- Dept. of Humanities
Faculty Office Building 524
SUNY Canton
Canton NY 13617 - (315) 386-7129
Ali S H E H Z A D Zaidi
SUNY Canton, Humanities, Faculty Member
- Latin American Studies, Latin American politics, Academic Freedom, Spanish Literature (Peninsular), Romance philology, University, and 29 moreMircea Eliade, Corporate University, Educational reform, Humanities, Higher Education, Shakespeare, Pedro Calderon De La Barca, Religion and Politics, Neoliberalism and Education, Democratic Education, Critical Pedagogy, Social Justice in Education, Hamid Dabashi, Democracy and Citizenship Education, Academic Freedom (Law), Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Pakistani Literature In English and Critical Theory, Daud Kamal Analysis, Pakistani literature in English, Islam and Sufism in South Asia, Pakistani Literature in English and Urdu, Literary Criticism, Comparative Literature, Poetry, World Literatures, Literature, Poetics, Contemporary Poetry, and DAUD KAMAL POEMedit
- I'm Ali.edit
- Robert ter Horstedit
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Abstract: No Messiah For Broken Glass Ali Shehzad Zaidi SUNY Canton This article discusses three poems by the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz who spent five years in solitary confinement in Pakistan. Imprisonment was the seminal experience... more
Abstract: No Messiah For Broken Glass
Ali Shehzad Zaidi
SUNY Canton
This article discusses three poems by the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz who spent five years in solitary confinement in Pakistan. Imprisonment was the seminal experience that ignited his creativity and shaped his poetry. Liberated from the mundane happenstance of the everyday, Faiz discovered the magical present to which the mystics beckon. Confinement heightened his senses, integrating them into poetry of pain and longing. Paradoxically, the years of confinement became a source of joy. Among the key images in these poems of Faiz: green water evokes revival and regeneration; the city of thieves recalls the kleptocracy into which Pakistan has devolved; and the faded curtains evoke the interminable cultural and religious confinement of Pakistanis. The walnut leaves, used to induce abortion, hint at their stillborn dreams and aspirations, as well as the loveless marriage between the people and their rulers. Faiz celebrates remembrance leads to healing and recovery. At a time when the Urdu language is being stripped of much of its Persian vocabulary and imaginative content, Faiz represents a vital connection both to the ancient civilizations in the territories of what is now Pakistan as well as a bridge between Pakistan and the world.
Ali Shehzad Zaidi
SUNY Canton
This article discusses three poems by the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz who spent five years in solitary confinement in Pakistan. Imprisonment was the seminal experience that ignited his creativity and shaped his poetry. Liberated from the mundane happenstance of the everyday, Faiz discovered the magical present to which the mystics beckon. Confinement heightened his senses, integrating them into poetry of pain and longing. Paradoxically, the years of confinement became a source of joy. Among the key images in these poems of Faiz: green water evokes revival and regeneration; the city of thieves recalls the kleptocracy into which Pakistan has devolved; and the faded curtains evoke the interminable cultural and religious confinement of Pakistanis. The walnut leaves, used to induce abortion, hint at their stillborn dreams and aspirations, as well as the loveless marriage between the people and their rulers. Faiz celebrates remembrance leads to healing and recovery. At a time when the Urdu language is being stripped of much of its Persian vocabulary and imaginative content, Faiz represents a vital connection both to the ancient civilizations in the territories of what is now Pakistan as well as a bridge between Pakistan and the world.
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This article discusses the sea imagery in Ahmed Faraz’s poem “Spray on the Eagle’s Pinion,” which appears here in a previously unpublished translation by Daud Kamal. Two other poems, “Siege” and “Remorse” exemplify the defiance and revolt... more
This article discusses the sea imagery in Ahmed Faraz’s poem “Spray on the Eagle’s Pinion,” which appears here in a previously unpublished translation by Daud Kamal. Two other poems, “Siege” and “Remorse” exemplify the defiance and revolt that characterizes Faraz’s dissident poetry during the eleven years of General Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime.
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This article discusses the themes of love and hope in the poetry of the Urdu-language Ahmed Faraz. It introduces two unpublished Faraz translations by Daud Kamal, examining the marine imagery in “Dawn-Birds” and the drought imagery in... more
This article discusses the themes of love and hope in the poetry of the Urdu-language Ahmed Faraz. It introduces two unpublished Faraz translations by Daud Kamal, examining the marine imagery in “Dawn-Birds” and the drought imagery in “Boulders of Clay.” The article also introduces Kamal’s translation of Afzal Arish’s “The Heave of Mud,” highlighting the allegorical and environmental dimensions of the poem.
