CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It relates to whatever gives

immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. Poetry is the universal language which

the heart holds with nature and itself. It has been the study and delight of mankind in all

ages. Fear is poetry, love is poetry, hope is poetry, hatred is poetry, are all poetry.

John Keats, Ghani Khan and Mirza Ghalib hold a unique position in literature due to the

contribution they have made to the poetry of English and Pashto and Urdu languages

respectively. These romantic poets had no actual contact with each other. Indeed, the

poets were so far away from each other - Keats lived in Georgian England and Ghani

khan in Pakistan, while Mirza ghazi in Delhi, so that any direct or indirect linkage

between them is conceivable. Although they belong to diverse cultures, their

backgrounds are different and even the times they lived in were different, yet they got so

many things in similar in their poetry. They have got certain things in common, so that

anyone familiar with their poetical careers would be tempted to compare them in literary

studies

This comparative study aims to find the elements of similarity between Ghani khan and

John Keats and Mirza Ghalib. These poets have almost the same feelings but have used

different languages for expression i.e., Ghanis use of Pashto language and Keats use of

English while Mirza Ghalib used Urdu (Persian). Keats was an authoritative person and a

firm believer in beauty. Like Keats too, Ghani khan, and Mirza ghalib also talk about

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beauty in their poetry. Looking at their poetic works, it is easily seen and felt that these

poets are blessed with the “romantic” spirit in them

Ghani khan (1914 – 1926) is widely thought-about as one of the most effective Pashtu

language author of the twentieth century. Ghani khan is additionally referred to as Ghani

baba. He was also a respected author and creative person. he's the son of Khan Abdul

Ghaffar khan. Ghani khan holds a high place in Iranian literature owing to his humorous

and satiric verses. He wasn't solely an author however conjointly was a painter and a

sculptor. His initial literary work was appeared in December, 1928. Ghani khan’s poetry

is anti-political. His major poems are A poppy flower, Music, Prayer, Search, Hell, King,

The jail dream, Reverie, Euphoria, prayer etc. He conjointly wrote in English and his

initial book was the Pathans (1947). The singular distinction of his poetry apart from his

obvious poetic genius is profound mix of data regarding his native and foreign cultures,

and therefore the psychological, sensual and spiritual facet of life. Ghani khan’s love for

nature on the native environment of the Pashtun individuals is visible in his works. He

wrote;

“Pashtun isn't just a race however, in fact, a state of mind; there's a Pashtun lying within

each man, UN agency now and then wakes up and overpowers him”.

(Ghani khan’s poetry, 25)

John Keats (1795 – 1821) was an English romantic author. He was one among the most

figures of the second generation of romantic poets alongside Lord Byron and Percy

Bysshe Shelley. John Keats belonged to a literary movement known as Romanticism. the

commercial revolution and therefore the political upheavals of the days had no

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considerable influence on John Keats whereas most of his modern poets enthused by the

political uprisings in France. Romantic poets, owing to their theories of literature and life,

were drawn to lyric poetry; they even developed a replacement style of lyric, usually

known as the romantic thoughtful lyric.

His initial printed literary work “on solitude” appeared in actress Hunts “examiner” in

1816. Keats major works are The eve of St Agnes, La fille dame sans merci, lyric on a

melancholy, lyric to a nightingale, lyric to fall, lyric on a Balkan state urn, lyric to

psyche, Hyperion, Lamia, Isabella, Endymion etc. the foremost conflicts in Keats poetry

are reality, enduring art, melancholy, mortal, life, death, separation, connection, the real

and therefore the ideal. Keats has associated the topic matter of affection and pain each in

his life and in his poetry. In 1821, he died of TB. He lived solely twenty five years;

however his poetic action is extraordinary. during this transient amount, he created poems

that rank him jointly of the nice English poets. He conjointly wrote letters that literature

is studied not as a result of it pleases or instructs however as a result of, as Longinus

wrote, it lifts North American nation out of ourselves; it moves North American nation

and brings North American nation face to face with the aspirations, dreams, hopes and

fears and joys and sorrows of our own life. And once 2 great poets of the stature are place

along, the aesthetic pleasure is greatly raised. T.S Elliot calls John Keats as

“the most notable and the most important ever written by any English poets".

Mirza ghalib; He was born in Agra, India on 27 th December, 1796 and belonging from the

noble class Turkish ancestry. Not much can be briefed about his educational life and not

much could be explored in this regard. He had one of the most esteemed and intellectual

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social gathering in Delhi. He got married when so young and had seven children but

unfortunately none of them survived. The times and motions in his life was revealed

through his poetry i.e. expression of pain. His companion i.e. Ghalib’s wife was a

complete opposite of his personality. As Ghalib was more open to life and life hearted

while his companion was self-restraint. Like any other individual Ghalib had negative

traits in his personality, which led to interest of gambling and drinking, which he was

extremely fond of. As he had a carefree attitude in his life for instance, gambling was a

crime in those times but Ghalib used to be not concerned and accepted that he is not a

staunch Muslim. His character had a lot of impact on his poetry, such as

“O abstentious one let me drink wine in the mosque

Or tell me of a place where God isn’t present”

The best part of his poetry is that his feelings use to be apparent and true to life. The

choices of words were spectacular to describe a particular moment in time. Similarly,

later in his life, he had an affair with his fan but he didn’t create any boundary of

limitations to restrict his life.

He didn’t even earn a better living but headed a life on the welfare of his friends and

financial support as in those times he wasn’t famous for his work. He passed away on

February 15th1869 and after his demise he achieved much more fame and recognition.

Ghalib had competition with the poet Zauq in the Bahadar Shah Zafar’s times. Both the

poets were inspired with the superiority of Meer Taqi Meer of the 18th century.

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1.2 Statement of the problem

This study was intended to critically analyze the love poetry of John Keats, Mirza Ghalib

and Ghani khan

1.3 Objectives of the study:

This study aimed to address the following research questions:

To find out the similarities between the love poetry of the poets under study

To find out the differences between the love poetry of the poets under study

To find out the differences in the cultures of the poets under study

1.4 Research questions

To find out the similarities between the love poetry of the poets under study What are the

differences in the concept of love and beauty in poetry of John Keats, Mirza Ghalib and

Ghani khan?

1.5 Significance of study

Keats, Ghani Khan and Mirza Ghalib hold a commanding position in the literature of the

three languages Pashtu, English and Urdu. This research is significant because the three

great poets are compared for the first time.

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 CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Romanticism was arguably the largest artistic movement of the late 1700’s. its influence

was felt across continents and through every artistic discipline into the mid nineteenth

century, and many of its values and beliefs can still be seen in contemporary poetry,

romantic poets cultivated individualism, reverence for the natural world, idealism,

physical and emotional passion and an interest in the mystic and supernatural.

Romantics set themselves in opposition to the order and rationality of classical and neo

classical artistic precepts to embrace freedom and revolution in their art and politics.

