Prof Shafey Kidwai chairs sessions at Festival of Letters organized by Sahitya Akademi

ALIGARH : Noted multilingual scholar, columnist, translator and Director, Sir Syed Academy, Aligarh Muslim University, Prof Shafey Kidwai (Department of Mass Communication, AMU) chaired the first session of the birth tercentenary seminar on Mir, organized by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, during its “Festival of Letters 2024”, world’s largest literary festival, being organized from March 11-16, to celebrate the great literary heritage of India that comprises the literary oeuvre of various languages and dialects prevalent in the country.

In his presidential remarks, Prof Kidwai said that Mir’s multilayered poetry cannot be understood through the prism of his biographical details. The poet refers to a plethora of events with no traces of physical presence .The narrator is not Mir himself. Further his poetry is not all about unrequited love and unprecedented misery land despair.

He said that Mir’s crying, lamentation and a marked sense of dejection are human traits, not attributes of poetry, one has to go beyond these stereotypes.

He also referred to uncensored biography of Mir which has recently been published. Earlier, many anecdotes that were appended by Mir, were deleted and not included in Urdu translations. Now, Anjuman Tarraqai Urdu Hind has done well by publishing its full text.

Prof Kidwai also presented a talk on “Urdu Literature in the Past Seven Decades” at another national seminar on “Post Independence Indian Literature”, and he will chair a session March 16 at a symposium on the “Life and Works of Gopi Chand Narang” at the Sahitya Akademi’s Festival of Letters.