In 1841, Syed Muhammad, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s elder brother, who had seen some success with his lithographic press published Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib’s (1797-1869) first divan (collection of a poet’s work). By this time Ghalib – insolvent, a jailbird, given to drinking and gambling – had ceased writing in Urdu, and was devoting himself entirely to Persian. The published divan, slim, containing 1095 verses, lacked the richness of his manuscripts which had blue lapis and gold embellishments, Chinese ink, and ornate plates. It was like any other unremarkable early lithographic print.
Ghalib’s earliest extant manuscript divan, compiled in 1816 (even before he is 19), comprised 1533 verses, while the Nuskha-e Hamidiya, of 1821 had nearly twice the number of verses of the published divan at 2,152. After 1841, Ghalib’s Urdu divan saw four more editions during his lifetime, each containing a slightly larger number of verses than the previous one. Ghalib composed a little more than 4,200 verses in Urdu, out of which 2200 verses did not make the transition from manuscript to print. A complete edition (kulliyat) did not come out till he lived.
Ghalib: Flowers in a Mirror – A Critical Commentary, Mehr Afshan Farooqi, Penguin, 2024.
Although, in the dibacha (foreword) of his 1841 divan, Ghalib refers to the “scattered verses found outside of this divan” as “inconsequential”, it may be argued that they were not disclaimed by Ghalib. In her book Ghalib: A Wilderness at My Doorstep, Mehr Afshan Farooqi has interpreted it as an assertion of copyright, more than a rejection of his own creations.
Her new book Ghalib: Flowers in a Mirror, offers critical commentary on the unpublished corpus or the so called ‘mustarad kalam’ (rejected, revoked, unselected) of Ghalib. Beginning with Altaf Husain ‘Hali’ (1897) and Ali Haider Nazm Tabatabai (1900), Ghalib’s published divan has seen a long line of commentaries dissecting and discussing the verses, but the revoked verses have garnered scant attention. Mainly there’s Abdul Bari Asi (Mukammal Sharh-e Divan-e Ghalib, 1931), Gyan Chand Jain (Tafsir-e Ghalib, 1971), and the old but recently published Syed Muhammad Zamin Kantoori (Sharh-e Divan-e Ghalib, 2012).
Flowers in a Mirror brings that much-needed searching, scholarly attention to the writings of a very young poet, given to freshness (taza-goi) and extraordinary style of versification.
Why was Ghalib’s poetry ‘difficult?’
Scholars generally agree that the rejected verses were difficult, with intricate Persianate constructions needing considerable effort in deciphering. These, it was posited were from early phase of his career. Like Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil (1644-1720) and Saib Tabrizi (1592–1676), Ghalib’s poetry was characterised by, and criticized for, its abundance of far-fetched similes, abstract, unfamiliar meanings, and unexpected images that stretched the limits of poetic expression. An amusing anecdote recounted in Hali’s (1837-1914) chronicle of Ghalib’s life and writings, Yadgar-e Ghalib buttresses the Ghalib, the difficult poet trope: once Maulvi Abdul Qadir Rampuri, a Falstaffian character, said to Ghalib (1797–1869), “I do not understand one of your Urdu verses”, citing the following:
pahle to roghan-e gul bhains ke anḍe se nikal
phir dava jitni hai kul bhains ke anḍe se nikal
First extract the essence of the rose from buffalo eggs,
Then, extract as much remedy as there is, from buffalo eggs.
Ghalib, taken aback, denied authorship of the asinine verse. Rampuri persisted in jest, claiming to have seen it in Ghalib’s divan. Hali reports that Ghalib soon realised the playful criticism, accustomed as he was to such quibbling, even incorporating responses to his critics within his verses, such as in:
na sataish ki tamanna na ṣile ki parva
gar nahin hain mere ashar mein mani na sahi
Neither the longing for praise, nor a care for reward,
If my verses lack meaning, so be it.