Poets like, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth Lord Byron Percy Bysshe

Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, Friedrich Schiller and John Keats propelled the Romantic

Movement. Romantic ideals never specifically did out in poetry, but were largely

absorbed into the precepts of many other movements. Romanticism has influenced many

Asian poets and they start using romantic ideals in their poetry. Ghani khan and Mirza

ghalib are an Asian poet who uses romantic ideals in their poetry’s.

The romantic period in English literature is known as the period of poetry. The

significant feature of romantic poetry is imagination and emotion. Mostly, the romantic

poetry appeals to the senses than to argument and to imagination than to logic. There is

no pure moral preaching, irony or satire in the romantic poetry. The best of the English

poetry over the past centuries is regarded as that having the qualities of Romanticism.

Major features of the Romantic movement in English literature are emotions, love of

nature and beauty, fondness of the past, metaphysical element, revolt against the classical

trends and rules, expression of self etc. one of the major characteristic of the English

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poetry is diversion of attention towards nature. The romantic poetry is inevitably bonded

with imagination and emotion. The English romantic poetry is averse to moralism, satire

or irony.

The romantic poets were all very close to the common man and had profound love for

humanity. They held great interest in their own selves and their personalities. The

romantic poetry brought about revolutionary development in matter and manner.

Urdu poetry gained immense popularity in the eighteenth century when Urdu

Replaced Persian as the major language of the Indian sub-continent. It is during this time

that Urdu language emerged out of an interaction between Persian and Khadi Boli which

was being used between Delhi and Agra. Urdu became a means of literary expression by

the end of the seventeenth century. During the eighteenth century Urdu flourished well

but it was in the nineteenth century that Urdu came to its perfection in the works of Zauq,

Momin Mir, Momin, Sauda and Ghalib. While Urdu literature tends to be dominated by

poetry especially the verse forms of the ghazal and nazm, it has expanded into other

styles of writing, including that of the short story, or afsana. No language can ripe

without a good literature. In language studies when we discuss the journey of a language

from being born to be picked up by people, the important step after all the lexicons and

grammar been created is the development of fruitful literature and its promotion. This

"fruitful" literature is what Ghalib did to Urdu. No literature is considered complete or

reputable without poetry being its integral part. Urdu literature is known for its poetry

and its poets have made name all around the world due to their style and use of beautiful

diction to explain even the more complex of things and feelings in the most vivid manner.

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 Urdu poetry is a rich tradition of poetry and has many different forms. Many of the

poetic forms and structures are of Arabic origin. Today, it is an important part of the

cultures of South Asia. Meer, Dard, Mirza Ghalib, Anees, Dabeer, Iqbal, Zauq, Josh,

Akbar, Jigar, Faiz, Firaq, Shakeb Jalali, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, Shair, Mohsin, Faraz

and Faizi are among the greatest poets of Urdu. The medieval Urdu poetry grew under

the shadow of Persian poetry. Unlike the Hindi poetry, which grew out of the Indian soil,

Urdu poetry was initially fed with Persian words and imagery. Sirajuddin Ali Khan Arzu

and Shaikh Sadullah Gulshan were the earliest promoters of Urdu language in North

India. By the beginning of the 18th century, a more sophisticated North Indian variation

of the Urdu language began to evolve through the writings of Mirza Mazhar Jan-e-Janan

(1699-1781 AD) Shaikh Zahooruddin Hatim (1699-1781 AD); Sauda has been described

as the foremost satirist of Urdu literature during the 18th Century. His Shahr Aashob and

Qasida Tazheek-e-Rozgaar are considered as masterpieces of Urdu literature. Mir

Hassan's mathnavii Sihr-ul- Bayann and Mir Taqi Mir's mathnaavies provided a distinct

Indian touch to the language. The last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was a poet

with unique style, typified by difficult rhymes, excessive word play and use of idiomatic

language. He has authored four voluminous Divans. Before the national uprising of 1857,

the reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar witnessed the luxurious spring of Urdu poetry

immediately followed by the chilly winds of autumn. Next to Sauda he is considered to

be the most outstanding composer of qasidas (panegyrics). Hakim Momin Khan Momin

wrote ghazals in a style peculiar to him. He used ghazal exclusively for expressing

emotions of love.

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Any description of Urdu literature can never be complete without the mention of Mirza

Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797-1869), who is considered as the greatest of all the Urdu

poets. With his passion for originality, Ghalib brought in a renaissance in Urdu poetry. In

the post - Ghalib period, Dagh (b. 1831) emerged as a distinct poet, whose poetry was

distinguished by its purity of idiom and simplicity of language and thought and romantic

elements. In the realm of life, Ghalib is a poet who questioned its logic and expends

much creative energy addressing the dilemmas of human existence. Philosophy is a

peculiar characteristic ofhã1ib’s poetry, but his mind is not restricted merely to his

surroundings, contemporary thoughts, or oft-repeated themes. He exceeds these things

and, contrary to Iqbal, Ghalib emerges as a poet-philosopher. After Dr Abdu Rahman

/nori declared that in India there were only two divinely inspired books—the collection of

Ghãlib’s poetry and the Holy Veda (the bible of Hindus)—Ghalib became a topic of

discussion everywhere, and a mass movement to dissipate his thoughts emerged,

disseminating Exhale to Britain, Russia, France, and other European countries.

Impressionable minds worldwide absorbed Ghalib quickly despite the ire that he faced,

mostly from his contemporaries back in his homeland. Hundreds of books published on

Ghalib attest to his popularity, the likes of which has not been seen for any poet or writer

of the Urdu language.

Pashto is the native language of the Pashtu people of south central Asia. It is one of the

two official languages of Afghanistan, and is also spoken as a regional language in

western and north western Pakistan and among the Pashtu Diaspora around the world.

The Pashto romantic poetry is an important part of the modern Pashto poetry. Pashto

poets found poetry to be a powerful vehicle for expressing and preserving their national

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identity and cultural values. The influence of romanticism from English poetry into

Pashto poetry could be traced in many Pashto poets the modern times, for example, Syed

Rasul Rasa, Ghani khan, Ajmalkhattak, Khyber Afridi, Younaskhalil, khatir afridi and

others. Romantic element in the works of the major Pashto poets shows the influence of

English romanticism on modern Pashto poetry. Imagination and emotion find a liberal

scope in the poetry of these poets (mirza, Keats. Ghani khan) of different languages,

regions, cultures and times. They are deeply involved in nature and some see the

reflection of god in nature. These poets believed in the truth of human feelings and

emotions and disregarded cold, stark reason and logic. Though these poets have shades of

difference in proportion with their peculiar personalities, yet all are basically romantic in

their outlook and approach

2.1 John Keats

 “The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate

from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth”

  -John Keats

John Keats devoted his short life to perfection of poetry marked by vivid imagery, great

sensuous appeal and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend. He is

the archetype of the romantic writer. Keats was an English poet whose rich poetry was

full of romantic spirit. He suffered from family tragedies. He lost both his parents when

he was a young lad of eight years. Tuberculosis killed his mother and brother and he

himself died of it at the age of just twenty-five, when he was receiving great recognition

for his work. The brevity and intensity of his life added some on his entire literary work

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and impact upon this Romantic poet. In a more mundane sense, Keats' father's death

greatly disrupted the family's financial security. His mother, Frances, seemed to have

launched a series of missteps and mistakes after her husband’s death; she quickly

remarried and just as quickly lost a good portion of the family's wealth. After her second

marriage fell apart, Frances left the family, leaving her children in the care of her mother.

