Heart's Shadow by Zaman Asurdah
Heart's Shadow by Zaman Asurdah
Table of contents :
Introduction to Kashmiri Literature
About Zaman Asurdah
Human Heart and its Comparison in Literature
Poems about Human Heart
Zaman Asurdah's HEART'S SHADOW
Writing Style of the Essay
Critical Analysis
Other works about Human Heart in Literature
Introduction to Kashmiri Literature
About Zaman Asurdah
Human Heart and its Comparison in Literature
Poems about Human Heart
Zaman Asurdah's HEART'S SHADOW
Writing Style of the Essay
Critical Analysis
Other works about Human Heart in Literature
Introduction to Kashmiri Literature - Sweatha C
Kashmir is a land blessed with incomparable beauty and cursed with seemingly interminable turmoil. Both these things usually create a very fertile ground for powerful literature.
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| Lalleswari - Mystic poetess |
In the 14th century, a great Shaivite mystic poetess, Lalleshwari, rose to prominence by writing verse in Kashmiri language known as Vakhs, devoted to Lord Shiva but also questioning certain dogmas related to religion.
Kashmiri literature is rich in poetry as that has been the preferred mode of artistic expression in the valley. The literature began with the work of three poets – Shiti Kanth, Lalla Ded and Sheikh Noor-Ud-Din.
Shiti Kanth’s prime work Mahayana Prakash is a graceful composition. It was written in the twelfth Century and consists of 94 vakhs each followed by translation and explanation in Sanskrit.
Some of the major names in contemporary Kashmiri literature are Chaman Lal Raina, Akhtar Mohiuddin, Amin Kamil, Ali Mohammed Noor, Rafiq Raaz, Gulshan Majid, Shafi Shauk, Somnath Zutshi, Nazi Munnawar Nagrad, Mohiuddin Rishi, Gulam Nabi Aatish, Makkhan Lal Mahav, Sunita Raina Pandita and Ratan Lal Shant.
The greatest poet of Kashmiri language so far is Lal Ded. She is the most abiding influence on Kashmiri literature. She and her contemporary, Sheikh Noor- Ud -Din Noorani have become famous literary icons in Kashmir. Kashmir has a rich legacy of literary writers who contributed a lot to the world of literature.
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| Rahman Rahi |
Among contemporary writers, Rahman Rahi is the greatest name. His writing has won accolades globally and he has received many prominent awards. His writings have been translated in many languages including English.
The greatest poet of Kashmir, who wrote in English, was Aga Shahid Ali. He has written some memorable poetry and represented Kashmir at the highest level of English Literature. He, however, died young due to brain tumour.
One area where Kashmiri literature has lagged behind, according to Raina, is the genre of novels. He feels there are only around a dozen worthwhile novels that have been written in Kashmiri. The one thing holding back the Kashmiri language is the lack of institutions dedicated to it outside the state.
Zaman Asurdah - Dhivyadharshini S
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| Zaman Asurdah |
An academician, essayist and short story writer, Prof Azurdah is known for his contribution in Urdu and Kashmiri literature. A recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award (1984) for essays in Urdu, Prof Azurdah holds Ghalib Award (2011) for his contribution to Urdu, close to his heart.
Unlike other awards, where one has to submit their work, Ghalib Award is given after selection is made by the academy itself, which is tough to achieve.
Born in a Rainawari based business family, Prof Azurdah’s father Mirza Abbas owned a Pashmina business in Amritsar, Punjab. He was born in a rich family , but the riches didn’t last long after he was born.
In 1947, at the time of partition of India, Prof Azurdah was two, when his father lost everything. “Though I was very young, I have some faint memories of those days,” said Prof Azurdah. Finally, in 1958, Prof Azurdah, then 14, was recruited as a stock assistant in the Animal Husbandry department. After serving there for four years, Prof Azurdah decided to become a teacher.
In 1971, Prof Azurdah registered for PhD and chose Mirza Salaamat Ali Dabeer as his subject. After seven years of research he came up with an 800 pages thesis on the poet known for his Marsiya writing.
