قتیل شفائی کی غزلوں کا نفسیاتی مطالعہ

Abstract

Shifai's ghazals provide an example of proof for the intertwining connection between an individual's art and his or her sociocultural context. This study argues that the act of creating poetry of this kind is an act of being: “doing” where language is the vehicle for expression via which the silenced collective fears, desires, and existential crises erupt. Performed in a psycho-phenomenological framework of Shifai’s ghazals, this paper demonstrates how they weave in his experiences oscillating between the personal and cosmopolitan: love, yearning, and alienation are not themes but rather symptoms of much deeper interplay between a person and the outside world. The poet’s images of unattainable union and decay within time in addition to silent defiance encapsulate a consciousness constructed out of historical evocation: post-Partition trauma and the paradox of being artistically free within a framework of tradition. With the aid of Freud and Lacan, the study interprets Shifai’s metaphors as attempts at subconscious bargaining, particularly the “fire” (ātiś) motif which is simultaneously destructive passion and purgatorial cleansing. At the same time, it attempts to answer the question posed by the societal eye that defines and confines artistic freedom: why ghazals, which claim to be apolitical, are in fact laden with entrenched resistance to boundaries. The conclusions drawn argue that aesthetic scrutiny is insufficient in the case of Shifai’s poetry which irrevocably condemns the memory, loss, and witnessing as burdens carried by the artist. Ultimately, this research repositions ghazals as psychological artifacts, arguing that the poet’s pen is never truly his own but an instrument of existential mediation.