She eventually returned to her children's life, but her life was in tatters. In early 1810, she

died of tuberculosis.

During this period, Keats found solace and comfort in art and literature. He breathed for

the sensation and transcended imagination in his poetry. Academy, where he started

shortly before his father's passing, Keats proved to be a voracious reader. He also became

close to the school's headmaster, John Clarke, who served as a sort of a father figure to

the orphaned student and encouraged Keats' interest in literature.

From his early sonnets to his incomplete poem, Hyperion his poetry like La Belle Dame

Sans Merci and Isabella had impressed many poets, group of artists, including the Pre-

Raphaelite Brotherhood and the symbolists, writers and critics and it had influenced

giants of literature. John Keats is essentially a poet of love, beauty, nature and life.

Imagination was a chief characteristic of Keats’ poetry. He roamed in the realm of

imagination by his poetic wings and they helped him to be a poet of senses, warmth,

expression of sensitive emotions and humanistic feelings. These features kept him away

from self-centeredness and selfishness. He loved Shakespeare and tried to adopt the best

of English literary tradition.

Aileen Ward rightly noted,

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“Keats's special originality was his sense of dedication to the tradition of 9English poetry

and his attempt to recover it for the use of poetry in his time. Keats earned his place in the

tradition of English poetry by his courage to accept failure and move beyond it, his

patience in learning his craft from those who could teach him”

(An evaluation of his poetry)

At the same time he could derive much from his talents and exhibit originality and thus

endow the recurring themes of poetry with a light that radiates only from his sound that

will find an echo in the hearts of young and old for all the times to come. Keats felt that

the deepest meaning of life lay in the apprehension of material beauty, although his

mature poems reveal his fascination with a world of death and decay.

Keats was a prophet and staunch believer in beauty. He was also aware of the harsh

realities of the world. The worship of beauty is the clue to everything in Keats; and, as he

came to feel that an experience into which no sadness enters belongs to an inferior order

of beauty, so he found the most soul-searching sorrow in the very temple of delight.

The mysterious and musical closing lines of his,

“Ode on a Grecian Urn”

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all,

Ye know on earth and all ye need not to know”

The above lines are some of the most discussed, debated and argued over lines in the

English poetry.

Ode on a Grecian urn is one of the best poems of John Keats. Understanding some lines

this poem are a challenge to any reader. Some of the difficulty arises because there is no

definitive text for this poem. No manuscript in Keats handwriting survives. Although the

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poem was included in a volume of poems published in 1820, Keats may have been too ill

to correct typesetting errors. Also, there exist two other versions of the poem which have

some claim to authority. The differences among these versions are significant and affect

meaning. Keats lovely, intelligent and deeply sympathetic nature befriended him easily to

other authors and cultural figures like Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Wordsworth and Shelley.

His close friend John Hamilton Reynolds remembers him as having,

“The greatest power of poetry in him, of any one since Shakespeare.”

 Despite growing and increasing recognition of his talent, his first volumes of poems and

 Endymion he was held in scathing derision, much of this collection was directed to his

poor origins. What makes Keats a romantic is his intention to attempt to run away from

the hazards of life by creating a new world in his imagination, which he hopes will

protect him from the pitfalls of life. He builds a dream world in his poems, like the other

romantics in order to break away from the actuality. He seeks for an escape from the hard

conditions of life in a realm of beauty and romance. Keats is also inspired by antiquity

because he seeks for an escape into the past too.

In Ode to nightingale, the song of the bird transfers him into the world of imagination

and he forgets his personal sorrows in the happy world of the nightingale. The ode is a

complex poetic form, and Keats is generally regarded as one of the masters of the form.

At the same time he develops a poetic language appropriate both to the form of the ode

and the nature of his themes.

Keats language renders experience precisely; it captures the rhythm and movement of

thoughts and feelings. Most of the odes are born of some sudden inspiration. The union

of joy and pain is the fundamental fact of human experience that Keats has observed and

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accepted as true in his odes. The odes structure conforms to the Gnostic pattern of a fall

from innocence into the dividedness of experience and subsequent return to a higher

innocence as self-knowledge or self-recollection.

Keats was also formulating the thinking behind his most famous doctrine, negative

capability, which is the idea that humans are capable of transcending intellectual or social

constraints and far exceeds, creatively or intellectually, what human nature is thought to

allow. Keats saw a world more chaotic, more creative than what others he felt would

permit.

In ‘Ode to nightingale’ and ‘Ode on a Grecian urn’, Keats tries to free himself from the

world of change by identifying with the nightingale, representing nature, or the urn,

representing art. These odes, as well as

‘The ode to psyche’ and the ‘Ode to melancholy’ present the poet as dreamer, the

question in these odes, as well as in La belle dame sans merci and ‘The eve of stagnes’

how Keats characterizes the dream or vision.

Keats often associated love and pain both in his life and in his poetry. He wrote about a

young woman whom he found to be very attractive in his Isabella. Love and death are

intertwined in Isabella, ‘The eve of stagnes’ and La belle dame sans merci. The fatal

woman who is destructive to love, like Cleopatra appears in La belle dame sans

merci and Lamia.

Most of the Keats works do not focus on religion, ethics, morals or politics. He mostly

just writes about sensations and experiencing the richness of life. Keats focuses on how

experiencing beauty gives meaning and value to life. Keats imagery ranges among all our

physical sensations, sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, temperature, weight, pressure,

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hunger, thirst, sexuality and movement. Keats repeatedly combines different senses in

one image, that is, he attributes the traits of one sense to another, a practice called

synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is a use of imagery and language choices which describe

sensory impressions in terms of other senses. His synaesthetic imagery performs two

major functions in his poems; it is a part of the sensual effect and the combining of senses

normally experienced as separate suggests an underlying unity of dissimilar happenings,

the oneness of all forms of life.

Richard H Foggle calls these images the product of his

“Unrivaled ability to absorb, sympathize with and humanize natural objects”

 Keats is one of the greatest lovers and admirers of nature. In his poetry, we come across

exquisitely beautiful descriptions of the wonder sights and senses of nature. He looks

with child-like delight at the objects of nature and his whole being is thrilled by what he

sees and hears. Everything in nature for him is full of wonder and mystery – the rising

sun, the moving cloud, the growing bud and the swimming fish. Keats love for nature is

purely sensuous and he loves the beautiful sights and scenes of nature for their own sake,

while other romantics see in nature a deep meaning-ethical, moral or spiritual.

