کورونائی ادب اور خوف کے عناصر CORONA LITERATURE AND ELEMENTS OF FEAR

Abstract

Although every aspect of life is affected in any crisis, the greatest change is often felt in human psychology and attitudes. Literary history bears witness to the fact that writers and poets have always incorporated the social circumstances created by such changes into their works, since literature’s primary concern is with human beings and humanity. As it has been said, “There is famine in Damascus, friends have forgotten love,” and our literature provides strong evidence of this reality. Whether it is Khastah-e-Ghalib, Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Quarantine, or the opening of Qudratullah Shahab’s Shahabnama, similar themes appear in European literature as well, such as The Canterbury Tales, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Albert Camus’s The Plague, and Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. These works demonstrate how pandemics and crises influence human mood and nature and become an integral part of literary expression. One of the most painful realizations during the recent COVID-19 pandemic has been humanity’s helplessness even in the scientific age. Despite constant innovations and the world’s intense focus on strengthening defense systems, comparatively little attention has been given to strengthening the human immune system. Scholars such as Dr. Ronald J. Glaser have even emphasized this concern in works like We Are Not Immune. Consequently, even today a tiny virus can bring the entire world to a standstill, pushing humanity into an unprecedented isolation where people hesitate to shake hands or even touch their own faces. Loneliness has often inspired literature and enhanced the creative abilities of writers. However, the isolation experienced during the recent pandemic is not voluntary but forced. Writers and poets traditionally resist coercion in all forms; therefore, such enforced isolation tends to generate fear and psychological distress rather than creativity. Interestingly, the French term associated with loneliness also carries the connotation of a decline in creative energy. In the early days of the pandemic, poets and writers across the world were seen reflecting on this atmosphere of fear and solitude. From the time of Camus to the present day, one of the most significant questions for intellectuals has been whether such viruses originate naturally or are the result of laboratory creation.