Similarities and Contradictions in Thoughts: The Beauty of Abdus Selim’s Exegesis on Literary Terraces

 

Human beings are gifted with a broad spectrum of qualities which enabled us to rise over all other created species on this planet. One of the invaluable traits that God Almighty bestowed upon us is that we can put ourselves in front of interrogative signs. Human beings are the only living species in the world who can think and can agree or contradict with their own musings. Having this exclusive epistemological physiognomy in vision, noted French philosopher Jose Rene Descartes promulgated hundreds of years ago “We think therefore we exist”.

Linking up European philosophy with the magnitude of intellectuality we find in Bangladesh is appropriate and impertinent both. It’s appropriate because philosophy, art and literature have no territorial boundaries. In today’s virtually connected world we can get to know the latest curriculums or classroom materials in Harvard University or University of East London or any other foreign institutions just with a click on our laptop keyboards. Moreover, philosophic concepts of Jean Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, Margaret Fuller, Julia Kristeva, Venedikt Yerofeyev etcetera are taught in universities across Bangladesh. On the other hand, I have used the word “impertinent” because we just go through the philosophic notions of these monumental western philosophers but we are not much concerned about streamlining our society or statecraft in light of the precepts these great thinking giants offered through their discourses. Antiestablishment Russian author Venedikt Yerofeyev selected the word “anti-musicality” while describing this particular circumference.  

Professor Abdus Selim is personally known to me. He is an erudite scholar in the domain of English language and literature. He is currently holding the top post in Department of English Language and Literature in Dhaka city’s Central Women’s University. He was kind enough to gift me a complimentary copy of his book “Being Apolitical” which is a sizeable compilation of essays and features authored by Professor Abdus Selim on stage shows, plays, playwrights, stage performers, the glorious Liberation War of 1971, translation studies, history and certain socioeconomic patterns that define the ambience that surrounds us in Bangladesh’s conservative society. One thing must be admitted though it’s slightly unpalatable. Reading and writing habits have drastically declined in our society. Even educated parents these days don’t encourage their children to read books. Under these circumstances where reading habit has nosedived, Professor Abdus Selim has obviously done a valiant job by writing a number of books.

In one of his essays in “Being Apolitical” Abdus Selim has illustrated evidentially the progress and evolution of theaters in Bangladesh and how staging plays gradually blossomed in Bangladesh following the Liberation War of 1971. Abdus Selim has named some prominent personages, who played huge roles in popularizing theaters in Bangladesh like Aly Zaker, Nasir Uddin Yusuf, Babul Biswas, Syed Shamsul Haque and Mamunur Rashid. Looking at the scenario prevailing in Bangladesh during last one year roughly, it’s saddening and troublesome to see that stage artistes, directors, actors and actresses are being harassed by means of abusing legal frameworks for vague reasons. As a nation neither us nor our rulers have yet learned to exercise tolerance when it comes to ideologies that don’t match our own thinking stream. It’s very unfortunate and this squalid tradition has been going on since the very birth of Bangladesh 54 years ago.

In another piece of writing, Abdus Selim has idealized youth. He extended compliments and felicitations to the vigour and grit of youngsters in this article. He alluded to literary works by Kazi Nazrul Islam, Rabindranath Tagore and William Shakespeare and in unison with these fabled litterateurs Abdus Selim quoted these words “Youth, I do adore thee”. The role of youths in the July Revolution was highly eye-catching. However, the new challenge which has glared up in the post-revolution period that the interim government must harness these young boys and girls with the task of building up a lovely Bangladesh that we have strived for since 1971 and our integrated desire found a way to have itself vented out through the mass uprising in July 2024. The most vital job now is to place these youths in employment or entrepreneurship without delay. Otherwise a reign of depression and demoralized state of mind will engulf our new generation.

Another essay by Abdus Selim dwells on canonical literature which is also known as pure literature in other words. In this essay we come across allusions to celebrated poets like Abdul Mannan Syed, Jibanananda Dash, John Keats, Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe. The themes of love, romanticism, death, humans’ longing for immortality and life’s transience were movingly explored by Abdus Selim in this write-up. Abdus Selim spotlighted on the bridgework between translation theories and practice in another article which is a scholarly work without doubts. Aligning with this point, I find it rather befitting to cite a widely reiterated maxim and a universally acknowledged aphorism about translated works which is “Translations are like women—not beautiful and faithful at a time”. I apologize to all my readers if I sound gender-biased. I don’t mean to hurt any section of the society I am living in. I hold women in high esteem in my thoughts and activities. It’s just a popular idiom about translation which I have heard in many countries in the West.

Another thing that I learned for the first time from Abdus Selim is 16th century Spanish novelist Miguel De Cervantes was also a dramatist. Miguel De Cervantes is a classical author whose fictional masterpiece Don Quixote is one of the best-sold books across the world and it has been translated in almost all major languages on earth including Bengali. In my assessment, Miguel De Cervantes taught writers to stand against establishments for the first time in European literary history by denigrating knighthood and mocking at knights taking a lot of risk around five hundred years ago.

Allusions to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novella No One Writes to The Colonel and Samuel Beckett’s magnum opus Waiting for Godot are reflections of the fact that Abdus Selim is very much attached with the ongoing creative dimensions of the postmodern era where we keep on waiting for things or individuals who hardly appear before us in tangible reality in the middle of a world ravaged by war, deceptions, graft, injustice, mass murders, geopolitical predicaments, exodus of refugees and many other depressive phenomena.

Going back to the beginning paragraphs of this review, Abdus Selim is found getting on the springboard appearing to be in discordance with himself by naming the book “Being Apolitical” and this dualism underpins the beauty of all scholastic endeavours. Politics cannot be segregated from anything in society or from anything in the entire world. Whatever social or economic or academic issues we talk about, we have no way to avoid addressing political vicissitudes, governing systems and state machineries.

The book “Being Apolitical” was published in February 2024 by Rhythm Prokashona Sangstha. Author Abdus Selim’s personal profile shows he was born in September 1945. I offer my prayers and best wishes to Professor Abdus Selim to have a long, healthy and spectacular life spangled with success stories and dazzling achievements.


Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury
is a contributor to different
English newspapers and 
magazines.