Courtesy Headlines Today
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (born 15 January 1935) is an Indian poet and an Urdu critic and theorist. He has formulated fresh models of literary appreciation. He absorbed western principles of literary criticism and subsequently applied them to Urdu literature, but only after adapting them to address literary aesthetics native to Arabic, Persian, and Urdu.
He was born on 15 January 1935 in India. He received his Master of Arts (MA) degree in English from Allahabad University in 1955.
Career
He began writing in 1960. Initially, he worked for the Indian postal service (1960-1968), and then as a chief postmaster-general and member of the Postal Services Board, New Delhi until 1994. He was also the editor of his literary magazine Shabkhoon and part-time professor at the South Asia Regional Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
An expert in classical prosody and ‘ilm-e bayan (the science of poetic discourse), he has contributed to modern literary discourse with a profundity rarely seen in contemporary Urdu critics.[1] His most recent books, The Mirror of Beauty (translated into English from the Urdu Kai Chaand The Sar-e-Aasmaan in 2006), and The Sun That Rose From The Earth (Penguin India, 2014), have been highly critically acclaimed.[3] He is the recipient of numerous honours and awards. Most recently he was awarded the prestigious Saraswati Samman for his work She`r-e Shor-Angez, a four-volume study of the eighteenth-century poet Mir Taqi Mir.
- Anjum Hasan in The Caravan on ‘The Mirror of Beauty’
- Rajni George in Open Magazine, the profile of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
- Mayank Austen Soofi’s interview with Shamsur Rahman Faruqi in Mint.
Some his published works
- Sher, Ghair Sher, Aur Nasr, (1973)
- The Secret Mirror, (in English, 1981)
- Ghalib Afsaney Ki Himayat Mein, (1989)
- Sher Shore Angez (in 3 volumes, 1991–93)
- Mir Taqi Mir 1722-1810 (Collected works with commentary and explanation)
- Urdu Ka Ibtedai Zamana (2001)
- Ganj-i-Sokhta (poetry)
- Sawar Aur Doosray Afsanay (2001)
- Kai Chand Thay Sar-e-Asmaan (2006)