Keats description of nature is very beautiful and he paints the pictures with words. He

describes things with beautiful images and it seems as if he touches them, hears them and

even smells them. He personifies the object of nature. Another quality of Keats, as a poet

of nature is that he often presents the objects of nature as living being with a life of their

own. His observation of nature is often characterized by minuteness and vividness. Keats

eye observes every little detail, and presents it with a mature touch. For Keats, nature

remains a perennial source of poetry and joy.

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Keats is the most Gnostic of the romantic poets in regard to living its most basic

principles of knowledge and redemption. Keats is clearly Gnostic in his soul-making

insights as an instance of his predisposition toward knowledge as the realization of the

self through direct experience and intuition. The experience of Gnostic principles of

redemption involving mythic descent and ascent is at the heart of the reappearance of the

creation of myth genre in romanticism. For Keats, beauty as synonymous with truth

displaces a transcendent absolute as an imminent principle of unity and knowledge.

Gnostic knowledge or gnosis differs from rational cognition in being a paradoxical

knowledge of the unknowable one. Keats exemplifies the ambiguity of the Gnostic

temperament in terms of the paradox of knowing and being.

Harold bloom and Lionel Trilling summarize Keats world view succinctly;

“Beyond the uncompromising sense that we are completely physical in a

World, and the allied realization that we are compelled to imagine more than we can

know or understood, there is a third quality in Keats more clearly present than in any

other poet since Shakespeare. This is the gift of tragic acceptance, which persuades us

that Keats was the least solipstic of poets, the one most able to grasp the individuality and

reality of solves totally distinct from his own, and of an outward world that would survive

his perception of it”

(An evaluation of his poetry, 31)

Shelley did much to decrease the intensity of this crushing attack on his works by paying

tribute to him (Keats) in his elegiac poem, “ Adonis” noting that those canker worms

Caused the genius of Keats to be blighted in the bud. Despite of the crushing attacks on

His maiden works and personal loses and sufferings, he said,

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“I think I shall be among the English poets after my death”

Poetry, Keats thought, should spring naturally from his inner soul and should reproduce

what his Imagination suggested to him; and what struck his Imagination most was

Beauty, not the “intellectual beauty” of Shelley, but the one which reveals itself to his

senses. Beauty, in fact, became the central theme of all Keats’s poems, since it was the

only consolation he found in life.

The memory of something beautiful brought him joy, as he wrote in the opening lines of

Endymion:

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”

Beauty could be either physical (women, nature, statues, and paintings) or spiritual

(friendship, love, poetry), though they were to be considered together, since physical

beauty was simply the expression of spiritual beauty and, even if the former might be

subject to time and decay, the latter was eternal and immortal. Imagination recognizes

Beauty in existing things, but also it is the creative force of Beauty.

In the letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey Keats wrote:

“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of

Imagination. What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed

before or not”

The worship of beauty is the clue to everything in Keats and it is quite usual to find that

Beauty and Truth often unite Kipper man (1990) discusses Keats’s principle of beauty

and how he realizes it in his works. His art's very form seems to embody and interpret the

conflicts of mortality and desire. The urgency of his poetry has always appeared greater

to his readers for his intense love of beauty and his tragically short life. Keats approaches

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the relations among experience, imagination, art, and illusion with penetrating

thoughtfulness, with neither sentimentality nor cynicism but with a delight in the ways in

which beauty, in its own subtle and often surprising ways, reveals the truth.

Different from the departure points of the researches mentioned, Pyle (2003) argues for

the kindling and ash in Keats’s poetry. Radical aestheticism remains the legacy of

romanticism. A radical aestheticism brings us the experience of something like auto-

sacrifice, and the result is not in the reassuring knowledge as Bourdieu promises with his

sociology of the aesthetic; it gives us an effect of what Keats calls a “barren noise”- the

voids all we claim in the name of the aesthetic, which breaks the hold of the ethical and

social considerations, and plays against the claims of knowledge. Something quite

unexpected will result from genuine radical aestheticism.

The recent studies have shown that it is of significance to probe into the aesthetic value of

Keats’s poetry. The topics for investigation in this field conclude the artistic form of

Keats’s poetry, the eternal beauty Keats seeks for, the beautiful and harmonious

relationship between man and nature that Keats argues for, the adoption of the concept of

negative capability to understand of Keats’s view on aestheticism.

In January 2013, the two researchers named Twinkle Hareshbhai Shah and Rameshingh

M. Chauhan had analyzed John Keats ‘Ode on Melancholy’ in their research paper

entitled ‘Odes: Sadness Underlying in Beauty.’

In this research, they examined sadness of Keats reflected in his several odes:

Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to autumn, Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode on

Melancholy. In this research paper, both researchers found that there is the sadness in

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every beauty that is represented by Keats in those five odes. It is written in there, that

Keats is a lover of a beauty. Yet, sadness also comes together with the beauty.

For instance, in Ode on Melancholy, from the lines

“She dwells with Beauty-Beauty that must die;”

According to researchers, everyone who can feel great pleasures then can also feel the

sadness. The beautiful things themselves are not immortal and they live for a short time.

(Hareshbhai and Rameshsingh 74-75).

Through Keats’s famous odes, we can say that whatever is beautiful must be true; and

whatever is true must also be beautiful. Thus beauty and truth are inseparable.

Beauty and truth are two sides of one and the same thing. Because beauty is a kind of

lens or window that gives us a glimpse of a greater dimension of reality which is true and

very much closer to God or the source of being or meaning where there is no place of

escapism rather beauty lies in the real world of men, not merely in art or in the fairyland

of fancy.

Here truth stands for the real and actual world a distinguished from the world of

imagination. Avoidance of reality can’t be the source of beauty. It is not a way out of all

pains. It’s a momentary. It is not the permanent solution of life. That is why Keats also

frequently came back to the real world from that of imagination. His Nightingale came

back to the earth time to time. Short lived pleasure could not give it ultimate peace and

happiness and it cannot be the way of ultimate truth and permanent beauty. Because

ultimate truth and beauty don’t lie in the state of escapism but in the state of reality that

he finally exhibited in his poetry. His aim was at the creation and revelation of beauty but

of beauty wherever its elements existed. And we see these elements are existed in this

19
world which is full of well and woe and if we want to ignore it through escaping we will

fall upon the thorn of life and it will bleed us. So it is better to accept the reality of life.

So the core of Keats poetry advocates us not to escape and seek short lived pleasure

rather find the deep truth in the real life which is the core of ultimate beauty and that is

the truth beauty. The hardships of our lives carry the essence of truth where people

should seek the beauty and take everything as beautiful so that we may find the meaning

of truth which will lead us to our death — the ultimate truth.

However it can be said that the word Beauty envisages the lovely things that can be

trendy and cherished by all of us which would give gratification instead of momentary

happiness. Further the truth refers to the plain facts of life which may be pleasant or

unpleasant. But we should have courage to accept them with equability which is rather

difficult. This makes our life beautiful.

