Iftikhar Arif

Iftikhar Arif
Born	Iftikhar Hussain Arif March 21, 1943 (1943-03-21) Lucknow, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, British India
Occupation	Urdu poet
Nationality	Pakistani
Ethnicity	Muhajir
Genres	Ghazal
Notable work(s)	Mehr-i-Doneem, Harf-i-Baryab, Jahan-e-Maloom, Kitab-i-Dil-o-Dunya
Notable award(s)	Faiz International Award 1988 Waseeqa-e-eEtraaf 1994 Baba-e-Urdu Award 1995 Naqoosh Award 1994 Pride of Performance1989 Sitara-e-Imtiaz1999 Hilal-e-Imtiaz2005
Influenced Urdu poetry

Iftikhar Hussain Arif, PP, SI, HI (Urdu: افتخار حسین عارف) commonly known as Iftikhar Arif (افتخار عارف) (b. March 21, 1943 Lucknow) is an Urdu poet, scholar and littérateur from Pakistan. His style is romantic Urdu poetry. He has headed Academy Adbiyat, the Pakistan Academy of Letters and Muqtadra Quami Zaban, the National Language Authority. He has been decorated with Hilal-e-Imtiaz, Sitara-e-Imtiaz and Presidential Pride of Performance, highest literary awards by Government of Pakistan.

Early days and education

Iftikhar Arif was born in Lucknow in 1943 and lived there till his migration to Pakistan in 1965. During this period he received his education at the Lucknow University where one of his teachers was Ehtisham Husain. He also studied at the Madressa-i-Nizamia, Farangi Mahal, and Government Jubilee College, Lucknow. He obtained a M.A. from the Lucknow university.

Career

Iftikhar Arif came to Pakistan in 1965 and soon thereafter won fame not just on account of his poetry, but also for his performance in the programme Kasauti, along with Obaidullah Baig on Pakistan Television. Coming to Pakistan and settling in Karachi, Iftikhar Arif started his career as a Radio Pakistan newscaster. It was through Altaf Gauhar, then federal information secretary, that he was selected and appointed head of scripts in the Karachi television centre. He teamed up with Obaidullah Baig and won the Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) quiz show of the 1970s, Kasouti. Later, he spent 13 years in England working for the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) -sponsored Urdu Markaz. Coming back to Pakistan, he worked first as head of the National Language Authority (Muqtadara Qaumi Zaban), and then as chairman of the Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL)and presently he is working again as a chairman of National Language Authority(Muqtadara Qaumi Zaban).

Works and achievements

IftiKhar Arif, 14th August 2011 Faisalabad

A famous couplet by Iftikhar Aarif
Shikam ki aag liye phir rahi hay shehar-ba-shehar
Sag-e-zamana hein hum kia hamri hijrar kia

Iftikhar Arif is a poet of Urdu. Three of his collections, Mehr-i-Doneem, Harf-i-Baryab and Jahan-e-Maloom have been published in many editions. In the introduction to the first book, Faiz Ahmed Faiz says that he has not only found traces of Meer and Ghalib in Iftikhar’s poetry but also of Firaq Gorakhpuri and Noon Meem Rashid. Tributes have also been paid to him by such persons as Annemarie Schimmel, Mumtaz Mufti, Meerza Adeeb, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi, Anna Suvorova and Upinder Nath Ashk. Prof Mujtaba Husain feels that “Iftikhar Arif’s poetry has the dash and pomp of Aatish and Yagana but he is without their aggression.”

Annemarie Schimmel writes in an article about him The theme of suffering, suffering for a noble cause, suffering in the hope that a positive meaning will emerge, has been repeated throughout Islamic poetry for centuries-- ¬¬just as Husayn and his family suffered on the waterless battlefield, just as Hallaj, the martyr of love, was put to the gallows and became an immortal symbol of reaching the goal of Divine Love through death; just as the lovers in classical Persian and Urdu as well as in Sindhi and Punjabi folk poetry feel in the cruelty of their persecutors the hand of the beloved.