In his masterpiece Ab-e Hayat (Water of Life), Hali’s friend and an extraordinary writer of Urdu prose, Muhammad Husain Azad (1830–1910), also alludes to an incident relating to a schoolmaster, with ludicrous pen name ‘Hudhud’ (Hoopoe), who was put forth in a mushaira to imitate Ghalib’s poetry. Although Azad’s criticism of Ghalib was not without bias and apparent rancour, it points out to the hostility Ghalib had to endure through much of his life for his style of writing.
The earliest instance of Ghalib being characterised as a writer of complex poems can be traced back to the first time he is mentioned in a tazkirah (anthology). Written by Mir Muhammad Khan Sarvar (d. 1834) between 1799 – 1809 (when Ghalib was just 12! – if we go by the generally accepted year of his birth, which has been contested by Mehr Afshan in her first Ghalib book), the Umdah-e Muntakhibah, generally known as Tazkirah-e Sarvar, has a long entry for Ghalib under the name ‘Asad’, his takhallus from younger days:
Asad, takhallus Asadullah Khan, urf Mirza Nausha, originally from Samarqand, was born and lives in Akbarabad [Agra]. He is an accomplished young man [javan-e qabil], friend-loving, kind-hearted, and always having lived in luxury. The disposition to write Rekhta is in his heart. He has been instructed in romantic love [ishq-e majaz]. In the art of poetry, he is indebted to the style of Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil (may God bless him). He writes Rekhta with a lot of Persian idioms. In a way, his style is unique. This writer knows him. Our friendship [with this writer] is established. His verses are often in difficult, and/or sophisticated meters. Composing in the khayal band style is dear to his heart.
Clearly, Ghalib’s reputation on three aspects, though not mutually exclusive – his penchant for complexity, the influence of Bedil, and an abundance of Persianisms – was made early. Sarvar also notes down 45 verses, including what are now well-known – ‘ishrat-e qatra hai darya mein fana ho jana’, ‘phir kuch is dil ko beqarari hai’, and some that did not even make it the first divan of 1816. Sarvar also includes the following rubai (quatrain):
mushkil hai zabas kalām mera aye dil
sun sun ke use sukhanvaran-e kamil
asan kahne ki karte hain farmayish
goyam mushkil va-gar-nah goyam mushkil
Since my poetry is so difficult, oh heart,
When they hear it, masters of poetry,
Request me to compose easy verse.
If I compose, it’s difficult; and if I don’t compose, it’s difficult.
Why was Ghalib writing such poetry despite criticism?
Ghalib’s preference for complexity stemmed from his desire to differentiate himself from contemporary poets. In the 1790 to 1870 period, there were at least five hundred poets writing in Urdu. In such a crowded literary landscape, deviating from the prevalent was almost imperative to carve a distinct identity. As Hali says, “Mirza didn’t want to move on the broad thoroughfare; rather than wanting every verse to be widely understandable, he preferred that inventiveness and unheard-of-ness (niralapan) be found in his style of thought and his style of expression.” He consciously wanted to create new images, bring out new meanings and expressions, which ultimately contributed to the enduring uniqueness of his work. Four years before his death, in correspondence with Maulvi Muhammad Abdur Razzaq ‘Shakir’, he expressed apparent delight in discussing a ‘difficult’ verse. He took pride in the fact that it contained a ‘new idea I have brought forth from my temperament’ (ek baat main ne apni tabiyat se nayi nikali hai). Ghalib meticulously explained all three verses, exhibiting nothing but a great sense of creative satisfaction. As he says in one of his rejected she’rs:
Dil ko izhar-e sukhan andaz-e fath-ul-bab hai
Yan sarir-e khamah ghair az istitak-e dar nahin
Expression for the heart is a door to victory
For me, the scratching of the pen, Is like the sound of a door opening
Understanding poetry requires familiarity with the poetics that inform its creation, including the literary culture of its time, and its expectations. Poems exist in dialogue with one another, which is particularly evident in classical Sanskrit, Perso-Arabic, and Urdu poetry. Ghalib’s preferred mode of poetry making in Urdu, the ghazal, is a highly stylised genre, thriving within a confined verbal space, that demands an intimate understanding of technical nuances. It originated from the Persian-influenced Indian style known as Sabk-i Hindi, which embodied love and romance as the main theme, characterised by a penchant for the baroque, an inclination to say things indirectly, and to divide the she’r into two parts – an argument or proposition, and its supporting proof, a tendency often found in the doha, or distich, of Braj Bhasha. Ghalib embraced this tradition taking from one of the chief patrons of this art form, Bedil, and infused it with his distinctive style.
