Mohammad Husain Azad was a pioneer of the new movement that took place in Urdu literature in the latter half of the 19th century. Son of a friend of Zauk’s, he had the poetic spirit nurtured by his association with Zouk.

After the First War of Independence, Azad resorted to Lahore and founded a literary society there. He pointed out that contemporary Urdu poetry was stale, repetitive, exaggerated, and in need of imbibing some freshness and spontaneity from the West. He wrote Urdu poems in the style of English ones, and dressed Western ideas in English style. For example, he captured the essence of Tennyson’s Excelsior in his ‘Ululami ke liye koi sad-I-rah nahin hain’, and rendered into Urdu the song of the flower-girl in Lytton Strachey’s Last Days of  Pompeii. Azad’s forte was his prose and apart from a poet, he was also a journalist, a critic and an educationist, using prose rather than poetry. Thus Azad’s contribution is more remarkable in prose – which is not at all dull and prosaic, but rich and often poetic.

Feedback  Be a Contributor  Site Map   Advertising Enquiries   Discussion Group