So if we closely study his poetry we see that he advocated to beauty and truth in one side,

on the other side he sometimes tried to find out this beauty and truth in the world of

imagination.

So beauty, truth, imagination, reality have become the dominant theme of his poetry. But

finally “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” supersedes all other themes of Keats poetry

according to Keats –

“That is all /ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”.

“A very odd young man, but good-tempered, and good-hearted, and very clever indeed.”

Mrs. Maria Dilke, quoted in ‘Papers of a Critic’, by Sir Charles Dilke, I, p. 8.

“What harm he has done in English Poetry. As Browning is a man with a moderate gift

passionately desiring movement and fullness, and obtaining but a confused

20
multitudinousness, so Keats with a very high gift, is yet also consumed by this desire; and

cannot produce the truly living and moving, as his conscience keeps telling him. They

will not be patient neither understand that they must begin with an Idea of the world in

order not be prevailed over by the world's multitudinousness: or if they cannot get that, at

least with isolated ideas: and all other things shall (perhaps) be added unto them.

“Matthew Arnold, Letter to Arthur Clough, 1848/9, in John Keats: The Critical Heritage,

ed. G.M. Matthews (1995).

[On Monckton Milne's Life of Keats] “An attempt to make us eat dead dog by exquisite

currying and cooking [...] the kind of man that Keats was gets ever more horrible to me.

Forces of hunger for every pleasure of every kind, and want of all other force -- that is a

combination! Such a structure of soul, it would once have been very evident, was a

chosen 'Vessel of Hell' [...]”

Thomas Carlyle, in J.A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834 -

1881 (1884).

“Here are Johnny Keats's piss a-bed poetry [...] There is such trash of Keats and the like

upon my tables, that I am ashamed to look at them [...] No more Keats, I entreat: flay him

alive; if some of you don't I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the driveling

idiotism of the Mankin”

The Edinburgh praises Jack Keats or Ketch, or whatever his names are [...]

“Why, his is the Onanism of Poetry -- something like the pleasure an Italian fiddler

extracted out of being suspended daily by a Street Walker in Drury Lane. This went on

for some weeks: at last the Girl went to get a pint of Gin -- met another, chatted too long,

and Cornelli was hanged outright before she returned. Such like is the trash they praise,

21
and such will be the end of the outstretched poesy of this miserable Self-polluter of the

human mind”

“Mr. Keats, whose poetry you enquire after, appears to me what I have already said: such

writing is a sort of mental masturbation -- he is always frigging his Imagination. I don't

mean he is indecent, but viciously soliciting his ideas into a state, which is neither poetry

nor anything else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium”

Lord Byron, Letters to John Murray, 12 August - 9 September 1820, in The Rutledge

Literary Sourcebook on the Poems of John Keats, ed. J. Strachan (2003).

“My indignation at Mr. Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice

to his own genius, which, malgre all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly

of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is

as sublime as Aeschylus. He is a loss to our literature”

Lord Byron, 12 November 1821.

“Keats, entirely a stranger to error, could believe that the nightingale enchanting him was

the same one Ruth heard amid the alien corn of Bethlehem in Judah; Stevenson posits a

single bird that consumes the centuries: "the nightingale that devours time." Schopenhauer

— impassioned, lucid Schopenhauer — provides a reason: the pure corporeal immediacy

in which animals live, oblivious to death and memory. He then adds, not without a smile:

Whoever hears me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one

that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me,

but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally

an entirely different one”

22
Jorge Luis Borges in "A History of Eternity" as translated in Selected Non-Fictions Vol. 1,

(1999), edited by Eliot Weinberger.

“In the latter part of that year’s summer [1817] I first saw him. It was on the Hampstead

road that we were introduced to each other…. …in that interview of a minute I inwardly

desired his acquaintanceship, if not his friendship… He was small in stature, well

proportioned, compact in form, and, though thin, rather muscular; — one of the many

who prove that manliness is distinct from height and bulk. There is no magic equal to that

of an ingenuous countenance, and I never beheld any human being’s as ingenuous as his.

His full fine eyes were lustrously intellectual, and beaming (at that time!) with hope and

joy. It has been remarked that the faultiest feature was his mouth; and, at intervals, it was

so. But, whenever he spoke, or was, in any way, excited, the expression of the lips was so

varied and delicate, that they might be called handsome”

Charles Armitage Brown, Life of John Keats, p. 44.

“Keats was in childhood not attached to books. His penchant was for fighting. He would

fight any one – morning, noon, and night, his brother among the rest. It was meat and

drink to him. Jennings their sailor relation was always in the thoughts of the brothers, and

they determined to keep up the family reputation for courage; George in a passive

manner; John and Tom more fiercely. The favorites of John were few; after they were

known to fight readily he seemed to prefer them for a sort of grotesque and buffoon

humor. I recollect at this moment his delight at the extraordinary gesticulations and

pranks of a boy named Wade who was celebrated for this.... He was a boy whom any one

from his extraordinary vivacity and personal beauty might easily fancy would become

great — but rather in some military capacity than in literature”

23
Edward Holmes, a fellow pupil at Clarke's School in Enfield.

“He was called by his fellow students 'little Keats,' being at his full growth no more than

five feet high.... In a room, he was always at the window, peering into space, so that the

window seat was spoken of by his comrades as Keats’s place.... In the lecture room he

seemed to sit apart and to be absorbed in something else, as if the subject suggested

thoughts to him which were not practically connected with it. He was often in the subject

and out of it, in a dreamy way”

“He never attached much consequence to his own studies in medicine, and indeed looked

upon the medical career as the career by which to live in a workaday world, without

being certain that he could keep up the strain of it. He nevertheless had a consciousness

of his own powers, and even of his own greatness, though it might never be recognized....

Poetry was to his mind the zenith of all his aspirations: the only thing worthy the

attention of superior minds: so he thought: all other pursuits were mean and tame. He had

no idea of fame or greatness but as it was connected with the pursuits of poetry, or the

attainment of poetical excellence…. He was gentlemanly in his manners and when he

condescended to talk upon other subjects he was agreeable and intelligent. He was quick

and apt at learning, when he chose to give his attention to any subject. He was a steady

quiet and well behaved person, never inclined to pursuits of a low or vicious character”

Henry Stephens, a fellow student at Guy's Hospital

“He was under the middle height; and his lower limbs were small in comparison with the

upper, but neat and well-turned. His shoulders were very broad for his size; he had a face,

in which energy and sensibility were remarkably mixed-up, an eager power checked and

made patient by ill-health. Every feature was at once strongly cut, and delicately alive. If

24
there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, which was not without something of

a character of pugnacity... The head was a particular puzzle for the phrenologist, being

remarkably small in the skull; a singularity he has in common with Lord Byron and Mr.

Shelley, none of whose hats I could get on.”

Leigh Hunt, "Mr. Keats".