It is a question worth posing as to why Ghalib chose, instead of Mir’s (1723-1810) accessible style, Bedil’s, from a previous generation, when he later rejected the poetry associated with him. These questions have been answered above in a way that Ghalib’s mind, his choices, his readings found for him his style, and can be supplemented with what Auden said that for any new generation of poets to truly distinguish itself, it must break away from the influence of the writers of the immediate past. Often, he says “young poets begin with an excessive admiration for one or more of the mature poets of his time”. But with age “his former hero-worship, as in other spheres of life, is all too apt to turn into an equally excessive hostility and contempt.” Adulatory references to Bedil were removed by Ghalib from his published divan, arguing that his earlier admiration could be attributed to youthful waywardness. The fact is Ghalib, as conscious as he was about his craft, he was very conscious about what he wanted to project about it. The Bedilian style, which he professed to have rejected, was never done as he continued to write in that pattern. It may have shed its synthetic weight as he got on, becoming smoother and more polished, but the inherent complexity of Ghalib’s mind persisted, infusing his poetry with a richness that is inimitable even today. The answer for the remaining question as to why he rejected half of what he wrote, lies elsewhere.
Why did Ghalib reject his verses?
In Ab-e Hayat, Azad flew a kite like various others, that Ghalib’s divan was edited by his friends Maulvi Fazl-e Haq (1797-1861) and Mirza Khan Khani, the chief kotwal of Delhi, who purportedly removed all the obscure verses. This anecdote took wind, like viral misinformation prevalent nowadays, because of the book’s popularity. Mehr Afshan contests this narrative, arguing that Ghalib would not have entrusted Khani, a pupil of Mirza Muhammad Hasan Qatil (1757–1818) whom Ghalib held in great disdain. In her first book, she discusses at length, Ghalib’s tussle with Qatil’s followers in Calcutta and elsewhere.
While there doesn’t seem to be a methodology to Ghalib’s selection criteria, the probable causes are discussed in detail through the 30 ghazals containing 203 verses in Flowers in a Mirror. The major reason is to avoid repetition of themes, of images, of a certain usage of a phrase or metaphor if used elsewhere. Other she’rs are kept out if they do not satisfactorily fulfil the requirement of proposition and proof (a dava and a dalil), even if they demonstrate semantic affinity or thematic dexterity. Sometimes verses are left out because the neologisms, at which Ghalib is a master, may seem to be too obscuring in the verses they are deployed. Yet, there are verses of exquisite beauty in the mustarad kalam that Mehr Afshan takes great delight in explaining, which makes one wonder if Ghalib was being too harsh on himself. Nonetheless, Mehr Afshan argues that his divans, in a sense, served as intikhabs (selections). Ghalib himself, in a light-hearted and self-reflective verse from the Urdu section of his last selection prepared for Nawab Rampur three years prior to his demise, muses:
Khulta kisi pe kyun mere dil ka mu’amla
She’ron ke intikhab ne ruswa kiya mujhe
Why would anyone have known the matters of my heart?
My selection of verses disgraced me
Fascinating as both of Mehr Afshan’s books are, in them Ghalib emerges as a hacedor – in Borges’ word – which contains the sense of a creator, an author, and a tinkerer. Moving from manuscript to manuscript to published divans, Ghalib keeps tinkering with his verses: changing a word here and a phrase there, reshuffling the sequence of she’rs, or removing them. In this regard, he was like any other writer, self-conscious, covetous of admiration and yearning for love.