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Mircea Eliade’s “The Trenches” (Şanţurile) is a World War Two story in which death is a reintegration into the divine. This Romanian language story is a variant of the legend in which Alexander found a gem that enabled him to see in... more
Mircea Eliade’s “The Trenches” (Şanţurile) is a World War Two story in which death is a reintegration into the divine. This Romanian language story is a variant of the legend in which Alexander found a gem that enabled him to see in darkness. In this venture into the fantastic, Romanian mountain villagers search for a hidden treasure at a juncture where legend momentarily demonstrates “the function of the unreal.” Affirming his belief in a Romanian nationalism that coalesces around a mythical Dacian past, Eliade belongs to a literary tradition that includes the poet Mihai Eminexcu and the playwright Vasile Alecsandri.
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This article discusses the poetry of Mirza Ghalib as presented in the translations of Daud Kamal. Among them is “Three Renderings” in which the image of a black eagle dropping an egg shell represents the dark forces that blight the... more
This article discusses the poetry of Mirza Ghalib as presented in the translations of Daud Kamal. Among them is “Three Renderings” in which the image of a black eagle dropping an egg shell represents the dark forces that blight the cosmos. The image of the rose symbolizes rebirth and spiritual renewal while the rain falling in the darkness heavenly grace.
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Besides discussing such seminal images in the poetry of Daud Kamal as Gandhara art, the bridge, and bird migration, this essay explores solitude as a necessary accompaniment to Kamal’s creativity and to his quest for self-knowledge. This... more
Besides discussing such seminal images in the poetry of Daud Kamal as Gandhara art, the bridge, and bird migration, this essay explores solitude as a necessary accompaniment to Kamal’s creativity and to his quest for self-knowledge. This essay also examines the undiscerning critical reception of Kamal’s poetry which, notwithstanding, belongs to the finest tradition of Islamic mysticism and is therefore destined to last.
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This article contains four uncollected Faiz translations by Daud Kamal.
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Mircea Eliade’s novella “In the Shadow of a Lily” (“La umbra unui crin”) is the last fictional work of the renowned historian of religions. The religious allusions and cultural referents in the novella create an intricate spiritual mosaic... more
Mircea Eliade’s novella “In the Shadow of a Lily” (“La umbra unui crin”) is the last fictional work of the renowned historian of religions. The religious allusions and cultural referents in the novella create an intricate spiritual mosaic that reveals the camouflage of the sacred in everyday occurrences, the survival of Romanian culture in exile, and a miraculous dimension of love. The novella’s mystery concerns a group of Romanian refugees who are implicated in the disappearance of trucks on a highway in what appears to be a new kind of Noah’s Ark. The Biblical symbolism of the lily illumines the novella like a jeweled house of mirrors to uncover the camouflage of the sacred.
In the poetry of Daud Kamal, water fi gures as an image of mercy, as in the Quran, and as a mirror that refl ects a divine hidden presence. The rock pool evokes the memory of Gandhara and other foundational civilizations born in love and... more
In the poetry of Daud Kamal, water fi gures as an image of mercy, as in the Quran, and as a mirror that refl ects a divine hidden presence. The rock pool evokes the memory of Gandhara and other foundational civilizations born in love and creative ferment. Conversely, the images of drought, heat, and dust symbolize a parched spiritual order. The river, a recurring archetypal image in Kamal's poetry, represents the fl uid self that is subsumed into collective identity to become a poetic distillate of history.
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Daud Kamal, the preeminent English language poet of Pakistan, left behind many unpublished poetry translations when he died in 1987. This essay discusses several translations from the Urdu, Persian, and Punjabi of Hafiz, Jami, Amir... more
Daud Kamal, the preeminent English language poet of Pakistan, left behind many unpublished poetry translations when he died in 1987. This essay discusses several translations from the Urdu, Persian, and Punjabi of Hafiz, Jami, Amir Khusro, Bulleh Shah, Sultan Bahu, and Mirza Ghalib, as well as translations of two folk poems that epitomize the Sufi traditions of Persia and the Indian subcontinent.
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Daud Kamal (1935–87), the preeminent English language poet of Pakistan, left behind many unpublished translations of poems by the classical Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib (1797–1869). This article presents and discusses several of these... more
Daud Kamal (1935–87), the preeminent English language poet of Pakistan, left behind many unpublished translations of poems by the classical Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib (1797–1869). This article presents and discusses several of these translations in the light of historical events during Ghalib’s lifetime. Although he endured many personal tragedies, Ghalib attained mystical heights that confirm his stature as the greatest Urdu poet.
