: On Fairy-Stories, J.R.R. Tolkien.]

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the first article, although unintentionally, also sheds some light on one of the reasons as to why/how, at the time of partition, the brahmins came to hold the important positions which they did, whereas, the majority of the co-religionists of the erstwhile emperors of undivided India, found themselves filling largely unimportant and ineffective roles or none at all. There are a host of other reasons for the backwardness of Muslims in the post independence Indian society (another one of them, for example, can be adduced from some remarks in darymple's, "The Last Mughal"). Which shows how overly simplistic and even bigoted (deliberately planted by vested interests) is the view that all ills plaguing the community were wholly and solely a direct consequence of the choices and actions of the ulema who lived during the period. As if the masses were beholden to nothing and no one else but them and if, as a gedanken exercise, they are removed from the scene, the Indian muslims' progress unbends itself in a steeply rising curve for which only the sky is the limit!

 

[Unbeknown]

was wondering if it would be injudicious or inappropriate or even disliked to borrow metaphor from modern or classical works of fantasy, to describe or refer to or contemplate about spiritual matters and religious rites?

we know that symbolism played an important part in the diction of the sufiya and that was perhaps because it served multiple purposes which literalism alone could not satisfactorily address.

a good read about metaphors and their genesis: Chapter 3, Studies in Analogy.

there definitely is the side-effect of conferring on these fantasies more laurels than they are worth and also of them acquiring greater currency among muslims than they presently enjoy or is desirable, because of the possibility of the youth inadvertently absorbing some of the unwholesome notions and disagreeable influences that invariably come enmeshed with most of them.

But if, as in some cases, they are already popular among muslims of a particular country/region or cultural or professional background - these metaphors could serve some of the purposes, even if to a limited extent, which symbolism serves(ed) in the books of tasawwuf.

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Personally, I feel that what one makes of the literature of any genre, especially, what we may call, open-ended fiction, depends on one's own persuasions, internal states and intellectual maturity. At least a few (many?) works out there are so open to interpretation and "positive selective reading" that one could make of them just about anything one wishes.

Poe seems to agree, albeit in a less than flattering manner:

In short, it has been shown that no man can sit down to write without a very profound design. Thus to authors in general much trouble is spared. A novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. It is there -- that is to say, it is somewhere -- and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves. When the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended, and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light, in the "Dial," or the "Down-Easter," together with all that he ought to have intended, and the rest that he clearly meant to intend: -- so that it will all come very straight in the end.

Poe's observations are wonderfully borne out by this collection of essays.

any thoughts?

 

[Inwardreflection]

was wondering if it would be injudicious or inappropriate or even disliked to borrow metaphor from modern or classical works of fantasy, to describe or refer to or contemplate about spiritual matters and religious rites?

Learn Spiritual matters first, then you can deduce what you need to. Who knows these matters until one travels the way through extreme hardship? Otherwise no point talking about this.

 

[Unbeknown]

I think you misunderstood me. What I meant was to use metaphors for learning/teaching spiritual matters.

The books are full of them and they are in the hadith too, in-fact, even in Qur'an al-kareem.

But usually they are based on the natural world - and in the terminology of the article I linked to - the vehicle are natural phenomenon. What I am talking about is metaphors from fictional world.

To give an example, "mushk-e-khutan" is a metaphor taken from fiction/legend. It is commonly used in urdu poetry and alahazrat has used it too.

he (raDyiAllahu'anhu) writes:

shab zulf ya mushk-e-khutan
ye bhi nahi, wo bhi nahi

and then, the oft-quoted example of the mathnavi shareef....

 

[Noori]

"mushk-e-khutan" is a metaphor taken from fiction/legend.

fiction? Plz, explain.

 

[Noori]

borrow metaphor from modern or classical works of fantasy

English fiction?

actually Inwardreflection is right, our youth, and even those who are on the sufi path (slook) they do not need to know very complex cocepts of tasawwuf which only few can understand, and very few are those who can explain. Driving a new metaphor will only benefit if the concept is really understood very well.