It is a peculiarity of Ghalib that despite being nearly synonymous with the Urdu language, many readers of the language, even those born in it, do not fully grasp the many meanings of his poetry. It is also a peculiarity of Ghalib that he suffered this even in his own lifetime. While his oeuvre is concise, it has inspired over a hundred commentaries, written in Hindi, Urdu, and some in English, but most fall short of elucidating his craft with many providing mere prose paraphrases. Tools of literary criticism of Persian-Urdu poetics and the analysis it enabled is largely overlooked. Such neglect would have been puzzling, if Hali and Azad’s impact on this tradition was not known. A little after two decades of his death, as Ghalib, like his predecessor Mir, was receding into obscurity, Hali’s Yadgar-e Ghalib rescued him from its shadows. But it is also another of Ghalib’s peculiarities that his saviour in a sense benighted his legacy for a modern audience. Following Hali, Ghalib acquired a slew of commentators, but most laid layer upon layer of meanings with which his poetry had little relation. And yet the deficiencies of the commentarial tradition serve also to highlight a strange triumph: that Ghalib’s poetry lives and continues to be loved.
Why is there a need for commentary on rejected verses?
In all post-colonial literary cultures, the challenge is that of discontinuity. Our sense and understanding of our classical tradition is fractured and is filtered through Western perspectives, distorting our understanding and leaving many aspects unseen. An article from the New Yorker comes to mind, which discusses why American women have been reading cookbooks voraciously since the eighteenth century: it was because they left their mothers behind in Europe and had no one to give them ‘the wisdom that is said to be passed spontaneously from generation to generation, like the gift of prophecy, in the family kitchen’. Flowers in a Mirror is able to resurrect (Auden: “the duty of the present is neither to copy nor to deny the past but to resurrect it”) these insights into our classical heritage, Ghalibian poetics and protocols of versification in its commentary. Often in explaining the verses, the book highlights semantic resonances, the interplay between words and metaphors, the aurality of some of the unpublished verses, and the images that add to the intensity and mysteries of verses. Ghalib’s poetry brims with intimately connected and evocative words. In fact, his verses offer a distinct pleasure for its mastery in using words in all its shades of meanings and for how he uses silence. While doing so, he often mulls over the inadequacy of language, saying for example in this verse that the language is a poor companion in the journey of poetry; whatever he imagines is too evanescent to be caught in words:
Fikr-e sukhan yak insha zindani-e khamoshi
Dud-e chiragh goya zanjir-e be sada hai
Concentrating on making poems is in fact nothing but a prison house of silence
The smoke from the guttering candle is like a soundless chain
In the Flowers in a Mirror, Ghalib’s poetry is interested in profound philosophical and cosmic concepts. With his vast vocabulary, paradoxes, neologisms, and vivid imagery, he seems to be grappling with the complexities of love, human existence, and the enigmatic nature of language itself. Some of the main themes in these verses are: rashk (envy, and its complexities and implications within human relationships); ainah & timsal (motifs of mirrors and symbols serve as metaphors for deeper philosophical reflections and contemplations on reality); nairang & tilism (magic, enchantment, and wonder permeate Ghalib’s poetry); garden, flowers, birds, and lament (these elements drawing out layers of meaning and symbolism associated with them in Urdu poetics); imagination and nature of meaning itself.
Both of Mehr Afshan’s Ghalib books are exceptional. It is again a peculiarity of Ghalib that for a writer of Urdu and Persian, two of the best books on him are in English. Here it must be pointed out that writing this book would have been particularly hard given the challenges of translation. While Ghalib traverses the complexities of two languages, Mehr Afshan has to navigate three. Poetry, inherently elusive in translation, presents an even greater hurdle as a ghazal, being steeped in a special kind of culture, and being essentially a poetry of conventions and formal rules, it can be practically unintelligible to the uninitiated. Still, it is Mehr Afshan’s prowess in translation that she is able to ensure that the essence of Ghalib’s verses resonates with the reader.
The concluding ghazal of the book is a hamd (poem in praise of God). Their place, traditionally, is at the beginning of a book or divan. This, I hope, suggests the author has embarked on her work on Ghalib’s remaining unpublished verses.
Nikhil Kumar works in climate policy and is an independent writer.
