A dense tranquillity, a harsh solitude: the ‘un-natural’ modernism of Miraji

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper delineates the socio-historical imagination underpinning the works of Miraji, one of the pioneers of Urdu poetic modernism. It argues that the ‘modernism’ attributed to Miraji’s poetry is best understood as the culmination of, as well as a veritable departure from, a specific diachronic movement internal to the history of modern Urdu literature. Presenting the idea of ‘naturalness’ as one of the principal catalysts of this internal movement, this paper demonstrates how Miraji attempted to reorient the trajectory of modern Urdu poetry by adopting an equivocal poetic language, which challenged the moral, social, and political imports of this politico-aesthetic discourse of ‘naturalness’.