8/9/2019 Ghalib Poet

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By all accounts, Asadullah Khan Ghalib is the greatest poet in the Urdu language. He is a

genius who excites the reverence generally reserved for Shakespeare, Racine and Goethe.

Asadullah means Lion of God, and Ghalib, meaning victorious, is the traditional pen-nameadopted by Eastern poets. However, Ghalib also uses Asad, meaning lion, as his pen-name

in several ghazals.

The bare facts of his life are as follows: He was born in 1797 in Agra, a city steeped in Mughal

tradition and famous as the site of the Taj Mahal. At the age of 13, he was married into a noble

family and left for Delhi. By the age of 19 he had produced a large part of his poetry in Urdu

and turned his attention to writing poetry in Persian. He was unemployed for most of his life

and was supported by grants from patrons like the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar

a poet of considerable merit himself and grandees like the Nawab of Rampur.

The cataclysm in Ghalibs time was the uprising by the Indian Muslims and Hindus against the

foreign rule of the British in 1857. However, this feeble military effort was uncoordinated and it

failed. The British violently crushed the revolt using Indian soldiers to fight other Indian

soldiers. Bahadur Shah Zafar, who had become a kind of symbol of the revolt, was exiled to

Rangoon in Burma, where he died after some years of loneliness and poverty in 1862. The

Mughal Empire in India was extinguished. As a courtier of the former Emperor, Ghalib had to

spend much time and effort trying to prove to the British overlords that he was not a

collaborator or conspirator. Ghalib died in 1869 in Delhi.

A few words about the man himself. Ghalib was of aristocratic descent, and his forbears were

Turkish warlords from Central Asia. In a well-known verse lamenting his fortunes, he says that

for a hundred generations the profession of his ancestors had been soldiering, and therefore

by way of poetry he could hardly hope to increase his sense of honor. Although he had fallen

on hard times, the streak of luxury never really left Ghalib. His children died young, and he

frequently sought solace with other women. He drank wine, and on one occasion was dragged

to court for having delayed payment of his bills to a certain Macpherson, the Scottish owner of

the wine and spirits store that he frequented. In court, he was asked if he was a Muslim, to

which he replied with a smile: Half a Muslim. When asked to explain, he said: I do not eat

pork, but I drink wine.

And now let us turn to Ghalibs language. The origin of linguistic expression is divine. In thebeginning was the Word, says the Gospel of John. Language is, in the words of Paul Valry,

the god gone astray in the flesh. Although Ghalibs Persian poetry is both erudite and

expressive, it is not his greatest achievement. His Urdu poetry is, however, even on the lips of

people who do not really know Urdu. Victor Kiernan, who has done much translation from

Urdu of the poetry of Iqbal and Faiz [who might be considered to be the silver and bronze

medallists of Urdu poetry] has the following to say:

As a poetical medium, Urdu might almost be a language made up by poets for their own

benefit Modern English may be too far secularized, overloaded with utilitarian burdens, to

be capable any longer of poetry. A language like Urdu, with a smaller prose content, has so tospeak a lower boiling point, and boils up into poetry or vaporizes into verse more readily.

A famous Turkish novelist and activist, Halide Edib, has mentioned that when she heard Urdu

poetry being recited for the first time it was though a shower of flower petals was falling upon

her.

It is a pity that many people will have to appreciate Ghalib only in translation. All lovers of

poetry will sympathize with Robert Frost who said that poetry is what is lost in translation. The

French say that translation is treason. The Japanese go further and say a translation is like the

underside of a carpet the threads are all there, but the exquisite beauty of the design isabsent. Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu poetry form an organic continuum and there are

metaphors, allusions, conceits and tropes that are common to poetry in these languages. It

would require too much elucidation and effort to explain the depths and heights of Ghalibs

poetry. Hence, I shall offer just a few simple samples from Ghalib rendered into English.

In a couplet referring to his reputation as a wine drinker, Ghalib says:

These philosophical topics, Ghalib, and your eloquence so fine,

We would have thought you a holy man, were you not a tippler of wine.

This type of introspective couplet usually ends a ghazal. It may be of some interest that the

sonnet in European poetry is modelled on the ghazal. Here it should be pointed out that

Ghalibs poetry is essentially melancholy in keeping with the dictum that our sweetest songs

are those that tell of saddest thought. Here is how Ghalib begins a ghazal:

No song am I, nor harmony complete

I am but the voice of my own defeat.

Part of another ghazal proceeds as follows:

My life would have passed somehow, but look

Why did I recall the path you took?

My sad thoughts turn to your street once again

There I recall I lost my heart in vain.

Next, a part of another ghazal by Ghalib:

A thousand desires, each one of which is enough to kill

My longings mostly gratified, but not enough to thrill.

We heard of Adam being turned out of Paradise downbeat,

But greater the shame with which we were turned out of your street.

To sum up, the last example is one of Ghalibs most celebrated ghazals:

It is but a heart, not stone or brick

Why should it not boil over with pain?

We shall weep aloud a thousand times,

Why should anyone to us complain?

Not a temple or a sacred place

Not an archway or some other base

Sitting as we are on the highway

Why should we be asked to move away?

When that beauty of attractive grace

Appears by herself and shows her face

With her looks like the bright midday moon

Why then does she veil her face so soon?

Yes, she is not a believer at all

Neither is she faithful, as I recall

Who holds his faith and his own heart dear

Why should he then to her street come near?

Even without Ghalib, weary soul,

No work will stop moving to its goal

Why with grief be then beside?

Why sigh and moan and why weep and chide?

It may be fair to say that Ghalibs poetry is sad. By contrast, Ghalibs prose, as it appears in

his famous letters, is full of wit, humour and joie de vivre. In Urdu literature, no volume of

published letters has ever approached the liveliness and attractiveness of Ghalibs letters.

From the ocean of Ghalibs poetry this is but only a glassful. Ghalib in his own lifetime cared

not for fame, and though he cared for fortune it evaded him. However, if across the centuries

Ghalib can speak to us with his poetry, then Ghalib has achieved a rare kind of immortality.

Ghalib shall live as long as there are speakers of Urdu in the world.

For those who wish to delve further into the poetry of Ghalib, the book edited by Aijaz Ahmad

titled GHAZALS OF GHALIB Versions from the Urdu by Aijaz Ahmad, W. S. Merwin,

Adrienne Rich, William Stafford, David Ray, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Strand and William

Hunt, Columbia University Press, New York, 1971, may be recommended.

GHALIB AND HIS POETRYby Syed Tanvir Wasti