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Daud Kamal’s translations of Urdu poetry deserve wider critical recognition. His translations of Munir Niazi convey an oneiric reality that traces the effects of dictatorship and capitalism on Pakistan. Kamal is best known for his... more
Daud Kamal’s translations of Urdu poetry deserve wider critical recognition. His translations of Munir Niazi convey an oneiric reality that traces the effects of dictatorship and capitalism on Pakistan. Kamal is best known for his translations of Faiz Ahmed Faiz which have become classics in the literature of imprisonment. Besides discussing translated poems by Faiz and Niazi, this article also discusses Kamal’s translation of Ahmed Faraz’s “Incandescent Beauty,” which displays a dynamic mastery of perspective, as well as his translation of Iftikhar Arif’s “Perspective,” which commemorates a seminal and archetypal event in Islamic history.
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This article examines poems on imprisonment by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984), an innovative Urdu poet whose confinement heightened his sense of wonder and concern for others. His poems were rallying cries against military dictatorship,... more
This article examines poems on imprisonment by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984), an innovative Urdu poet whose confinement heightened his sense of wonder and concern for others. His poems were rallying cries against military dictatorship, corruption, and human rights abuses. Far from being embittered for having been unjustly imprisoned, Faiz turned the ordeal of imprisonment into creative ferment, dedicating his life to poetry and preserving Pakistan’s cultural heritage. The Faiz poems quoted in this essay, which were translated by Daud Kamal, inspire hope for the cause of peace and justice in Pakistan.
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Two Short Essays:
Exile, Prisoner, Poet: A Brief History of Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Daud Kamal’s Legacy of Mercy
Exile, Prisoner, Poet: A Brief History of Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Daud Kamal’s Legacy of Mercy
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This essay examines representative stories of the American Western genre in both film and literature in light of various literary influences, including The Bible and classical epics such as Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and The Odyssey. These... more
This essay examines representative stories of the American Western genre in both film and literature in light of various literary influences, including The Bible and classical epics such as Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and The Odyssey. These stories relate the dynamic tensions of characters caught between righteous and unrighteous anger, between home and longing for the road, and between the imperative to survive and the impulse to sacrifice oneself for others.
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This article examines Venture Smith’s slave narrative, one of the very first in the United States, in which Smith recounts his African childhood and his struggle to purchase his freedom. Smith describes various financial transactions... more
This article examines Venture Smith’s slave narrative, one of the very first in the United States, in which Smith recounts his African childhood and his struggle to purchase his freedom. Smith describes various financial transactions including one that led to the death of his son. Because he exploits other African Americans in pursuit of his freedom, Smith is implicated in the very system that had enslaved him. In his mordant narrative Smith delegitimizes slavery by showing how it converts human beings into commodities. At its conclusion, the narrative conveys the sorrow of a man relegated to social death by the institution of slavery.
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For Mircea Eliade, imaginary worlds that revive our wonder are quintessential, for it is through the imagination that "space becomes sacred, hence preeminently real." Written in his native Romanian, in what Eliade calls "the language of... more
For Mircea Eliade, imaginary worlds that revive our wonder are quintessential, for it is through the imagination that "space becomes sacred, hence preeminently real." Written in his native Romanian, in what Eliade calls "the language of my dreams," Eliade's novella "A Great Man" explores an existential dimension fraught with terror. In the tradition of fantasy as metaphysical discovery, the tale concerns a man who becomes estranged from others because of an extraordinary change in his physical properties. The protagonist of the novella, Eugen Cucoanes, suddenly and inexplicably begins to grow taller by about a centimeter a day. As his "macranthropy" progresses, he becomes aware of that the world is, in a real sense, alive. He begins to have difficulty hearing and speaking. His voice changes, taking on the characteristics of the natural world. With the assistance of a friend, who is the first-person narrator of the story, Eugen heads for the mountains. There, he shows his friend, the narrator, and his girlfriend, Lenora, a hierophany, an object in which the sacred is incarnated and revealed. Eugen continues to grow, and at the end of the novella is last seen headed for the sea, leaving the reader to ponder humanity's final anguish and first astonishment. The disappearance of the protagonist into the sea recalls Eliade's own uprooted existence as an exile, which served a metaphor for modern religious experience.
