Customer Reviews

The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib: Selected Poems of Ghalib

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Here is poet that has mastered the craft of poetry with such depth and such emotion. Ghalib says more in a couple of ghazals than most poets can say in a lifetime. Bly and Dutta do an excellent job of capturing this enigmatic poet's nuances and humor. Unfortunately, this is a poet that the west has overlooked for too long. Ghalib's spiritual struggles and painful honesty have the ability to speak to a universal audience. Now I am buying this book for everyone.

Ghazals are Urdu poems that have at least five couplets. Interestingly, the couplets within a Ghazal generally are not related to each other and stand on their own. Ghalib is probably the most loved Urdu poet. He was a master of Urdu poetry and his considerable linguistic skills in Urdu and Persian allowed him to create subtle and extremely complex metaphysical, existential, romantic, sad, and biting poems. One reason why Ghalib is not as well known as Rumi (though, a better poem, in my opinion) is the fact that his poetry never received good treatment from other translators. In fact, when I read some of the translations of Ghalib's poem, I sometimes laugh at the idiotic interpretations and mediocre quality. Even when an Urdu scholar translates Ghalib's poem, the problem is that this scholar is often mediocre poet and poor in English penmanship. The results are horrendous (read the translations by Ghalib Academy, New Delhi and see what I mean).

This work by Bly and Dutta is simply marvellous. I think the credit probably goes to Bly as he is not only a great poet, he also has deep experience in translating poetry. I doubt anyone else could have done a better job than this. Well done and thanks.

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.

Ghalib's playful poetry in Urdu is fascinating, such as the line in the caption of this review, a fact most Indians are privy to. But having his quirky, self-effacing romantic gems in English is a delight of a different order altogether. The translation is thankfully quite interesting in and of itself which lends this book an amusing, page-turning quality.

Couple of notes:

(1) Get the Ecco Press version if you can find it, the paper quality is less annoying. The Amazon site (this page) advertises a publication from "Rupa Co." which has crummy pages that I regret buying.

(2) Also, the Ecco Press version of the book contains interesting translation notes from Sunil Dutta, which are fun to read. Robert Bly is listed as the editor, and while he hogs the credit, he simply performed the role of revising and redecorating Dutta's copious translation notes.

Either way, I highly recommend this thin volume for people who appreciate poetry in general or "shayari" in particular. I'd gladly pay for more than 30 samples of Ghalib's prolific work.

The paperback version of this book contains the Ghazals in English, Devnagari, and Urdu script. Go for the paperback and see how the original poems look in Urdu. For those of us who can read Urdu, it is a delight to read the original verses and match them with the English translation.

I am impressed. Ghalib is indeed a great poet and his work must be read by more people. I am so thankful to Robert Bly for doing this beautiful translation. I think Mr. Bly was the only person who could have done this great work - he seems to have a foot in the eastern horizon. His wonderful translations of Mirabai and Kabir and his decades of exposing deep poetry from other cultures shows up in this book. I hope everyone would read this book. The couplets stand by themselves in the poems and their color and depth continues to vary (this poetic form is so different from other poetry - each two line couplet within the same poem was like a poem itself. And each couplet within a poem did not necessarily have a relationship with the preceding couplets.) Reading Ghazals seems like counting different colored pearls threaded on an invisible thread.

Thanks to Mr. Bly for doing this wonderful book.

Although Ghalib is not as well known as the famous Sufi poet Rumi and great Persian poet Hafez, in my view he is even better in some ways. His Urdu poems are sometimes very complex and he was a master at exploiting subtleties of Urdu - a language in which one can write couplets that can be interpreted in several different ways. Furthermore, Ghalib could exploit the Urdu by using ambiguities - one doesn't know whether he is longing for God or his lover in his couplets. Several people have attempted to translate Ghalib and I think it will be next to impossible to get the same color and taste once an Urdu couplet gets changed to English - In my opinion English doesn't have the poetic capacity to absorb the richness of Urdu. Despite these limitations, Bly and Dutta have done a great job. I understand both Urdu and English and therefore I can say with confidence that this book contains the best translations of Ghalib's poems.

Ghalib was a master of Ghazals. Not only did he exploit Urdu language's subtleties and complexities, he bared his soul in his poetry. His poetry is filled with conflict of existence, love, musings about religion and life. His masterful exploitation of language, history, and metaphor in poetry is magnificent.

This is an outstanding translation that stands above the rest. The paperback version has the original Ghazal poems side by side with original version in Urdu (that is written in Persian script) and also in Hindi language (written in Devnagari script), making the book very valuable. I was impressed by Robert Bly and Sunil Dutta's artful translation in which they did not destroy the original flavor and also did not turn the English versions into mush by meaningless attempts to rhyme the original couplets. I guess this excellent translation is shaped by the fact that Bly has been doing translations for decades and has acquired mastery over the process (he has previously translated Mira and Kabir)
This book has selections from the best of the best poems Ghalib had written.
Highly recommended.

Ghalib is probably the most beloved poet in the Indian sub-continent. His poetic stature towers over other giants of poetry, such as Zauq, Mir, and Iqbal. People of Pakistan and India can be heard reciting Ghalib's couplets all the time. Unfortunately, this great philosophical and romantic poet has not received the recognition that he deserves. Perhaps it is due to the poor translations of earlier attempts that suffer from flowery language. Many of the earlier translators have tried to take the original Urdu couplets (Urdu is the language Ghalib wrote in extensively, besides Persian)and make the English versions rhyme. This is an impossibility because Urdu is such a dense, complex, and at the same time, very subtle language. The meter of the couplets can be too short, leading an attempt to make the English version rhyme fall flat on its face.

Robert Bly and Sunil Dutta's versions do not suffer from the previous attempts of forcing rhymes on the English versions. Fortunately they have done a great job by shunning flowery language that suffocated the early translations. This book contains thirty of the most-loved and probably Ghalib's best ghazals (poems). The translations have turned out great. The authors have attempted to stay closer to the literal meaning of the original text from Urdu rather than to force their interpretations. Hopefully such beautiful translations would bring Ghalib into the literary landscape of English reading people like sunshine

Ghalib lived in very turbulent times. The Mughal empire in India was on its last legs and the British empire had tightened its clutches over India. Ghalib even lived through the horrendous 1857 "Sepoy Mutiny" of the "First War of Independence" (depends on whose view you believe in) and saw decimation of Delhi, a city he loved. The anguish of his poems is extremely hard to convey in a sterile language such as English. In any case, Robert Bly and Sunil Dutta's translations are over and above what else is available in the market. Excellent job.