The Beauty of Comparative Literature

Comparative literature is the academic discipline in which people read of tropes, ideas and all in all plots, in juxtaposition with other tropes, ideas and plots, esp. those that belong to other regions. This juxtaposition leads to the identification of similarities and, differences that tend to lie on the spectrum of subtle similarities.

The world is an obvious conglomerate of different cultures and social thoughts. Every culture has its own modes of reading, writing and storytelling. Each of these modes, and the result that they tend to give, varies from region to region. If one keeps lingual differences aside, the similarities in literary texts that stem from different parts and minds of the world are nothing short of an asset.

These very similarities are the reason that comparative literature has garnered attention as one of the most intriguing subjects in the sphere of its mother discipline, ‘Literature’.

The beauty of comparative literature relies on a multitude of things. Some of those are as follows:

• One may see a similarity in the texts coming from vastly different areas of the globe.
• One may be able to assert that there is a metaphysical link between universal human psyche, otherwise how else would these striking similarities exist?
• One may be able to observe how the idea of ‘Imitation is the highest form of flattery’ is applicable in the real world. A writer from one part of the world may fall in love with the work of a writer from another part of the world, thus inculcating the latter’s storyline, diction, etc. in his own work.

The titular postulate is to be elucidated by taking examples from the following works:

• Kubla Khan by ST Coleridge
• Zama Mahal (My Castle) by Ghani Khan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a renowned Romantic poet. His poem ‘Kubla Khan’ is laced with a : ‘…pleasure dome…’. The dome is built where the waters of Alph flow (Alph is a river in Antarctica). ‘Kubla Khan’ presents the dome as a: ‘…pleasure dome…’, one that’s described as :

‘A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!’.

Ghani Khan belongs to the literary realm of Pashto, a language spoken in the Northern regions of Pakistan. Ghani’s poem ‘Zama Mahal’ talks about the same idea of a dome (a castle’s dome to be specific), but in different wordings of course. Ghani writes:

‘Da seen da speenu shagu na mey jor ku yo mahal…’

Translation :

‘I have erected a castle from the white sands of (a) River…’

Readers and fans of literature might not find it difficult to connect the dots and comprehend the underlying idea of both the poems. The former has been written in 1816 and the latter, sometime in the late 1900s.

A sunny pleasure dome and a castle made of white sand are both not only strictly imaginative ideas, but also constructions that are based on subtle societal rebellion.

Coleridge goes on to write:

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

Ghani too, writes something of the very same sort in the following lines:

‘Dey Tol…Jahan warta,

Hairaan Hairaan Katal’

Translation:

‘The whole entire world was,

watching it in astonishment.’

This streak of similarities and connections that lies in the lap of literature is a very strong one! To fathom its strength, one has to dive deeper and deeper into not only human psychology, but also in the demesne of the philosophies and practices that tend to run the world, i.e. meliorism, philanthropy etc.

Below attached are the links of two texts that are based on the same topic that this TOOP blog is about. Read, sift, enjoy!

https://www.dawn.com/news/1736233

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280805239_A_Study_of_the_Comparative_Elements_in_the_Poetry_of_Keats_and_Ghani_Khan

About the author: The blog has been penned by Uns-E-Zahra. She is an avid fan of lingual admixtures, and tends to incline more towards works that have interlingual elements.