“And don't you remember Keats proposing 'Confusion to the memory of Newton' and

upon you’re insisting on an explanation before you drank it, his saying, 'Because he

destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism? Ah, my dear old friend,

you and I shall never see such days again!”

Benjamin Haydon, Autobiography and Memoirs.

“I remember… his first introduction to Mr. Haydon; and when in the course of

conversation that great artist asked him, "If he did not love his country," how the blood

rushed to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes, at his energetic reply. His love of freedom

was ardent and grand”

Charles Cowden Clarke, article in the Morning Chronicle (27 July 1821).

He is studying closely, recovering his Latin, going to learn Greek, and seems altogether

more rational than usual — but he is such a man of fits and starts he is not much to be

depended on. Still he thinks of nothing but poetry as his being's end and aim, and

sometime or other he will, I doubt not, do something valuable.

James Augustus Hessey to John Taylor, (16 September 1818), as quoted by Edmund

Blunden in Keats's Publisherp.56.

“He, who is gone, was one of the very kindest friends I possessed, and yet he was not

kinder perhaps to me, than to others. His intense mind and powerful feelings would, I

25
truly believe, have done the world some service, had his life been spared — but he was of

too sensitive a nature — and thus he was destroyed!”

John Hamilton Reynolds

[Keats] was the very soul of courage and manliness, and as much like the Holy Ghost as

Johnny Keats.

George Keats.

“When somebody expressed his surprise to Shelley, that Keats, who was not very

conversant with the Greek language, could write so finely and classically of their gods

and goddesses, Shelley replied "He was a Greek."

Richard H. Horne, in New Spirit of the Age (1844) Vol. 2.

“With Wordsworth, mortality is often just under the surface, as it was with Keats, another

child of his time, who believed, because of the Enlightenment, that we are material beings

in a material universe and that we must just accept that fate. We are mortal, but with no

divine shoulder to lean on, and we will never understand the deepest truths, which,

contrary to all the protestations of the Enlightenment, neither reason nor science can

reach. Keats had a tragic sense of life. He is recognizably a Romantic; there is no

Enlightenment Utopia waiting for him”.

2.2 Ghani Khan

Abdul ghani khan was also called the “John Keats of Pashto”

Great Pashto Poet Ghani Khan Was Born In (1914). Ghani khan was the best poet of the

20th century, in Pashto language. He was the poet of the time of many great poets like

26
Ameer Hamza Shinwari, Khushal Khan Khattak, and Rahman Baba He was Very Well Known

and respected artist and writer.

Ghani Khan Made His Name through out the World but Still Most of the people know

little about Ghani Khan. Most of the people's views about ghani khan are

“A poet who wrote about love, music, leasure, wine and sensuality"

Some people says Ghani Khan is a rebel. While some says he is a heretic, Abdul Ghani

Khan was the first born of Abdul Ghaffar Khan. He was very much dear to both of his

parents.

Ghani khan received his early education from a teacher in a mosque. Ghani Khan studied

at the Rabindranath Tagore's Shanti Niketan Art Academy. During his studies he starts

taking interest in painting and sculpture. He studied sugar technology in America and

after returning home he started working at a sugar mill in Takht Bhai in 1933. Due to his

father influence he was also involved in politics not that much active like his father. He

was a staunch supporter of the cause of Pathans.

In 1948, Ghani Khan was arrested by the Government of Pakistan. But he gave up

politics by then. He was imprisoned for six years in different jails across the country.

During his imprisonment he wrote a collection of poems "Da panjray Chaghaar". He

declared it as the best work of his life. In 1958 he published a short book in prose, "The

Pathans". Besides his poetic genius, Ghani khan possessed a profound knowledge about

his native and foreign cultures.

Ghani Khan was a great romantic Pashto poet. He holds an important position in the

galaxy of the Pashto poets. His poetry is an expression of the culture, traditions,

civilizations, and Pashtu sway of life. Ghani Khan’s romantic bent of mind is fully

27
expressed through the Pashto language. Besides, Ghani khan also staunchly believed in

the love of nature and beauty. By his poetic imaginative wings, flies to the world of

ecstasy, he talks of the romantic lands of pleasure, and happiness in palaces, music,

beloved, masti (wantonness). But he is also aware of the harsh realities of life.

Ghani khan was very much dear to his parents. His father played a notable role in the

struggle for Indian independence. Influence of his father up on him gave a patriotic sense

to him. Love and affection from his family influenced his poetry. Ghani khan became a

victim of influenza epidemic at the age of six and his parents began prayers earnestly to

Allah for the recovery of Ghani Khan. The severity of this illness was so intense that

made Ghani Khan`s mother ask God to transfer the illness of her son to her in lieu of his

recovery and it happened as his mother had wished. She died of this prayer which she had

made for Ghani Khan’s recovery. Ghani Khan, therefore, recalls her mother`s intense

love for him in his poem,

English translation of Ghani`s verses

Mother (Moor).

“Though you have been buried and hidden in dust,

I still remember your black beautiful eyes,

I do still remember your arms, around me in my pains.”

 He had his own individual style. He rebelled against the traditional forms and writing of

poetry. He seemed impressed by no one but followed the inner call of his own self and

soul and fit his poetry in his own individualistic style. His followed his conscience rather

than his intellect. He did not write poetry for the sake of criticism but rather believed in

the freedom of thought and expression and always seemed working against the set

28
traditions. Ghani khan’s style, words, thoughts, ideas all are his own and his emotions

and sensitive feelings are the result of his own personal experiences in life.

Ghani khan is a great admirer of beauty and nature. He is noted for his eccentric and

complex expressions and philosophical musings in his poems. Being a Pashto poet his

poetry mainly addressed his own people, traditions, culture and mankind. He vitalized the

idea of love, glory, passion, kindness and faith. His poetry patronizes the reader for its

bold manner and perception of reality critically described in almost all of his literary

works. The romantic notions in his poetic work baffle the reader giving them an insight to

the soft and slander identity of pakhtoon that lies beneath the tough exterior. He called

himself a man of construction and described selfless service, love and faith as his

religion. Ghani wrote on a variety of subjects. He couched his thoughts in a style that is

very much characteristic of him. He uses nature to express his feelings. His imagery, in

comparison to the Romantics, may be simple but has a charm all its own. It is vivid and

expressive of the meaning and feelings. His nature imagery is in very simple manner so

that the common man can easily interpret it.

Ghani khan’s poetry discarded the notion of pakhtoons as a violent nation with brutal

values. He portrays their side that talks about peace, love, freedom and loyalty. His

poetry is based on the philosophy of romanticism that conveys the message of mysticism,

love and passion that is a revolt against the orthodox mindset that misconceived the

pakhtoons. His poetry gave the pakhtoons a new identity with patriotism.

The major distinction and uniqueness of his poetry lies in the insightful blend of

knowledge about the native and foreign cultures, the identification of the real spirit of

pakhtoon culture and the sensual and enlightened aspects of religion and faith. His poetic

29
collection is available in Urdu and English language that provides the opportunity to non-

pakhtoon readers to get to know with the unique, appreciable work of one of the greatest

minds that poetic circles ever had. When his works are translated to English people from

all over the world came to know about his poetry and understand the depth of his poems.