This theme runs through a large part of recent Urdu poetry, particularly that of lftikhar Arif. He is modern in his use of language, but classical in the way he hides his burning concerns in allusions, symbols and metaphors¬--an art perfected by classical Persian and Urdu poets. lt allows the poet to voice his deepest concerns, hopes and fears in a form that is not time-bound but valid for every time and expresses (as Ghalib once said) what is in everyone's soul.

l sincerely hope that European and American readers will discover in this volume a new world of poetry, hitherto unknown to them--a world whose fascination may lead them to explore further the beauties of Urdu literature and discover both its rich heritage and its promise for the future.

Anna Suvorova writes about Iftikhar Arif's poetry: A further aspect of Iftikhar Arif's work may be termed 'existential'. And this is most universal. Always balancing on knife-edge between life and death, hope and despair, love and emptiness, his poetry expresses the existential 'homelessness‘ the 'exile and loneliness' of a human soul in a world loaded with weapons of mass destruction. A famous poem of Arif's, 'The twelfth man' , represents 'the typical situation of contemporary man--the lifelong wait before being either ruined or venerated. But in the end, pure recognition of divine and worldly realities comes to the poet through a sharp quarrel with his own ego.

The final dimension of lftikhar Arif's poetry is more or less at the surface--I mean its socio­political context. 'Exile', 'homelessness' and 'wandering in the strange lands' mere existential symbols or poetic allusions of Mir and Ghalib, but the experience of the poet and a great number of his compatriots. The whole Pakistani poetry of the recent past has been 'written in the season of fear' and only recent events in that country will perhaps bring the “climate of deliverance”.

To me, Iftikhar Arif is not a rebellious poet. Being a philosopher, and a sharp observer, he is preaching a stoic 'dignity of endurance' as a protest. Sometimes this way is longer and than revolt.

The Oxford University Press has selected a portion of Iftikhar Arif’s poetry and had it translated into English. The collection has been published under the title, Written in the Season of Fear. The introduction to the book was written by Harris Khalique, a poet in English, Urdu and Punjabi.

Arif's poetry has been translated into a number of languages, including English, Russian, German, Persian, Hindi and Bhasha. A recording company has released a Pakistan Television Production of ghazals titled “Chup Durya” containing poems by Iftikhar Arif rendered by a number of prominent Pakistani singers, including Malka-i-Mooseeqi, the late Roshan Ara Begum, the late Madame Noor Jehan and Iqbal Bano etc.

Awards

Hilal-i-Imtiaz (2005), Sitara-e-Imtiaz(1999), Pride of Performance (literature 1990), Baba-e-Urdu Maulvi Abdul Haq Award, (poetry, 1995), Naqoosh Award (1994), Faiz International Award for Poetry by Aalami Urdu Conference and a number of other prestigious National and International literary awards.

Theses written

Theses of post graduate level on life and works by Nargis Gul Malik from Karachi University Iftikhar Arif: Fun Aur Shakhsiyat, Liaqat Ali of Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan Iftikhar Arif ki Shaeri ka Funni Wa Fikri Tajzia and Ayza Qureshi of Islamia University Bahawalpur Iftikhar Arif Bahaesiyat Shaer.

Books & Publications

• Mehr-i-Doneem (1983)

• Harf-i-Baryab (1994)

• Jahan-e-Maloom

• Shehr-e-Ilm ke derwazay per (2006)

• Written in the Season of Fear (English translation)

• The Twelfth Man (translation of Barhwan Khilari by Brenda Walker, 1989)

• Kitab-e-Dil-o-Dunya (2009)

• Modern Poetry of Pakistan (2011, editor)

External links

• Iftikhar Arif expressing his views on today's poetry. and then reciting some of his poetry. 29/04/2011
• author page at Lyrikline.org, with audio and text in Urdu, and translations into German.
• Official website of National Language Authority
• Official website of Pakistan Academy of Letters