What we need is simple lessons for self purification without knowing the terms. I know sufies who pray tahajjd, fast almost every day, recite quran as much as they can, their eyes sheding tears as soon as they listen/recite quran and na'at, they stay away from all worldly desires but they don't know most of the sufi terminnology or even the names of sufi works. They practice more than focusing on theory.

 

[Unbeknown]

fiction? Plz, explain.

khutan is a district of Tartary famous for musk deers and mushk-e-khutan refers to this superior quality musk. I dunno how but it seems I mixed up the fictitious Tartaries with the very real Tartary which actually existed and thought that the phrase is a reference from legend.

my bad. I apologize for the mistake.

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English fiction?

yes. there is sufficient material in urdu/persian/arabic already.

they do not need to know very complex cocepts

What we need is simple lessons for self purification without knowing the terms.

I surely did not mean understanding/teaching advanced tasawwuf symbolism - like the "mantiq al-tayr" of shaykh fareed-al-deen or this.

what I meant is creation of new symbols, more relevant for our times, for just the thing you said - better understanding.

symbols/metaphors need not be arcane - in-fact they should not be - if the generality of people are to benefit from them.

as I said earlier, it is everywhere in our books. Just look at the qasida mi'raj of alahazrat. one can ask, "why use all that imagery? Why not just say it all plain and simple and get done with it?" That's the whole point of a metaphor - to explain in a different, more elegant and evocative manner.

I was just asking if we can bring in newer ones.

hope that clarifies what I am trying to say/ask.

 

[Noori]

I was just asking if we can bring in newer ones

we cannot, but it is quite possible that an english speaking sufi, who has good command over sufi terms and concepts, may find some metaphors in english literature which he may use to explain to english speaking saliks.

 

[Unbeknown]

khutan is a district of Tartary famous for musk deers and mushk-e-khutan refers to this superior quality musk. I dunno how but it seems I mixed up the fictitious Tartaries with the very real Tartary which actually existed and thought that the phrase is a reference from legend.

my bad. I apologize for the mistake.

after searching high and low, I found a historical reference to khutan at last. See pdf-page #202 of this book. At-least, it seems to be the same place.

in other contexts it is interpreted as an imaginary place - see note#14 here, which I might have misread.

thanks to sidi Noori.

 

[Inwardreflection]

I think you misunderstood me. What I meant was to use metaphors for learning/teaching spiritual matters.

The books are full of them and they are in the hadith too, in-fact, even in Qur'an al-kareem.

But usually they are based on the natural world - and in the terminology of the article I linked to - the vehicle are natural phenomenon. What I am talking about is metaphors from fictional world.

To give an example, "mushk-e-khutan" is a metaphor taken from fiction/legend. It is commonly used in urdu poetry and alahazrat has used it too.

he (raDyiAllahu'anhu) writes:

shab zulf ya mushk-e-khutan
ye bhi nahi, wo bhi nahi

and then, the oft-quoted example of the mathnavi shareef....

Yes but still how can you identify a correct metaphor up until you understand the Sufi terminology in the first place? So again, one travels, experiences then is MADE TO PUT PEN TO PAPER

 

[abu Hasan]

khata, khutan, khita

http://sunniport.com/index.php?threads/ye-bhi-nahin-wo-bhi-nahin.3449/#post-8281


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for historical references:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.43996

macarius, the patriarch of antioch in his travels: [trans. from arabic]

lughat sarwari p442:

platts p487

fayruzi p585

 

[Unbeknown]

Yes but still how can you identify a correct metaphor up until you understand the Sufi terminology in the first place? So again, one travels, experiences then is MADE TO PUT PEN TO PAPER

brother, while I do not think you are wrong I do think we are approaching the issue from orthogonal directions and so it will be difficult to concur with everything.

wa's salaam