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| Human Heart |
The heart contains four main sections (chambers) made of muscle and powered by electrical impulses. The brain and nervous system direct our heart's function.
The views of ancient philosopher - Aristotle
The following are some of the arguments of Aristotle in favour of the heart and against the brain for some features. Those features are:
• Heart is considered for sensation because all animals have organs like heart where only vertebrates and cephalopods have brain and yet other animals have sensation.
• Blood originated from the heart which is mandatory for sensation where the brain is bloodless lead to without sensation.
• Heart is warm in nature having the characteristic of life and brain is cold nature that tempers the emotion and furiousness of the heart
. • Heart is created first in the body where the brain is formed next. Heart stops working last when the body expires.
• Heart is connected with all the sensing parts and muscles of the body, through the blood vessels where the brain is not connected to sense organs.
• Heart is located at a central place which is a fitting place for their unique functionality whereas the brain is not so.
Aristotle is contrasting the claims of brain supremacy over heart, that those of Alcmaeon, Hippocrates, Plato and argues that the insufficiency of fleshy tissues around the brain is in order for consciousness but Aristotle provide the reason that the flesh lessness is for cooling purpose of brain and the backside of the head is also fleshless, but it is empty from sensory organs. Heart and brain together form a unit for controlling the body, that is, heart is warm, and brain tempers the heat and incense of heart.
Poems about the Heart in Literature - Sharmila M
Poets have often written about the heart. Whether they’re discussing desire, or being broken-hearted by loss or unrequited love, or the boundless joy they feel in their hearts when encountering the wonders of the natural world. Heart is something that is connected with our feelings, it may be pain, joy, empathy, confidence, anxiousness, anger or whatever emotions we feel, it comes from our heart.
Sir Philip Sidney, ‘My true love hath my heart, and I have his’
The poem is taken from Sidney’s long prose work the Arcadia, a pastoral narrative which Sidney composed in around 1580. The sonnet “My True Love Hath My Heart” describes how two lovers share their hearts in the very first line. They have given each other their complete feelings by just a simple exchange. The speaker holds his lover’s heart dear, so does her beloved. According to her, no such bargain is better than theirs as it is a selfless act of love. Her lover’s heart keeps their singular emotions in one place. Whereas, her heart guides his thoughts and senses. He loves her heart as if it was his own. The speaker cherishes his heart as within her it bides. She goes on to describe how their hearts were wounded due to some complications in the relationship. In the end, she affirms that by sharing equal pain they are now in complete bliss.
John Donne, ‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God’
This is a remarkable sonnet because, although it was written after Donne’s confirmation as a priest in the Church of England, it is teeming with the same erotic language we find in his earlier ‘love sonnets’. This is the aspect of Donne which prefigures a poet of 250 years later, the Victorian religious poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who often addresses God in the same breathless, excited way that we see in this sonnet. Donne’s sonnet also ends with a very daring declaration of desire that God ‘ravish’ him, much as he had longed for the women in his life to ravish him in his altogether more libertine youth.
William Wordsworth, ‘My heart leaps up’
This simple nine-line poem describes how the poet is filled with joy when he sees a rainbow, and that he has always felt this way, since ‘my life began’; he hopes he will always keep that sense of enchantment with the natural world. Whenever Wordsworth beholds it, his heart gets filled with enthusiasm and energy. It is not that the sensation of joy existed in his heart when he was a child. As an adult, he still enjoys the beauty of a rainbow. He wishes to retain this childish self even if he matures and grows old. If it does not happen, he will embrace death unquestionably. According to him, nature, symbolized by the rainbow, will always be divine, and he thinks it should be for everyone. The poem contains Wordsworth’s famous declaration, ‘The Child is father of the Man’, but it’s also noteworthy for its joyous opening line about the way one’s heart skips a beat when one encounters something beautiful or sublime in nature.
