Firdous Bahar
“Addressed to someone aesthetically sublime, to whom,
I owe genuinely all t’is narrative and the noble ink: SQ.
To thou my Sunshine, my anaesthesia-compound,
I won’t say or proclaim today- I Love You,
But in lieu, do enunciatein front of entire Cashmere
That Iadore you as a muse: Aphrodite.
Ay, SQ.! Thou art my anaesthesia;
An anodyne to garnish my ache with….
Silky! Thou art an alchemyof my desiccated heart”.
The present script took me some past and partially some present recollections to dress up t’is entire philosophical thought into its current form, was drumming the curtains of my ears and layers of my mind alike. So, I kick started with the muse appeared in the disguise of medication that was in act to valour my vulnerable heart into proper function, but did vivify the dead poet into life. Here, I will jot down the lines of inspiration, which runs as; “two droplets of an Olea europaea (olive …) in an océan of lait [French word for milk] as the golden-rimmed spectacles of Ray-Ban in function to drape or camouflage the nadir of Sq.’s aesthetic posture …, old love in newfungleness really daggers the patients of heart.” To bring forth into reminiscence in the fresh-start of twenty-first century the architectonic artists of past century, might bénir [bless] the present manuscript [first written by hand] by the cologne of ancient clichéd camphire: Lawsonia inermis. But it’s absolutely in signification to congeal it via the insinuation of evergreen columns of beaux arts. Hence, to make it more appropriate according to the inscription earned in advance in the title above: The aesthetics of symphony and the sublime. The thought about the said enterprise did enter into my capital by the aid of the revealed manifestation, plus, when I was listening to the blockbuster Spanish song – Despacito; composed by Louis Fonsi, sung by the composer himself and with him in conjoined support by the rapper/ft.Daddy Yankee. So, you should give it a try; I assure you of that, those who doesn’t find an influx in their blood would rise them onto the verge of an idiotic-exaltation. The lyrics of the song are idiosyncratic to my semblance, struck my heart and mind in parallel combination, when I had earplugged my ears through the earbuds and absorbed in the atlantic of music; deep in the world of violin and euphoric symphony. I totally felt sublimated, dreaming about La la Land, mind entirely engaged in wool-gathering; was creating castles in the air, and rollicking in a conception in a tour to the Disney World. Overall in a thematic word, I was ‘lost’in a dulcet of the symphony. Yup! t’is is the power of music which could surcharge your spirits and boost your energy by the lyre of a mellifluous fluidity– as of passerines that are warbling out euphonious metres on high-altitudes, –that the rhyme and rhythm will sprout spontaneously in your person like an organic sensibility in poesy, which a person cannot curb what might the gender would be, masculine or feminine. Its effect is like marijuana which lulls an individual to the state of soporific[a], after that, only the blessed ones could tell thee the aftermath of its being accompanied in odyssey. Hence, the music which is captivating and splendorous and which is capable of ennobling the fibre of fancy into the heightened-imagination, could lift a person up in transportation and during contemplation does give an elevation to the thoughts, yes, that is the nudge of an aesthetics of symphony and the sublime. As in the kind of rhapsody the writer did once felt the presence of his beloved Sq. [to whom the narrator/writer does owe all his narrative and the noble ink] beside him, when in reality he was away from fiction, perhaps in a tour de’ivoire, perfect with solitude and anonymity. Savouring the morphean of a song, the lyrics of which goes:
“Evening is amiable and adorning,
Beside my right is my Psyche SQ.
What else, do I need for life and love?
Evening is sweet and favoured,
With me is my darling Selene,
Ah! What a fetching scene is t’is,
[Neigh the Dal lake]
Having a wave of enamour’d love lore,
Youthful anamnesia in swirling eddies.
… … …
O! What else, does the symphony lack,
Than the sweet rhythm, rhyme, and metre?
Evening is amiable and adorning,
Beside my right is my Psyche SQ.
What else, do I need for life and love?”
However, this all and other elements in corollary to symphony does give it a proper intimacy with an aesthetics that does orchestrate the cords of this manuscript [majorly on the beauty of symphony] in a unified whole. Aesthetics in the sense of an abstract-phenomenon we can describe, anything enchanting which is capable of holding our perception in transfix, as in awe-struck in one maiden glance, [the author got knocked down by the aesthetic portrait of SQ], that it should have close and penetrating appeal with the beauty- beauty which keeps an artist or artists of variegated genres under its enthrall, with rather mouths ope very wide and heart perplexing to have that Ledaean beauty in that frenzy, born in bachelor cognition. Anything beautiful which is captivating is in actuality in John Keats’ words the Truth Beauty. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”. Beauty in natural phenomenon, in woman, and in art. So, that is why I once wish to have a calibre like, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart– maestro virtuoso of music and melody, feet and rhythm like Michael Jackson– the dexterous dancer of West, sublimity like John Milton– the germ of grand English poetry: thus to compose the music, the symphonic metres of which shall lacerate the malfunction of perturbed souls, and to revolve around in dervish spinning unto my nucleus shall not form nexus [transcendental union] with the ultimate end, the stalwart of this entire Olympus; the Supremo, who is being girdled around all the while by the celestial-figures, to whom the most subtle English poet, John Milton (1608-1674) did remark about in one of his most spectacular Petrarchan sonnet, “On His Blindness”, an extract:
“That murmur soon replies: “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best?
