Allama Iqbal Analysis

LordByron and Allama Iqbal, Revolutionaries with a Difference

Ashutosh khanna Independent Researcher,
Distt.Poonch,(J&k)

Abstract:

This paper explores a comaparative study of two prominent literary figures, Allama Iqbal and Lord Byron. Iqbal is greatest of those literary figures of modern Indiawhose achievement represents a synthesis of the East and the West. His genius, training and situation made him a confluence of several streams of influence – ancient Indian thought (he always refers to his Brahmanic origins), the mystic tradition of the East (the subject of his doctoral dissertation was “The Development of Metaphysics in Persia’), Western philosophy and literature, and last but not the least the Islamic thought. Among the

With a native gift for literature and philosophy he combined an extraordinary capacity to Imbibe foreign influences and to assimilate them to his own system. His genius, training and situation made him a confluence of several streams of influence – ancient Indian thought (he always refers to his Brahmanic origins), the mystic tradition of the East (the subject of his doctoral dissertation was “The Development of Metaphysics in Persia’), Western philosophy and literature, and last but not the least the Islamic thought. Among the most significant literary influences on Iqbal was that of the German and the English Romantic movements. Among the Germans he was influenced most by Goethe and Nietzsche and to a lesser extent by Herder and Heine, and among the English Romantics Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron had the greatest impact on him. With Wordsworth and Shelley, he shares a lot in common, both in subject matter and poetic technique, but with Byron he seems to have very little in common and yet there are several adulatory references to him in his poetry and prose – works. The most glowing tributes are paid to the poet in Payam -i- Mashiq (The Message from the East), the Persian work which Iqbal wrote in his response to Goethe’s West Oestlicher Divan. The first tribute occurs under the tittle, ‘A conference of the Deceased in the Heaven’. Placing Byron among the

Iqbal has conveniently ignored a significant part of Byron – the part that is unpalatable to him and unsuited to his system. This is, of course, his favorite method. He singled out some aspects of Napoleon and Mussolini for praise while ignoring others which would not merit praise from his standpoint. But whereas the unpalatable aspects are implicitly hinted at in his poems about Napoleon and Mussolini, in his eulogy of Byron, with the exception of a veiled reference to his solipsism, the unsavory aspect is almost suspected. Iqbal might have been partly influenced by the Byron – legend which was quite alive when he went to Europe for higher studies but it will be unfair to say that his estimate was primarily based on the popular reputation of the poet. Like Goethe, Carlyle, and Chesterton he saw in Byron not merely “a spoiled child of fame and fortune” as Hazlitt described him but the soul of the modern world aspiring for absolute freedom and defying all limitations. He saw that essentially, he shared something very fundamental in common with Byron. Both of them were dissatisfied with things as they are and dreamers of an idealized order. To both of them man was a reservoir of boundless potential. The whole poetry of Iqbal is an adoration of man who in his hierarchy is only next to God. As he