Emily Dickinson, ‘The heart asks Pleasure – first’
Its title was memorably borrowed by composer Michael Nyman for his soundtrack to the 1993 film The Piano. The poem begins with the speaker telling the reader that the first thing a heart wants is pleasure. It is the highest-ranked or most desirable state of being. But, there are other options too if pleasure is not available. Second, the heart would like to have an “excuse from pain”. If there can’t be pleasure in one’s life, then at least it can be pain-free. This isn’t always the case though. One’s life might not be painless, but if they can have “little anodynes” or moments of relief from the pain, then that’s enough. They would “deaden suffering” a little.
Zaman Asurdah’s HEART’S SHADOW - Pavithra B
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| Human Heart |
The essay Dilic Cay or Heart’s Shadow is the cream of all that the author has experienced, heard and known about the human heart. At the end of his analysis he comes to the conclusion that the human heart is the store of delectable emotions.
Human heart is a lump of flesh, equal to our clenched fist. A man’s life starts with the first heartbeat and also ends to the very same point. God's creation is reflected on the human body. Zaman Asurdah gives a quick comparison to the human body with nature. He says that:
“The flow in the veins and arteries is reminiscent of the roaring hill streams, hills and mountains. The nervous system is like the telegraph and broadcasting network. The heart has the status of an ocean in which a treasure of blood is always present.”
He says that blood constantly keeps circulating all over our body just like the rivers that flow through various places and finds its ultimate home, Sea. Blood also runs through the veins and reaches its home, heart as its goal.
The sea has various minerals and precious pearls in it. Similarly the human heart is also a treasure and the greatest gift for humans, itself. As a result, from this very ocean of the heart are churned priceless pearls like achievements and desires. It has waves of emotions making it turbulent. When it is free from emotions, it is calm and serene. When boats of desires sail in it it becomes stormy and sometimes the heart itself sinks like a boat.
Each one has a unique perspective on the heart but no one has grasped its essence. Each one are deceived but none are convinced to one conclusion. Philosophers, Doctors, Poets each come with their own terms and understanding of the human heart.
Doctors call it a machine with four compartments which can accommodate the whole universe. It is the highest of the highest sky. In common we believe that man was made of clay and the heart is nothing but dust. One can get confirmation of this fact when one comes across the hearts of some people.
Zaman Asurdah talks about various kinds of hearts found in men and women. They are:
Weak Heart : A slight tilt can break women’ hearts. Even the cracking sound is not audible, tears of blood flow down their cheeks. Such people cannot withstand even the gentlest pressure as they lack the necessary resilience.
Delicate heart : Zaman Asurdah gives an example of a husband and wife. The woman’s cat was attacked by her husband’s dog. The cat was not hurt to the extent the lady had imagined. The doctor was called and the drawing room became a virtual surgical theatre as long as the dressing continued. The cat recovered after a few days but the lady’s delicate heart was so deeply perturbed that she did not again peep into that small niche of her husband’s heart in which the poor dog had made its abode.
Plastic heart : In ancient times there was nothing called plastic. No one knew that there are hearts which are made of plastic. But nowadays many people have undergone plastic surgeries and the valves of the heart itself are made of plastic, due to the unhealthy living of mankind.
Silky heart : These hearts are silky and their softness is very vital. Light from outside strikes them like lightning. People with such hearts are very tough but a little spark is enough to set them ablaze. Sometimes they are even reduced to ashes. Again, the very sound of scissors tears them apart.
Wax heart : it is a great blessing to have a wax heart. They melt down with the harsh and hot words they hear at the same time one cold word freezes them. If they fight ten times with the same person in a day then they sue the peace of their enemy eleven times the same day. Such people should be kept at a normal temperature.
Steel heart : People call men that are steel hearted. Such people have no effect on cold and hot emotions. They are alike both inside and outside. If you strike them with a hammer, no harm will come to them. Only an echo of the impact will be heard.
Glass heart : Several people are made of glass hearts. The world itself is a glass house. It reflects what we do. These hearts are broken everyday and it is impossible to rebuild it. Even a slightest of jerk can crack the glass heart. Zaman Asurdah quotes the lines of the poet Arif as an example:
A crack has appeared in my glass (heart),
The vessel (body) makes a jarring sound.
