Ghalib

Mirza Asadu'llah Khan Ghalib was the brightest luminary of his time in the South Asian, Muslim literary community. A poet in Urdu and Persian, he was endowed with exquisite imagination, sparkling wit, and a charming presence. Ghalib was a brilliant conversationalist, skilled in the art of human relations. In the last twenty years of his life, the political conditions of northern India caused the death or dispersion of many of his best friends. He satisfied his gregarious urges by writing exquisite letters in Urdu, in a delightfully conversational style. By these means Ghalib kept in touch with his scattered friends. These letters were so novel in style that the first collection was published only a month after the poet's death. In this book, Daud Rahbar provides thoroughly annotated English versions of 170 Urdu letters. These letters exemplify the possibility of elevating human relations to an art form, and Rahbar's translation reproduces the delicate flavor of the original Urdu prose.

This selection of poetry and prose by Ghalib provides an accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the preeminent Urdu poet of the nineteenth century. Ghalib's poems, especially his ghazals, remain beloved throughout South Asia for their arresting intelligence and lively wit. His letters—informal, humorous, and deeply personal—reveal the vigor of his prose style and the warmth of his friendships. These careful translations allow readers with little or no knowledge of Urdu to appreciate the wide range of Ghalib's poetry, from his gift for extreme simplicity to his taste for unresolvable complexities of structure. Beginning with a critical introduction for nonspecialists and specialists alike, Frances Pritchett and Owen Cornwall present a selection of Ghalib's works, carefully annotating details of poetic form. Their translation maintains line-for-line accuracy and thereby preserves complex poetic devices that play upon the tension between the two lines of each verse. The book includes whole ghazals, selected individual verses from other ghazals, poems in other genres, and letters. The book also includes a glossary, the Urdu text of the original poetry, and an appendix containing Ghalib's comments on his own verses.

This book has the unique distinction of presenting, in one compendious volume, the best of Ghalib in poetry and prose. It contains 104 ghazals, seven miscellaneous poems, and a bouquet of sixty-eight selected letters, besides a few striking couplets and qitas. The ghazals and poems are first given in the original form in calligraphic Urdu. This is followed, on the opposite page, by their English translation, couched in a language that is simple, lucid and rhythmical. The ghazals and poems have also been provided with a transliterated version in the Roman script. This should enable the non-Urdu-knowing reader to have a feel and flavour of the Urdu text. In addition, the book contains a critical-cum-biographical introduction which is comprehensive, well-documented, and insightful. It is hoped that the book will receive a welcome response from the lovers of Ghalib, who was an outstanding poet fit to rank with the greatest poets of the world, and a precious part of our cultural heritage.

Amit Basole teaches Economics at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. Urdu poetry as well as history and architecture of the Indian subcontinent are his passions. Anjum Altaf is a South Asian living in Lahore. He is the author of Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Aakar Books Delhi 2019, Liberty Books Karachi 2020.

A Brilliant Biography Of Nineteenth Century India S Greatest Poet Mirza Mohammad Asadullah Khan Ghalib Began Writing Poetry In Persian At The Age Of Nine And The Pre-Eminent Poet Of The Time, Mir, Predicted A Great Future For The Precocious Genius When He Was Shown His Verse. But Success And Material Rewards Did Not Come To Ghalib Easily For The Times Were Against Him, And He Did Not Suffer Fools Gladly Even If They Occupied Positions Of Importance. Ghalib Was At The Height Of His Powers When Events Took A Turn For The Worse. First Came The Decline Of The Mughal Court, Then The Rise Of The British Empire And, Finally, The Revolt Of 1857. Though Ghalib Lived Through The Upheavals And Purges Of The Revolt, In Which Many Of His Contemporaries And Friends Died And His Beloved Delhi Was Irrevocably Changed, He Was A Broken Man And Longed For Death. When He Died, On 15 February 1869, He Left Behind Some Of The Most Vivid Accounts Of The Events Of The Period Ever Written. In This Illuminating Biography Pavan K. Varma Evocatively Captures The Spirit Of The Man And The Essence Of The Times He Lived In.

Screenplay of a television serial on Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, 1797-1869, Urdu and Persian poet; translated from the Urdu original.

Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib was born in Agra in the closing years of the eighteenth century. He wrote in both Urdu and Persian and was also a great prose stylist. Ghalib fascinates his readers for many reasons, but one of the most noted qualities in Ghalib was that he was a careful, even strict, editor of his work. It is said that he discarded or disregarded more than half of his Urdu verses. These verses were forgotten for long, until as late as 1918, in the library of the princely state of Bhopal. In 1921, they were edited and published as a new Divan-e Ghalib. In Flowers in a Mirror, Mehr Afshan Farooqi continues her research in the strain of her first book, A Wilderness at My Doorstep. She examines Ghalib’s approach to his work, the world in which he lived and composed, and ultimately, his genius. She selects 30 ghazals from the rejected corpus, translates them into English and provides an erudite, sparkling critical commentary. Through this book, she highlights the significance of marginalized poetry and the need to reinstate the forgotten verses in our lives and hearts.