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Mircea Eliade’s “A Fourteen-Year Old Photograph” is a short story about a miraculous rejuvenation. Dumitru, a Romanian immigrant, returns to a church in search of a miracle worker named Dr. Martin, believing that four years earlier Dr.... more
Mircea Eliade’s “A Fourteen-Year Old Photograph” is a short story about a miraculous rejuvenation. Dumitru, a Romanian immigrant, returns to a church in search of a miracle worker named Dr. Martin, believing that four years earlier Dr. Martin had cured his wife Thecla of asthma, simply by holding up a ten-year old photograph of her. According to Dumitru, Thecla was cured of her asthma and began to resemble her image in the photograph, taken when she was just eighteen or nineteen years old. A church board member tells Dumitru that not only was Dr. Martin no longer performing miracles at the church, but that he was a fraud named Dugay. Dumitru finds Dugay in a nightclub called the Three Hundred, where Dugay confesses to Dumitru that he was indeed a fraud. Dumitru continues to insist on the truth of the miracle even as Dugay becomes convinced that the true saint and worker of miracles was none other than Dumitru himself. Ultimately, the equivocal nature of the miracle is a means to revelation, gesturing to the illusory nature of the self and to such notions of Eliade as the camouflage of the sacred and the unrecognizability of miracle.
Research Interests: Romanian Literature, Romanian Studies, Romanian Language, Mircea Eliade, Eliade, and 5 moreRomanian Cultural Studies, Romanian, Mircea Eliade and Ioan Petru Culianu works and thoughts., Mircea Eliade, History of religion, Religious studies, and The difficult encounter in Rome. Mircea Eliade's post-war relation with Julius Evola–new letters and data–
This essay situates Alcuin within a historical context of debate regarding the education and rights of women in the late eighteenth century. Written in the form of dialogues between a young schoolteacher and a widowed socialite, Alcuin is... more
This essay situates Alcuin within a historical context of debate regarding the education and rights of women in the late eighteenth century. Written in the form of dialogues between a young schoolteacher and a widowed socialite, Alcuin is now recognized as the first published fictional work by the first major novelist of the United States. In this seminal work, Brown affirms Mary Wollstonecraft’s compelling vision of the equality of the sexes, while exposing the patronizing tone of contemporary male discourse on women. Alcuin is a deft piece of literature which undermines faith in the apparent enlightenment of its time.
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This paper examines the process of mystification that accompanies new paradigms, and discusses such contemporary legitimizing myths as The Myth of the Magic of the Market,The Myth of the Inefficient Public Sector, The Myth of... more
This paper examines the process of mystification that
accompanies new paradigms, and discusses such contemporary legitimizing myths as The Myth of the Magic of the Market,The Myth of the Inefficient Public Sector, The Myth of theObjective Media, and The Myth of American Exceptionalism. While these legitimizing myths limit our understanding of the world, liberating myths such as The Rainbow Warrior are needed to address our spiritual and ecological crises.
accompanies new paradigms, and discusses such contemporary legitimizing myths as The Myth of the Magic of the Market,The Myth of the Inefficient Public Sector, The Myth of theObjective Media, and The Myth of American Exceptionalism. While these legitimizing myths limit our understanding of the world, liberating myths such as The Rainbow Warrior are needed to address our spiritual and ecological crises.
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In Mircea Eliade’s Men and Stones, two cave explorers, Alexandru and Petrus, seek to imaginatively recreate a distant human dawn after they discover the sacred stones of cave dwellers. The living stones become a metaphor for an eternal... more
In Mircea Eliade’s Men and Stones, two cave explorers, Alexandru and Petrus, seek to imaginatively recreate a distant human dawn after they discover the sacred stones of cave dwellers. The living stones become a metaphor for an eternal dimension of transient humanity and for a sentient universe. The title of this play is taken from the Koran and evokes Alexandru’s crisis of despair in the cave. After he is injured in a fall, Alexandru experiences a revelation that confirms love as a pathway to knowledge and as the surest means of escape from the labyrinth of despair.