The truth is that whatever the heart possesses is attributed to it by poets. Doctors do not bother much about it. They have started transplanting hearts as if it were a cabbage seedling. Doctors preserve hearts of brain dead or donated people and support it with oxygen and blood to keep it alive until they are transplanted. But only the upper class of wealthy men can afford to live such lives. An average girl's heart is like a special jewellery box . Only a few girls can marry the person they love. Not every woman has that chance. Asurdah compares such lives with the loved one to be a jewel inside an ornament box.
Zaman Asurdah quotes various examples from poet’s like Iqbal, Aatash, Akbar-Jaipuri, Jigar Muradabadi and other philosophers and writers. Jigar Muradabadi in short says that, ‘Heart is love and-love is heart'. Asurdah concludes that the heart is an enigma which is difficult to unravel.
“As the poet Iqbal says, the heart's book can be interpreted in countless ways. The heart's shadow cheats every man according to the level of his intelligence. If you too ponder over it, it will appear before you in a thousand hues.” - Dilic Cay (1974)
Writing Style of Heart’s Shadow - Shamitha S
The Kashmiri prose writer Zaman Asurdah is a popular and a different kind of writer. He is a Sahitya Academy winner, he depicts humour and satire in his works. He wrote the essay Heart's Shadow and through this essay he predicts the different types of human hearts. His writing style of this text is a descriptive style in a linear form.
In this essay, the different hearts are described and have been compared. Man's creation has been compared to various parts of earth and also the heart is compared to different parts of earth.
Descriptive essay is a type of essay that describes something. Specifically, a descriptive essay should describe something the writer has experienced or knows about, with sufficient detail to communicate that subject to a reader. Good descriptive writing uses precise language. Good descriptive writing often makes use of figurative language such as analogies, similes and metaphors to help paint the picture in the reader's mind. Descriptive essays break the structured, formal approach used in more conventional academic writing, allowing the author to speak from personal experience. Being too personal risks seeming silly or over dramatic or too impersonal and things get boring. The art of the descriptive essay is striking the balance between these two. So through this Heart's Shadow, Zaman has beautifully and skillfully revealed how various hearts exist in this world.
Critical Analysis of Heart’s Shadow - Kadambari R
The writer presents different types of people with different types of heart to the readers. Though at first, one might feel like the author is a bit of a judgmental person based on the examples he had stated in his essay, one cannot completely disagree with him. Because as the essay progresses, the readers are able to engage with the writer because every one of us would have crossed paths with some people who would have had similar characteristic features like those that the writer has mentioned.
His writing style is not prosaic. It is simple but has elements of imagination to it. He used sensory imageries such as visual and auditory imageries in his essay. This is identified in the line, “roaring hill streams, hills and mountains.” He compares the heart to a clenched fist and tells how a man’s journey starts with the first heartbeat ‘and also ends on his return to this very point.’ He then says that everything that the god has created in this earth is fully reflected in one’s body and goes to compare it with the sea, river, hills, mountains, etc. His picturesque form of writing about the heart influences the readers to read it further.
He then talks about the heart as a centre of all desires and expresses his resentment towards people because they haven’t ‘grasped its essence.’ He then brings out how different people view the heart differently. He then gives one example based on his experience where he had to deal with a lady who had such a weak heart. After this example, he goes on to explain different types of hearts to the readers. He talks about plastic hearts, silky hearts, wax hearts, hearts made of steel and hearts made of glass. With reference to the hearts made of glass, he brings in poet Arif’s words,
‘A crack has appeared in my glass (heart),
The vessel (body) makes a jarring sound.’
