8 August 2003
In the introduction to The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib: Selected Poems of Ghalib, the poet Robert Bly notes that, “Ghalib’s tart, spicy declaration of defeated expectations ranges over many subjects” (2). This statement is true, for the ghazals of this collection do cover many varying subjects, including friendship, romantic love, divine worship or love of God, identity, reality of existence, religion, and desire, treating the unfulfilled or corrupted aspect of each. Yet this focus on the unrequited does not lessen the beauty, impact, or satisfaction of the reader’s expectations for the book itself. This set of thirty poems by the eighteenth-century Indian poet Ghalib (born Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan) demonstrates the writer’s charm, wit, and deep understanding of the nature of existence, with its disappointments and the accompanying inevitable need for perseverance. As Sunil Dutta points out in the postscript “Ghalib and His Work,” “The word ‘ghazal’ means, literally, a conversation with the beloved. Thus the ghazal is essentially a love poem” (59). The poems in this book are all conversations with the speaker’s beloved, although the calm matter-of-factness and ordinary language make the reader feel as if she is the beloved in question and the speaker addresses her, telling stories and imparting wisdom in order to both share his own pain and illuminate her on the truths of life. That the subject of each ghazal is another love – God, a friend, or a lover – makes the words more personal, as if the speaker is revealing deep confidentialities in an intimate environment. The meaning of each couplet retains its import and gains some additional meaning for the reader because she feels the message is being offered with love, out of a genuine concern for her.
This work is interesting in the study of the ghazal as a form; because its translators were more focused on preserving the spirit and intent of the original Urdu couplets, the radif (ending repetition) and kafiya (rhymes preceding the ending repetition) have been abandoned, leaving the more important aspects intact. Each couplet, or sher, is “a highly condensed poem of two lines and can stand on its own as an individual poem; a good sher is detachable and independently quotable” (60). Within any given poem, any particular couplet might seem to have no bearing on the perceived theme. This is the “disunity” of which Agha Shahid Ali speaks when he says, “The ghazal has a stringently formal disunity, its thematically independent couplets held (as well as not held) together in a stunning fashion” (Ali 2). Therefore, when we read the two couplets which begin “When the Day Comes” –
One can sigh, but a lifetime is needed to finish it.
We’ll die before we see the tangles in your hair loosened.
There are dangers in waves, in all those crocodiles with their jaws open.
The drop of water goes through many difficulties before it becomes a pearl (15)
we are apt to wonder what the connection is, both between the couplets themselves and between the couplets together and the title; what coming day is indicated by these enigmatic lines? what relationship exists between a sigh and tangled hair, or between a sigh, tangled hair, a crocodile and a pearl? and, in what ocean does a drop of water become a pearl? As we read further, to the end, we can see the meaning of the disparity. The final line, “There are so many colors I the candle flame, and then the day comes[,]” resolves the question with the idea, echoed in other poems in this compilation, that everything is one in existence, that all things exist in one moment. Line 11 asks, “How long is our life? How long does an eyelash flutter?”. If a lifetime of experience can be so large, yet a lifetime so small, then it must be true that the Ganges is in a drop, and the planet in a grain of sand (“The Drop and the River”) (31). Ghalib’s poetry travels from one subject to another smoothly, almost imperceptibly changing, offering a sense of the inter-connectedness of event and perception and meaning.
Another traditional characteristic of the ghazal which is clearly demonstrated in the poems of Ghalib is the turn, or mystery/resolution within each couplet. The poet’s mastery of this technique may well be what lends the couplets their independence, a completeness that makes each one a poem in its own right. For example, “Don’t Skimp with Me Today” begins, “For tomorrow’s sake, don’t skimp with me on wine today. / A stingy portion implies a suspicion of heaven’s abundance” (19). The reader may, and probably usually does, draw certain conclusions about each line of a poem, leading to assumptions about the line(s) to follow. In informal poetry, these assumptions may commonly prove correct; surprises seem to come more often in the form of word choice than in a shift of intent. Here, however, the common associations we might make with the imperative “don’t skimp with me on wine today” fail to lead us to the connection the poet makes, with a more divine rationale. We might understandably assume the speaker to be addressing someone who has been known to “skimp” on wine, possibly a wife or innkeeper who disapproves of the speaker’s intake. Or, in light of the opening “for tomorrow’s sake,” we might be led to believe that the demand is a threat; “if you short me today, there will be trouble between us tomorrow.” The resolution, then, is a bit of a turn, for it brings in the un-hinted-at ideas of mortality and divine approval of the drinking of wine. If we read the former intent, the speaker is saying that to skimp is to risk being sorry if the drinker should die before tomorrow: “Why should we save what we have? If I should die, I will find plenty in heaven.” If we accept the latter interpretation, we see the speaker contending that heaven has provided an abundance of wine for the pleasure of people on earth; the argument becomes, “heaven provides it, therefore we should partake of it.” In either event, the speaker makes an argument that is unexpected and hard for the addressee to combat. It makes an entertaining and thoughtful surprise.
The lack of ending repetitions and rhyme scheme make these translations of Ghalib’s ghazals a valuable study in the subtler aspects of the form. Without the restrictions of such conventions, the student of the ghazal can practice on the couplets themselves, concentrating (as with Bly and Dutta) on the independent spirit and traditional “turn” within each pair. Perhaps to study these aspects independently of the radif and kafiya constraints is to gain a better understanding of the culture of the poetry, rather than an attention to the wordplay. Certainly with these areas fully explored, the addition of repetitions and rhymes will bring the form itself into each example of it, “the planet in[to] a grain of sand.”
Works Cited
Ali, Agha Shahid. Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan UP, 2000. Print.
Ghalib. The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib: Selected Poems of Ghalib. Trans. Robert Bly and Sunil Dutta. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1999. Print.
