Mirza Ghalib

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

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.

The book is an anthology of seven critical essays on the work of Mirza Ghalib, and considers a number of issues such as comparisons between him and Muhammad Iqbal, William Shakespeare and John Donne. It also foregrounds the most distinguishing features in his poetry, including his art of dialectical poetics, the obsession with the theme of death throughout his poetry, and the representation of Karbala and Ahle-Bayt in his work. The book thus highlights the different shades of meaning in both his poetry and letters. These myriad shades are embedded in Ghalib’s vision of life. Like Shakespeare and Sophocles, Ghalib details the colourfulness of life in all its horror and glory. Just as life itself is colourful in its myriad shades, Ghalib’s poetry offers us a vision of life which is pluralistic, multifarious and universal at the same time.

"Teer-e-Neemkash: Mirza Ghalib's Gems of Meaning" is an honest and humble attempt to bring Ghalib’s poetry close to the readers of English language so they can appreciate the genius that Ghalib is. The book presents a heart-felt, immersive, insightful and profound discussion in English on Ghalib's Urdu poetry. Classifying Ghalib's poetry into themes, it is a study in perspective aimed at bringing the greatest poet closer to the English readers, celebrating Ghalib's astounding poetry.

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.

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.