Zaman then talks about how easy it is for the doctor to transplant the heart. This could be suggestive of how people quickly move on in life. He also talks about how traders, common folk and engineers keep their hearts and goes on to describe an average girls’ heart. And talks about poets and philosophers who had different views about the heart starting from Iqbal to Plato. Though he seemed to have spoken about how different people view the heart differently, it is evident that he agrees with Plato as he described it as the centre of all desires. Because in the beginning of the essay, we find Zaman calling the heart as a centre of all desires.
Towards the end, he says that it’s extremely difficult to unravel the enigma of the heart and once again brings in the poet Iqbal’s view where he says that the heart’s book can be interpreted in countless ways. And ends the essay by saying that the heart’s shadow cheats every man according to the level of intelligence. One can see how the writer slowly started his essay by praising the beauty of the heart and he ended it by calling it a cheater because it cheats a man according to his intelligence level. Nonetheless, the heart is truly a storehouse of delectable emotions.
Other Works Related To HUMAN HEART - Supriya A
Heart symbolises Love, and here we go with the most popular poem that strikes our mind when we talk about heart, lined up at the beginning; passionate and romantic indeed.
Sonnet 46 - William Shakespeare
Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar,
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
A closet never pierced with crystal eyes,
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him thy fair appearance lies …
In this sonnet we find a different approach towards one’s heart, Shakespeare argues that his eyes and heart are engaged in a fight to the death over who should have the right to own the image of Shakespeare’s beloved, the Fair Youth. The poet’s heart argues that it knows the truth of the young man, and no eye, no matter how clear, has ever penetrated that truth. Shakespeare concludes that his eyes own his beloved’s outward visible appearance, while his heart has rights over what’s inside.
A Birthday - Christina Rossetti
The poem is about the narrator's delight over her love’s upcoming birthday. The narrator, who most likely voices Rossetti’s own views, compares her heart to various things in nature. In a series of brilliant and densely beautiful comparisons, the poet says that her heart is full. Rossetti uses anaphora, which becomes evident with the repetition of “My heart is like” in every line of the first stanza, it shows the narrator is not able to express her joy through language. That is; the joy of the narrator is inexpressible, and cannot be defined in words. Her feelings abound and make her unable to articulate what she wants to. She keeps on searching for a suitable simile for her feelings, as a result, makes use of the natural symbols that bring about images of happiness and celebration.
Heart to Heart – Rita Dove
Rita Dove’s “Heart to Heart” is a poem seeking to define the heart. Oscillating between the physical (organ) and the metaphorical (that of feeling), the literal and the abstract, the poem explores common conceptions about the heart using cliché and seeks to establish the truth about what it means to feel, love, and intimately connect with someone. “Heart to Heart” is a poem built on reasoning. As the speaker tries to understand the heart and its workings.
THE TELL- TALE HEART, BY EDGAR ALLAN POE:
The title refers to the beating of the old man’s heart. The heart “tells tales” to the narrator. Tales, as you well know, are stories, and can be based on either real or imagined events. In either case, tellers of tales want to keep the reader or listener paying attention, and will often resort to extreme exaggerations to achieve that goal. So, what tales does the old man’s heart tell? We first hear his heart beating on the eighth night, when he realizes that something is not right in his room. His heart tells a tale of fear, which in turn makes the narrator extremely angry and gives him the push he needs to carry out his dastardly deed. The next time we hear the beating of the heart is after the old man is dead. See, this is part of why the narrator tells us he cut up the body before burying it under the floorboards. If it wasn’t for that step, we could imagine that the old man maybe wasn’t quite as dead as the narrator thought. Since that isn’t a possibility, and since we know that dead hearts don’t beat, the narrator’s own hidden guilt over the deed is projected onto the dead man’s heart, thus telling a tale of the narrator’s guilty feelings. So, the title also refers to the narrator’s heart. Inside the heart is where our deepest, truest feelings and emotions live, at least metaphorically speaking. We could look at the whole story of the old man’s murder as a tale told by the narrator, a tale from his own heart. The title refers to both the narrator’s heart, and to the old man’s heart, and to the tales told by both.
We the students of I M. A. English have referred various sources and have tried to explain it in a brief note. Various literary works were also referred during the preparation.
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