Ghani khan never compartmentalized his creativity but his spirit moved freely through

different disciplines of expression trying to find the meaning of life. He was against the

thought barriers that had held his people in check for long and thought the lessons of free

thought and creativity. Through his poetry he was trying to find a new meaning to the life

of pakhtoons. Ghanis poetry is a reflection of his times. To the pakhtoons, he is the crazy

philosopher, who loved them as a people but he was apart from them in so many ways.

He was soft, gentle, cultured, loving, sensitive, creative and imaginative who expressed

himself in a way that has touched the hearts of so many. He wrote nationalistic poems to

urge pakhtoons and especially the youth to wake up from ignorance, gain education and

bring about betterment of their nation. Using his poetry as a medium, Ghani incited the

pakhtoons to rise out of their apathis, break the chains of slavers and develop socially,

economically and normally according to the code of pakhtoon wali in a free culture and

society. He says

“I want to see my people educated and enlightened a people with a vision and a strong

sense of justice who can carve out a future for themselves in harmony with nature”.

His patriotic passion is reflected in the following lines;

“O mother, with what face

Will you wait for me, if i am not turn to pieces by enemy guns?

Either I turned this wretched kind of mine into a garden of mine,

30
Qalam Taqat Literary Society has published a new book about the literary achievements

of Ghani Khan, the legendary Pashtun poet and phosphor. It is titled as "Ghani Khan- Da

Pukhto Adab da Shalami Sadai Shakhsiat".

It is a thesis by late Fazli Ghani Ghani, the eminent Pashtun writer who was killed when a

suicide bomber targeted the house of Asfandyar Wali Khan on October 2, 2008.

Since his college days Fazli Ghani Ghani (Shaheed) was greatly inspired by Ghani

Khan's life and works. Being an enlightened nationalist himself Fazli Ghani Ghani

always appreciated Ghani Khan's nationalistic fervor, his ecstatic poetry and his deep

philosophical thought. A time came that the two Ghanis' found themselves in a stronger

bond of mutual trust and friendship.

He was a regular visitor of Ghani Khan's study room where they would sit for hours and

would resolve issues of an unseen world.

Based on his interviews with Ghani Khan, the writer delves deep into Ghani Khan's

works and discovers him from quite new and refreshing angles. He discusses Ghani

Khan's themes of love, Beauty, Truth and Death with the mastery of a prolific writer and

seasoned critic.

Many other wrote about Ghani Khan's literary achievements and they wrote pretty well

but this thesis written by one of Ghani Khan's most trusted lovers is totally different in its

approaches and content. Fazli Ghani Ghani don't rely on accounts written by other people

but he himself observes Ghani Khan from a very close angle, talking and laughing with

him, learning from him and asking him why is he so different from others?

Literary circles have applauded Azad Hashtnaghri for publishing this original and

31
refreshing thesis by his uncle Fazli Ghani Ghani (Shaheed) that discovers Ghani Khan in

his true artistic and philosophical colours.

Since his college days, Fazli Ghani Ghani (Shaheed) was greatly inspired by Ghani

Khan’s life and works. Being an enlightened nationalist himself, Fazli Ghani Ghani

always appreciated Ghani Khan’s nationalistic fervor, his ecstatic poetry and his deep

philosophical thought. A time came that the two Ghanis found themselves in a stronger

bond of mutual trust and friendship. He was a regular visitor to Ghani Khan’s study room

where they would sit for hours.

Based on his interviews with Ghani Khan, the writer delves deep into Ghani Khan’s

works and discovers him from quite new and refreshing angles. He discusses Ghani

Khan’s themes of love, beauty, truth and death with the mastery of a prolific writer and

seasoned critic.

Many others wrote about Ghani Khan’s literary achievements and they wrote pretty well

but this thesis written by one of Ghani Khan’s most trusted fan is totally different in its

approach and contents.

Fazli Ghani Ghani does not rely on accounts written by other people but he himself

observes Ghani Khan from a very close angle, talking and laughing with him, learning

from him and asking him why is he so different from others?

Literary circles have applauded Azad Hashtnagri for publishing this original and

refreshing thesis by his uncle Fazli Ghani Ghani (Shaheed) that discovers Ghani Khan in

his true artistic and philosophical colours.

Ghani khan also wrote a book which was a sketch of the Pathan people.

32
"It aims to increase our understanding and appreciation - of these very complex people

who are simple and big-hearted to a fault and yet have a custom of deciding everything

by a fight."

This is the author´s words - he is a Pathan himself and a well-known poet,

"He has a genial humor and a convincing literary style."

"Being a Pathan himself and in love with his people he gives a vivid and glowing picture

of their mode of living, of their history, customs, superstitions, folk-songs and politics.

He wants to introduce the Pathan to us and make him tell us "of his struggle and his

dreams, of his love and his feuds, his field and his watch-tower, his new rifle and his old

wife".

For as the author says,

"His violent nature, strong body and tender heart make a very unstable combination for

living, but an ideal one for poetry and color".

A 20th-century poetic genius wrote about his people's struggles with modernity,

ignorance, freedom and discrimination.

Some of his popular poems were turned into songs and introduced generations of

listeners in Pakistan and Afghanistan to humanism, aesthetics and mysticism.

Until now, the artistic and intellectual gems of Abdul Ghani Khan (1914–1996),

however, remained hidden from the wider world because few of his capacious Pashto-

language poems were translated into other languages.

A remarkable book by a lifelong friend and admirer of Khan's has changed that. Imtiaz

Ahmad Sahibzada has dedicated years to studying and translating Khan's varied and

voluminous poetry into English. Sahibzada's "The Pilgrim of Beauty: Selections from the

33
Poetry of Abdul Ghani Khan" translates poems from Khan's three poetry books into

English. The author has also extensively researched Khan's life and has summarized

literary criticism of his work.

Sahibzada's lasting contribution is to preserve the original spirit and rhythms of Khan's

poetry in his translation. His extensive research and explanations in endnotes will help

readers understand the context of individual verses and poems.

He says Khan's poetry is acutely relevant for Afghanistan and Pakistan today.

"His poetry reverberated with the message of peace, which if realized will benefit all of

us today,” he said.

Safoora Arbab has earned her Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in New York

City with her major in philosophy. She is now pursuing a PhD in the department of

comparative literature, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her study

focuses on the Pashtun nonviolent movement of the Khudai Khidmatgar during Indian

Independence, as well as looking at the historical erasure of the movement in post-

partition Pakistan.

She is closely examining the literature generated by the Khudai Khidmatgars - their

poetry and writings in the journal the Pakhtun - to explain how nonviolence was

embodied, at least for a short historical span, by a people who think of themselves, and

are painted, as inherently violent. Ms Arbab especially looks at the poetry of Ghani Khan

for representations of an alternate Pashtun imaginary.