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Mircea Eliade’s “The Captain’s Daughter” invokes the legacies of Hafiz and Pushkin to sacralize the world. In this enigmatic short story, the motif of boredom denotes the characters’ immersion in profane time and in a mechanistic mode of... more
Mircea Eliade’s “The Captain’s Daughter” invokes the legacies of Hafiz and Pushkin to sacralize the world. In this enigmatic short story, the motif of boredom denotes the characters’ immersion in profane time and in a mechanistic mode of being. A captain hires a peasant boy, Brânduş, to box with his son, Valentin. Brânduş subverts Valentin’s socialization into reflexive violence, and reveals that he knows that the captain’s daughter, Agrippina, had been left back a year at school. Intrigued, Agrippina tries to find out how Brânduş discovered the secret that was at once a family disgrace and transformative mystery. The young boy represents the spiritual freedom missing in Agrippina’s suffocating social and family environment. In its recollection of the various cultural guises of love, in its return to origins, Eliade’s story unifies cultures and connects us to the living universe.
Keywords: Eliade, The Captain’s Daughter, Hafiz, Pushkin, Romanian short story, Romanian literature, Persian literature, Persian poetry, Russian literature.
Keywords: Eliade, The Captain’s Daughter, Hafiz, Pushkin, Romanian short story, Romanian literature, Persian literature, Persian poetry, Russian literature.
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The characters of Henry VIII and La cisma de Inglaterra evoke the future in ways that subvert both their sense of destiny and orthodox religious perspectives on the English Reformation. The motif of failed pre-determinism undermines the... more
The characters of Henry VIII and La cisma de Inglaterra evoke the future in ways that subvert both their sense of destiny and orthodox religious perspectives on the English Reformation. The motif of failed pre-determinism undermines the notion of history as a redemptive process, revealing a schismatic world sundered from God. In these plays, the future interrogates the present to convey the imminence of social dissolution and the loss of unifying myths.
In Othello and El amante liberal, Cyprus symbolizes the contradictions of the soul. Through a journey of self-discovery, Othello and Ricardo arrive at a hybrid identity, a mestizaje, as they struggle against the “green-eyed monster” of... more
In Othello and El amante liberal, Cyprus symbolizes the contradictions of the soul. Through a journey of self-discovery, Othello and Ricardo arrive at a hybrid identity, a mestizaje, as they struggle against the “green-eyed monster” of sexual jealousy. The Cypriot voyage in Shakespeare and Cervantes is a return to a chastened social order and to a tragic self-knowledge.
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Book Review
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Book Review of Lucy Byng's Roumanian Stories
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Book Review of Eileen Welsome's The Plutonium Files
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My responses to questions in a forum on "Democracy and Education".
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Foregrounding the tensions between conscience and power, Shakespeare’s Edward III portrays an English monarch who ostensibly reforms after attempting to seduce a faithful female subject. The play, like other literary reincarnations of the... more
Foregrounding the tensions between conscience and power, Shakespeare’s Edward III portrays an English monarch who ostensibly reforms after attempting to seduce a faithful female subject. The play, like other literary reincarnations of the legend of the Countess of Salisbury, affirms the primacy of keeping one’s word and the sacrament of marriage over obedience as a subject. The apparent self-mastery achieved by the king provides an illusory restoration of order and justice at the conclusion of Edward III. In this play, Shakespeare demystifies monarchy and royal self-representation to resurrect a past that honors the inner voice of conscience.
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This essay examines essentialist representation of Hispanic peoples and cultures in three textbooks, Spanish for Secondary Schools (1961), Mi Historia Universal (1978), and Civilización y Cultura (1993). Those textbooks tend to portray... more
This essay examines essentialist representation of Hispanic peoples and cultures in three textbooks, Spanish for Secondary Schools (1961), Mi Historia Universal (1978), and Civilización y Cultura (1993). Those textbooks tend to portray
Hispanics as one-dimensional characters that are defined by their essences rather than by their historical and sociological context. The stereotypes found in the textbooks tend to naturalize privilege, perpetuate economic inequalities, and
conceal the exploitative aims of imperialism. These stereotypes are less prevalent now thanks in part to the contributions of postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said.
Hispanics as one-dimensional characters that are defined by their essences rather than by their historical and sociological context. The stereotypes found in the textbooks tend to naturalize privilege, perpetuate economic inequalities, and
conceal the exploitative aims of imperialism. These stereotypes are less prevalent now thanks in part to the contributions of postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said.
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Research Interests: Higher Education, History of Universities, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Higher Education Management, Higher Education Studies, and 6 moreHigher Education Leadership, Art and Activism, Student activism in higher education, University, University Students, and Arts and Crafts Movement
Introduction to the poetry of Mohammad Zaman.
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Tribute to a friend and scholar.
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Introduction to Studies in Honor of Robert ter Horst
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Against my wishes, the Campus Times editors titled my letter to the editor "Join Struggle to Restructure University" which contradicts the intent of my letter.