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Furthermore, an individual cannot experience the aesthetics of symphony and the sublime in music and lyre only, rather he needs to look forth to the wide panorama of literature and arts, which is in hold of gigantic repertoires of academia and supreme men of letters. Their works are really in possession to qualify the elements that are in need to give the proper figure, correlation and intimacy to the theory of aesthetics and sublime. This all, an individual can descry in an English literature, when the plunge of the said one, would bepenetratingand deep, in the realm of poetry, especially when the frolicking takes place through the hemispheres of acclaimed poets like John Donne, John Milton, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Robert Browning– and American poets Edgar Allan Poe, R.W. Emerson, Walt Whitman– among others. All right, let’s not length t’is project into details of the said poets, rather a kudos writer should condense the page on the main artists who have an indelible impact of aestheticism on them. The artists are from the prose literature and fine arts– poetry, music, painting etc. Let’s prioritize with the master of aestheticism John Keats. Who adores the word “Beauty” above than the Christian principles, like a stung man: stung by the scorpion of Fine Arts in reality, like the theory of aesthetics, the theory of sublime, the theory of “I”art pour I’ art” [art for art’s sake] or like any other frenzied person immersed in any abstracted deity, who is quite hard to dodge from his steadfast recalcitrance. So, was t’is Adonis of beauty, smitten by the Aphrodite of aesthetics. This all-in summation I can assert in ‘y providence is like the Hippocrene potion, that if gulp in profuse left the person in the state of coma orcommonly referred times as hypnotism. From where he or in opposite end, does come only poets and Majnüns, like JohnKeats, James Joyce– who sailed to the far horizon for the theory of aesthetics in his book, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (1916)– among others, in English literature and Mirza Assad Ulla Khan Ghalib and Mir Tauqi Mir, including many more, in Urdu literature.John Keats [1795-1821] In English literature: it’s quite impregnable not to experience an exaltation while delving into the kingdom of John Keats’ poetry. He did depict almost in all his poetry the lovers of passionate outburst, where a young reader estimates [in his poetry] the narrative directs to his personal self and everything which the poet did experience the auditor or the reader squarely experiences in his own person. Therefore, it’s impossible to escape from the sublime appeal of his poetry- poetry which is beauty; beauty which is imagination, imagination that has the power to flight from the constrains, the bulwarks of modern civilization and perch onto the top of mount Helicon and to drink the pure elixir with the muses out there. Until the tyro flights of imagination [in actual the paroxysm of frenzy] doesn’t get in rendezvous with the ultimate perfection: The Truth Beauty. Only then you will relish the gentle zephyr of an aesthetics and the opium of sublime in its utmost form. This a genuine lover of Keats would gauge, by the poet’s assertion on poetry which he proclaims should be the “Incarnation of Beauty”. It signifies, thatthe poet favours the art of poetry should be fully fertilized through the nutrients of aesthetics. He even declared in a letter to his brother, that “With a great poet the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration” and also did enunciate that “I have loved the principle of beauty in all things”.William Wordsworth [1770-1850]: Wordsworth is not the past interest out here, he did gain prominence in literature via his jargon of rustic leid in poetry, by which he did sway the auditors and readers alike. For instance, in “The Daffodils” -the couplet breaks, an extract;
“Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.”
It has gained an immense popularity among literary circles and is poignantly employed in the rhetoric of poetic art. Which has the power to persuade the massive number of public [ the readers and auditors] with it. For-why, it purveyors them the power of imagination. And it’s this faculty of human brain which proffers them the opportunity to liberate themselves uninhibited free, from the fetters of an industry, that persistently cuffs them to recline in an indolent ease in the castle of darkness.
Rusul Mir [19th century Kashmiri poet]: Rusul Mir is the brain of Kashmiri poetry, his entire artworks are superabundant with the foreign similes and metaphors. He is the champion of genre– the aesthetics, rather, he worships the word ‘beauty’ as his religious icon, a sort of canopy to nurture his gift and soul and did beseech for it times as wolf does howl for the Luna, so did he through his art of poetry, [although dead by centuries ago, but I would love to retain him in present continuous form here]. No one can stand in vie or in proportionate symmetry with this lyric giant’s nineteenth century romantic poetry. He is well-known through his rare linguistic style and unique craft of poetry. He explored the word “Beauty” beyond the compass of transcendentalism, that has its roots anchored in mysticism. He is being referred times as “Husun Parast”, and sometimes as “Husnuq Mout” i.e. former ‘the priest of beauty’ and latter [notoriously] insane after beauty [and belle]. This we can surmise via the beloved maqta curtail-fetch from one of his most celebrated ghazal“Dela Ram Negarow” featured in the middle of “Kulyat-e-Rusul Mir”, readymade over the tongue of every Romeo and Juliet in the zeitgeist. The couplet;
“Rusul che zeneth Deen-w-Mazhab Rookh te Zuluf cheney
Quoæ zane kah gou Kufür te Islam Negarow”
Furthermore, in painting look at Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, which appearsthe way likewise we look at the painting. Because the painting has been made under the discreet circumstances of a perfume –i. e, the fragrant stroke of an aesthetics:Jasmine, when the artist was himself influenced by the scent-smile of someone, neutral from prosaic and prejudice of hypocrisy. Nothing comes from the vacuum; everything is subtly interlinked with each other. Universe is constituted by the amalgamation of myriad elements and every single particle in every iota element has its own credit here. I mean everything is loaded with the theorem of sublime and charged enthusiastically with the spirit of beauty- aesthetics.Thus, look around and explore what is concealed in an ambush in the cosmosthat is abiding on significantia– for the fissure to sprout– pivotal importance that does matter or, the underlying substance in the present écriture,is the reflection over t’is thought of an alien inundation like the abstruser muse of obscurity. I have solid conviction that the auditors or, the readers of this foil will not feel repentant afterwards. Beauty is manifest to neutral eye, but latent to an uncanny anomaly: the foliage of baroque structure, over an organic art has the widespread application in the spiritus mundi.
(The author a Kashmir University pass out is known for his academic interest in English Literature. Views are his own, [email protected])