Ghalib is an astonishing poet from India, perhaps the most important poet since Kabir. In The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib: Selected Poems of Ghalib, poet Robert Bly and Urdu scholar Sunil Dutta collaborate to bring the delicacy and intensity of Ghalib's poetry to readers of English. This collection of thirty ghazals by Ghalib also serves as an introduction to the ghazal, the elegant and amazing poetic form revered for centuries in the Muslim world.
Ghalib was unorthodox in many ways: he was a Muslim, but he drank and was fond of gambling. He had a difficult life, full of rejections and excesses; much of his life was spent in Delhi during the British conquest of India. Ghalib's poems often mingle humor and anguish. In "The Clay Cup," he says:
I know that Heaven doesn't exist, but the idea
Is one of Ghalib's favorite fantasies.
His form and detail are exquisite. Many emotions flood into one poem--he complains, he pokes fun at intellectuals, he grieves over desires--and it is up to the reader to find the thread that holds the couplets together. Ghalib ends "The Road with Thorns" with a charming boast:
The lightning that fell on Moses should have
fallen on Ghalib.
You know we always adjust the amount of the wine
to the quality of the drinker
His work lies in the tradition of Hafiz and Rumi; and yet he manages to join that fervor with a contemporary style. More than one hundred years after Ghalib's death, his ghazals remain indisputably modern, intense, and as fresh as ever.
"An invigorating bouquet of ghazals, witty and astonishing and deliciously difficult,from a poet who deserves to be better known in the West--and is bound tobe, after this book. " -- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress Of Spices "How fine it is to see a new collection of Ghalib brought into English. His ghazalsoffer spiritual and emotional wisdom, scope, self-knowledge, beauty, and a way of leapingfrom statement to statement whose influence on American poetry is already apparent.This is a splendid and needed collection of work by a poet of major significance." -- Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry "What if we demolish the ego, dig under the ruins, as Rumi tells us to, andinstead of finding the divine Friend, we find just the ground we're standing on? Ghalib and Robert Bly face this stark possibility with their fine, blended gaze." -- Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi --Pavan K. Aug 6, 2012
Amazing work , the English translation fails to catch the complete essence of the words but that's fine'cause its practically impossible to get 100%from a translation , overall great work --Gaurav Joshi Dec 5, 2014
This is indeed the best translation of Ghalib available in English language. I have read versions in English by Aijaz Ahmad, Kanda, Sasha Newborn and several others and there is simply no comparison. Bly and Dutta's work is far-far superior to what is available in the market. Since Urdu is my mother tongue and I have read Ghalib's original work, I can evaluate this book at a different level than others who can not read Ghalib's original poetry in Urdu. I am quite a bit surprised at other reviewers who have given this book one star and at their vituperation. Sounds as if they were reading some political book and became upset at something!!! I am really surprised that the reviewer from Irvine believes that the verses stray from their literal meanings and the interpretations are incorrect. I would love to hear from him and find out how he arrived at this absolutely insane conclusion. I have read Ghalib so many times in Urdu and Bly's versions, in my opinion, are much closer to the Urdu originals than other books. Of course, Urdu being the language it is and Ghalib being the best poet in Urdu, tons of meanings emerge from the original Urdu couplets. English is simply not capable of expressing the subtleties that exist in such a refined language as Urdu. The reviewer from Sunnyvale sounds like an illiterate buffoon, I wonder if he was reading the same book that I was! His bizarre definition of Ghazal "Ghazal is said to be a cry of a gazelle who is being cornered by a hunter and knows it is going to die" also exposes his lack of understanding of what this poetic form is. Anyway, translations are done for the benefit of people who don't know the original language. Given this fact, people who know the original Urdu would never be satisfied with the translations. I am in the same boat. I don't think that anyone can capture the feelings, color, and beauty of Ghalib's poetry in a translation. Still, Bly and Dutta's work outshines any other effort and The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib is an outstanding introduction to Mirza Ghalib. --By Rajinder Sethi 22 February 2003
