Fayzi's Planetary Poetics

Abstract This article recovers a theory of poetry articulated by the Indian poet laureate Abul Fayz Fayzi (d. 1595) in “The White Tide of Dawn” (“Tabashir-i subh”), the Persian prose preface to his collected poems. Fayzi's oblique style of thought wanders through shifting metaphors and lyrical prose, and his creative mode of exposition scales up into what this article calls Fayzi's planetary poetics—a way of recognizing, through poetry, how experience, language, and the pursuit of truth are constrained by the earthbound nature of human perspective. Fayzi's theory maintains canny clarity about such limitations, regarding poetry as a form capacious (and honest) enough to accommodate inquiry's ambitions and failures. Reading Fayzi alongside scientific, philosophical, and literary-theoretical texts widely available in early modern India, this article shows how key leitmotifs in Fayzi's essay (the mathematical concept of the Earth's center; the desert as space of discovery and transformation; the lunar eclipse) come together in a powerful compact of hubris, fragility, and creativity. Fayzi's planetary poetics actuates multiple senses of “theory” (as a set of principles; as a way of seeing; as a means to freedom) and offers a compelling, important contribution to ongoing discussions about the ghazal, the lyric, and poetry itself.