One can be a good poet and a bad revolutionary. Or a poor one. In my college days, long, long ago, our history teacher did not take the French revolution of 1848 seriously. Maybe, he thought that a political upheaval which ends with Louis Napoleon on the throne cannot be much of a revolution. (It was this government about which Marx had written: “France has often known the government of kept women. This is the first time it has a government of kept men.”) So, the students did not learn of the role of Alphonse Lamartine in the revolution’s early stage.
It was much later, when some of our radical students read Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that they announced that 1848 had been a crucial point in Europe’s political development. In fact, it was a stage on the road to the Paris Commune of 1871. A student, more radical than others, concluded that the middle class would always betray the workers and this point had been illustrated by Romain Rolland in his novel Jean Christoffe.
But, for heaven’s sake, when did the middle class anywhere claim that it would support a seizure of power by the workers?
Anyway, let’s go back to Lamartine. He may have been a lukewarm revolutionary and not much of a politician. But he wrote good verse.
About a month back, I bought a used copy of The Oxford Book of French Verse from the old-books bazaar. Opening it casually, my gaze fell on two lines from Alfred de Musset underlined in pencil by, probably, the previous owner:
“L’homme est un apprenti la douleur est son maitre,
       Et nul ne se connait tant qu’il n’a pas souffert.”
(Man is an apprentice, pain is his teacher. And no one recognises himself, until he suffers pain.)
At first, I thought it was a translation of some Urdu couplet, like
“Ahl-e-beenish ko hai
toofan-e-hawadis maktab,
 Lutmai-mauj kam az
saili-e-ustad naheen.”
Well, one supposes ideas travel. So, if Alfred de Musset and Ghalib express a similar Semitic-derived thought, it is not surprising. Let’s look at Lamartine:
“Mais la nature est la qui
t’invite et qui t’aime,
 Plonge-toi dans son sein q’elle t’ouvre toujours,
Quand tout change pour toi,
la nature est la meme,
 Et le meme soleil se leve sur tes jours.”
(But the nature is the same which invites you and loves you, Plunge into its bosom which is always open to you, when everything changes for you, nature remains the same. And the same sun rises upon your days.)
Of course, poetry cannot be translated. But is there a better description of ‘nature’ as mother? Whatever I do, there is no change in her affection.
It is “Vallon” (the little valley), one of the great poems of the poet. But one’s approach to any subject is conditioned by his perception of how the nature or the society has treated him. Hugo’s “Booz” reflects upon his life at the end of the day:
“Je suis veuf, je suis seul, et sur moi le soir tombe.”
(I am a widower, I am alone, and the evening descends upon me.)
This reflects not so much the material penury as the fatigue of the soul and the absence of anyone to comfort him. It is not the demand for a young companion as with Tavalluli:
“Bar man avaez, labam bar lab chu ghuncha froo band.”
(Hang on my neck and entrap tightly my lip in your lips.)
But for a woman, who would soothe him by placing a hand on his forehead, the woman of Verlaine’s “strange and penetrating dream - “et m’aime et me comprend” (she loves me and understands me.)
However, Shakaib Jalali does not count because he starts with disappointment:
“Wahi jhhuki hui baelain wahi dareecha thha,
Magar vo phhool sa chehra nazar na aata thha,”
But ends with desperation:
“Kisi ki aas tau tooti, koi tau haar gaya,
Ke neem-baaz dareechon main roshni hai udaas.”

n    The writer is a retired              ambassador.
    Email: abul_f@hotmail.com