Mir Taqi Mir, for the heart and mind

Sumit Paul

As a student of classical Persian language and literature at the University of Tehran and after that at Oxford, I was already au fait with the names of the subcontinent’s formidable Urdu poets Mir Taqi Mir, Momin Khan ‘Momin’, Daagh Dehlavi, among others. In fact, it would have been sacrilegious on my part not to have heard these names, especially of Mir and Ghalib.

While translating Buddhist scholastic work ‘Mahabhinishkramana’ (The Great Renunciation) into English as ‘The Light of Asia’, Sir Edwin Arnold tellingly wrote in the preface, “Veil after veil will lift, but there’ll be veil after veil behind.” The same can be said about the redoubtable Mir Taqi Mir, whose vast oeuvre and consummate poetic genius will continue to engage great critics, theorists, interpreters and translators like the venerable Dr Gopi Chand Narang and Surinder Deol in exploring hitherto unknown facets of such a sublime poet. Dr Narang needs no introduction. I was reading his perspicuous critical analyses in Urdu and English long before I came to India. He is a world-renowned critic whose name was suggested to me by my British Professor of Urdu, the legendary Sir Ralph Russel, at SOAS, London. Ergo, reviewing his book ‘The Hidden Garden’ (translated from the Urdu by Surinder Deol) is like manna from heaven for me. I feel indeed privileged.

As I’ve stated at the outset, though much has been written on the poetic greatness of Mir Taqi Mir, an etiological (the study of causation or origination) analysis of his poetry was much-needed. Life’s varied and myriad circumstances invariably play a vital role in determining a poet or writer’s persona or poetic self. Before Dr Narang, all other experts on Mir attempted to delve into his verses without bothering much to know about the circumstances that egged him on to write certain ghazals and pen specific masnavis such as ‘Muaamlaat-e-I’shq’ and ‘Khwaab-o-Khayaal’. As a trained theorist, having studied Swiss linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure and after that the greatest exponent Umberto Eco’s apercus on semiotics (science of signs and symbols), Dr Narang has clinically explored the sighs and angst in Mir’s poetry and the trials and tribulations that he faced in life with a dignified sangfroid.

Employing WK Wimsatt Jr and Monroe C Beardsley’s celebrated intentional fallacy and juxtaposing it with TS Eliot’s objective correlativity, the scholar duo has presented a holistic picture of Mir’s exquisite poetry and its hidden roots and reasons. Knowing that ‘ambiguity is a literary quality’ (William Hazlitt), Dr Narang has plumbed the depths of Mir’s poetic as well as non-poetic selves by choosing the most apposite creations from the magical quill of Mir to delineate a holistic pen-picture of his craftsmanship.

To encapsulate, the book shines with the academic rigor and coruscates with the halo of admirable erudition. That doesn’t mean the ‘Hidden Garden’ caters only to the academicians. Even those remotely interested in Mir’s poetry in a purely non-academic manner shall find this compendium to be a great source of solace to the heart and mind. The English translations capture the quiddity of the original. The volume is an exhaustive saga of Mir’s poetic craftsmanship and evolution. It’s a delight to readers and scholars and a sine qua non for the libraries across the world.