On the concluding day of the International Urdu Conference at the Arts Council of Pakistan on Sunday, a session devoted to the life and poetry of Nasir Kazmi became the intellectual high point of the moot — largely because of the spellbinding address by veteran scholar and poet Dr Khurshid Rizvi.
The session was included in the Urdu Conference in connection with the special occasion of centennial celebrations of Nasir.
From the very first moments, it was clear that this would not be a routine critical talk. Sitting in the audience, one could feel an unusual attentiveness in the auditorium. Dr Rizvi spoke with a calm authority, and almost every other sentence that he uttered was met with spontaneous applause -- not out of courtesy, but out of genuine recognition. His words carried a kind of weight that slows time and compels listening.
Reflecting on Nasir’s poetic talent, Dr Rizvi described it as something that was beyond analytical frameworks. Having known the poet personally, he spoke as a witness rather than a distant critic. He recalled a certain gravity in Nasir’s personality, something “heavy” and grounded that never let him become superficial.
While generations will continue to draw sustenance from Nasir’s poetry, Dr Rizvi observed, those who had heard him speak in person had access to something now irrevocably lost.
One of the most arresting moments came when Dr Rizvi dismantled a comforting cliché. Great people, he said, were often declared immortal because their work survived. That was true — but only partially, he said, and explained that although the creative work left by such geniuses lived on, their personality did not. The living presence of Nasir— the man with whom one could sit with, listen to, and experience — had vanished, and only those who encountered him could truly measure that loss, the scholar said.
Placing Nasir among the most creatively intense individuals he had known, Dr Rizvi named only two others in the same category — Majid Amjad and Munir Niazi. What bound them together, he argued, was not craft alone but a rare fusion of madness, spontaneity, and creative fire — a gift that could not be taught or imitated.
Dr Rizvi shared one of Nasir’s own piercing observations on poetry: When a poet stops being ‘completely spent’ and tries to ‘save’ some of this creative personality, he ceases to be a poet.
Creation of true poetry, he explained, demanded a thorough consumption of the poet’s creative self. Without that much effort, a poet could only be like a flame painted on a canvas that may look convincing, but gave no warmth, the scholar remarked.
Moving into a close reading of Nasir’s work, Dr Rizvi described his poetry as a river carrying multiple currents at once, which remained distinct and parallel.
He explained how Nasir’s imagery resisted academic explanation. His metaphors could not be neatly explained in terms of textbook theories, and they were instantly felt even if they could not be completely comprehended. To explain his point, he recited a couplet: “Purani Sohbatein Yaad Aa Rahi Hain/ Charaghon Ka Dhuan Dekha Na Jaye”
Rejecting the idea of ‘manufactured modernity’, Dr Rizvi argued that genuine freshness in poetry could not be imported from outside. Like a flower, it must grow from within the branch, he said, adding that paper flowers stitched onto a tree may look decorative, but they were not growth.
As he spoke about Nasir’s long poems Nishat-e-Khwab and Pehli Barish, Dr Rizvi’s analysis carried a sense of wonder. He described Kazmi’s diction as an ‘overflowing spring’. He said Nishat-e-Khwab was a fantasy poem like Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, and it had not received the critical attention it deserved.
Just before concluding, Dr Rizvi shared a light yet telling anecdote to make his point about knowing when to stop. He recalled a famous story about the great Arab scholar Khalil bin Ahmad, the founder of Aruz (prosody/metre).
He said: A villager once arrived at Khalil’s door with his son and said, “I have come from far away, hearing of your knowledge. Please teach my son a little Sarf [morphology], a little Nahv [syntax], a little Tibb [medicine] and a little Aruz”. Then he added anxiously, “But please keep in mind -- our donkey is standing at the door, fully loaded, and we must leave as well.”
Dr Rizvi paused and smiled, saying that while narrating this story, he himself felt the same anxiety at the session-- the fear of hearing someone say, “bas, ab band karein”. The hall laughed instantly, recognising both the humour and the truth of it. The joke gently underlined his final lesson — that wisdom is not only knowing how to speak well, but also knowing when to stop speaking.
The session was gracefully steered by Ambareen Haseeb Ambar, whose introductory remarks framed the discussion with insight and warmth. Turning to the other speaker, she invited Nasir’s son Basir Sultan Kazmi to describe Nasir as a father and a human being.
She noted that Basir himself was a distinguished poet and dramatist, someone who had forged his own identity despite the shadow of a towering literary figure — defying the common saying that nothing grew under a dense tree.
In his response, Basir gently dismantled the metaphor. If Nasir was a towering tree, he was a generous one -- a tree that moved its branches aside to let light through, that provided shade during storms, and that enabled growth rather than obstructing it. He described his relationship with his father as a bond rooted in friendship, encouragement and intellectual freedom.
As the session drew to a close, it felt less like the end of a panel talk and more like the completion of a carefully sustained silence. What lingered was not only a deeper understanding of Nasir, but also a rare glimpse of living scholarship —thoughtful, restrained and humane. On the final day of the Urdu Conference, the audience did not merely listen; it bore witness.
