From the thirteenth to the fourteen century, two Persian poets of Indian background changed literary history. The most famous is Amir Khusrow, who has attained iconic status in South Asian historiography. The second is Amir Khusrow's friend, rival, and contemporary, Hasan Sijzi, whose work has almost been forgotten, except by devotees of classical Persian poetry. (Although in Central Asia, where the longest standing tradition of modern scholarship exists [see Salmatshoeva], and South Asia, where Hasan's poetry has until recently been neglected, scholars have begun to rediscover the founder of the South Asian ghazal [see Borah; Jahan 1998]). Although Hasan's fame does not approach that of Amir Khusrow, many medieval Persian poets acknowledged Hasan to be superior to Amir Khusrow in the domain of the ghazal, a genre introduced to South Asia. Amir Khusrow himself was among Hasan's admirers; he acknowledged the inspiration he drew from his fellow poet:
Khusrow, your poetry contains the secrets of speech
but your words breathe Hasan's poetry.
Shibli Numani, arguably the most famous modern Urdu critic, offered much the same praise to Hasan as a poet who surpassed Amir Khusrow in the domain of the ghazal (Numani 1: 131). Concerning Hasan's prose recollections of the Sufi Shaikh Nizam al-Din Awliya, entitled Fawa'id al-Fuwad (Morals of the Heart), Amir Khusrow was even more enthusiastic:
If only all my writings were inscribed with the name of Hasan
if only Hasan's book would be inscribed with my name.
In addition to his many ghazals, Hasan also composed a verse narrative called Ishqnama (Love). This narrative tells the story of a Muslim man who falls in love with a Hindu girl. Contrary to the common practice of widowers burning themselves on pyres when their husband died, the Muslim man in this particular narrative burns to death on a pyre after his wife's death. Until Amir Khusrow and Hasan Sijzi, such tales had never been part of Persian literature. These two Delhi poets Indianized Persian, and thereby influenced the future of Indo-Persian literary culture.
Morals of the Heart testifies to Hasan's preference for keeping a distance from courtly life. Like Amir Khusrow, but to an even greater extent, Hasan severed his connections with the court late in his life. From 1307 onwards, Hasan completely broke with the Khalji court and turned to Shaikh Nizam al-Din Awliya as his spiritual guide. He eventually moved to Dawlatabad, a city in southern India to which Mohammad Tughluq had moved his capital in 1327, with the intention, according to one scholar, of "preaching Islam" (Jahan 1998: 9). Hasan died just under three decades later and was buried in Khuldabad in the district of Aurangabad in modern-day Maharashtra.
Called the Sa'di of Hindustan even during his lifetime, after the most famous Persian poet and didacticist of the thirteenth century, Hasan's ghazals probe the depths of human condition, asking what it means to love, to die, and to be born. Their meaning is frequently as ambiguous as the gender of the beloved (Persian does not distinguish between male and female pronouns; I have chosen to translate the neutral third person by "she" though the beloved Hasan had in mind may well have been male). But even and especially when their precise referents are ambiguous, these ghazals seek, and sometimes find, that space where language overcomes mortality. (Rebecca Gould)
Born in Anhui Province in 1967, Yang Jian worked as a factory laborer for thirteen years. A practising Buddhist and scholar of Chinese traditional culture, he began writing poetry during the mid-'80s. Laureate of the first Yiu Li'an Poetry Award (1995), the ninth Rougang Poetry Award (2000), the first Yulong Poetry Award (2006), and the prestigious Chinese Media Literature Award (2008), his books of poetry include Dusk (2003), which was rated as one of the ten best books of the year, Old Bridge (2007), and Remorse (2009). Yang Jian also paints with ink and brush. He now lives in Ma'anshan, Anhui.
Yang Zi (1963- ), an acclaimed contemporary Chinese poet, is the author of a dozen books including Border Fast Train (1994), Gray Eyes (2000), and Rouge (2007). After his university studies in Chinese literature, he lived in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for nine years and co-founded the literary journal Big Bird. In 1990, he was appointed Vice Alderman of Tahaqi Village. Since 1993, he has lived in the southern coastal city Guangzhou and now works as the Associate Chief Editor of the Nanfang People Weekly. Also known as a poetry translator, he has introduced the works of Osip Mandelstam, Paul Celan, Fernando Pessoa, Gary Snyder, Charles Simic, and other Western poets to Chinese readers.
Ahmed ALajmi was born in Bahrain on April 13, 1958. He is a member of the Bahrain Writers Association (Usrat al-Udaba' wa-l-Kuttab), which he headed from 1999-2001. He also served as the editor-in-chief of its journal Karaz (Cherry) from 2007 to 2009. He has published twelve books of poetry from 1987 to the present. His work also has been published in various cultural publications, and he has taken part in many poetry festivals in Bahrain and overseas.
ALajmi's book I Can See the Music (2007) contains translations from the Arabic in English, Spanish, Farsi, and French. English translations of some of his poems appear in Pearl, Dreams of Shell, edited by Hameed Al Qaed (Howling Dog Press, 2007). His collection of poems As If It Is Love (2009) was published as a set of postcards in a folder, in both Arabic and English.
When German-born poet and playwright Nelly Leonie Sachs (1891-1970) was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, she observed that co-winner Shmuel Yosef Agnon represented Israel, whereas "I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people." The wide arc of her life from the fashionale Tiergarten section of Berlin to exile in Sweden began when she was born on December 10, 1891, the daughter of a prosperous manufacturer.
Growing up in the fashionable Tiergarten section of Berlin, she studied dance and music with private tutors, and began to write poetry at age 17. Sachs became renowned in Germany for her expressionist lyrics, but her life darkened with the persecution of the Jews as Hitler rose to power. Her fascination with Christian mysticism, in a collection of legends from the Middle Ages, published in 1921, led to her finding comfort in the mystical elements in ancient Jewish writings found in Orthodox Hasidism.
When she learned, in 1940, that she was destined for a forced-labor camp, a German friend, at great risk, journeyed to Sweden to meet with Swedish poet and 1909 Nobel Laureate Selma Lagerlof, who had been a friendly correspondent of Sachs for many years. Jews were not permitted to leave Germany, but, from her death bed, Lagerlof persuaded Prince Eugene of the Swedish Royal House to intercede. He arranged a visa for Nelly Sachs and her mother. Selma Lagerlof died before their arrival. Settled in Stockholm at almost fifty years old, Sachs made a modest living by translating Swedish poetry into German. With the exception of her mother, every member of her family was killed in the concentration camps.
Her first collections of poetry, But Even the Sun Has No Home (1948) and Eclipse of the Stars (1951), dealt with the annihilation of six million Jews under the Third Reich. They did not receive as much attention as Eli: A Miracle Play of the Suffering Israel, which became a widely acclaimed radio play in Germany.
Before she became the first Jewish woman to win the Nobel Prize, on her 75th birthday, she received the 1965 Peace Prize of German Publishers. In accepting the award from the land she had fled, she said (in the spirit of concord and forgiveness that are among the themes in her poems), "In spite of all the horrors of the past, I believe in you.... Let us remember the victims and then let us walk together into the future to seek again a new beginning."
Nelly Sachs died in Stockholm on May 12, 1970.
(James McColley Eilers)
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