During an online interaction, to a query ‘what prompted her to render Ghani Khan’s into

English’, she said that she took a class in translation methods at UCLA and translated a

few of his poems that she could also use in her research work later on.

34
She said she knew that there were no published English translations of Ghani Khan’s

work. Once she started translating a few of his poems - especially ‘Latoon’, she fell in

love with his work, his way of thinking and expressing himself, his witty humanism, and

it was such a wonderful pleasure to be able to relate to his expressions both as Pakhtun

and as part of the global diaspora,” she explained.

Ms Arbab pointed out that she was quite surprised that Ghani Khan had not yet been

translated into English. She however, did know of Imtiaz Sahibzada’s translations of

many of Ghani Khan’s poems, but these were yet unpublished.

She felt that the brilliance and complexity of this poetry, a complexity that was expressed

in very simple straightforward Pashto that anyone could relate to, had to be shared with

others. “It is a form of poetic thinking that crosses nationalist boundaries and speaks to

both the local and the Diaspora,” the translator observed.

Regarding the challenges, she faced while putting Ghani into English, she said, “It was

surprisingly easy to translate Ghani Khan’s words and concepts into English because I

think he also, like most of us today, was educated in the West and so his expressions

speak to a mixture of the Pakhtun and Western context he was brought up in”.

She added that even though Mr. Khan had attended Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Azad schools

and was educated in Pashto in his early years, the influence of the colonial context was

pervasive in that era. Of course, she said, his later education was a mixture of British,

American and even a nationalist one at Tagore’s Shantinekatan. She went on to add that

his expressions and metaphors were drawn from this rich global background.

“What was really difficult to translate, however, was the complexity of meaning, the

nuances, and history of the metaphorical allusions that he refers to in very simple

35
language. She said the language, so deceptively simple, could seem flat and even silly in

English without that background reference that was available in Pashto or even the

Western philosophical thinking, which always seeped through his poetry”

To another question, Ms Arbab replied that

“Most often there was an element of surprise that the thoughts in Ghani Khan’s poetry

were so easily accessible, and its humor and humanism so universal. She said, sometimes

even a denial that this poetry was actually written in Pashto”

Ms Arbab elaborated that the classification of the Pakhtuns in the world was of a

backward and violent tribal society, with little knowledge of their rich and long literary

tradition, which she said made it difficult to place Ghani Khan within these

predetermined categories.

“He shatters these categorizations with his words by relocating Pashto within a global

and contemporary context. His words defy the nature of bounded categories and

stereotypes,” the translator maintained.

About Ghani Khan’s unique way of expression, Ms Arbab said, his poetry was so

unconventional not just in its breadth and expansiveness — even when he was being

ironic in depicting all kinds of human follies and fanaticisms he did it so humorously —

that it was hard to translate this style.

She said one had to have the context and history of Pashto poetry, of Pakhtun traditions

which he both upheld and mocked, and the historical context of the times in which he

was writing.

36
“So his poetry without that context in English — which is the most difficult part as it

takes away from the richness of his thought — but there is nothing else to be done,”

she remarked.

Responding to a query, did she want to convey a particular message through renditions of

Ghani Khan, she said, initially it was about Pakhtun expressions of the nonviolent

movement, as examples that expressed an alternate ethos of the Pakhtuns other than the

categorizations of them as a racially and inherently violent people, as a form of resistance

to colonial representations.

“But now I am making selections that are more than just ideological examples for my

own ends but rather as articulations of new, refreshing and wholly unexpected

perspectives that one cannot categories in any way,”

Ms Arbab opined.

To categories Ghani Khan’s poetry she said was in fact to commit violence to them. She

said, it would try to bind and contain the unbounded spirit of the man reflected in his

poems. She said she thought we needed to embrace his spirit of humanism and allow his

poems to speak freely for themselves rather than try to shape them or try to structure

them within any ideological or poetic category.

Mr. Khan had blended actually the feel and thought of Western and Eastern hues both

into Pashto. When asked how hard it was to put into rendition, she answered that Ghani

Khan had captured the thinking of both West and East and blended them into a new

whole so that there are no clearly drawn boundaries between them that one could point to.

37
“Such borders of course do not exist either. We try to create these borders ideologically

but in fact there are such a lot of crossovers and re-articulations that one cannot easily

draw a line between East and West,” she described.

She stated that it was why Ghani Khan was especially attractive in today’s world. She

said Ghani Khan’s poetry was rooted in Pashto, steeped in its traditions and history yet

his colonial and international education allowed him to fuse the thinking he was exposed

to with his traditions.

“There is resistance in this kind of transcendence of both tradition and political context as

well because it defies and expands both: he revolutionizes Pakhtun thinking but he also

refuses to acknowledge colonial and Western boundaries of thought and representation”

Ms Arbab concluded

Published in Dawn March 16th, 2015

Poet, painter and sculptor Abdul Ghani Khan has been a part of Pashto literature and art

for more than a hundred years, and to celebrate his contribution, Fikri Tarrun – a literary

organization – had events for his centenary in 2014.

Abdul Ghani was born in 1914 in what is now Charsadda district. His father Khan Abdul

Ghaffar Khan was a prominent leader of the Khudai Khidmatgar Tehreek.

Abdul Ghani was the youngest parliamentarian in the Indo-Pak subcontinent and was

incarcerated on several occasions before and after Partition. He was trained at

Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan Academy in painting and sculpture. He passed

away in 1996.

While speaking at a press conference at Peshawar Press Club, Fikri Tarrun’s central

organising committee presented a list of events they have planned to celebrate Khan’s

38
centenary. This includes seminars, poetry recitals and music shows.

As a part of the centenary celebrations, they also plan on putting up portraits of Abdul

Ghani made by other artists all over the province.

Prominent Pashto poet Rehmat Shah Sayel said Abdul Ghani was a progressive poet and

his command over poetry and expression was second only to Khushal Khan Khattak. He

added the literary organization had formed two committees – a central one and an

international one to deal with different events being held inside and outside the country.

According to Sayel, they have also planned to publish a book on Abdul Ghani’s life and

works. He said that they have asked the Pashto Academy at the University of Peshawar

and Pakistan Academy of Letters to publish the late poet’s journals. Some of Abdul

Ghani’s selected poems will also be translated into Urdu and English. Furthermore, a

calendar with Abdul Ghani’s poems and paintings will be available in print.

The committees plan on awarding those individuals who have done significant work on

Ghani’s life and art – they will be given the Ghani Khan award during the year. Sayel

demanded the authorities should declare 2014 as the year of Abdul Ghani Khan. He said

the federal government should issue a commemorative stamp in his memory, adding it

should also set up a museum in Ghani Dheri, Charsadda.

The late poet’s grandson, Mashal Khan said this was an occasion to celebrate his

grandfather and show people the different aspects of his personality. Poet Usman Ulasyar

was also present at the occasion.

Abdul Ghani was the most youthful parliamentarian in the Indo-Pak subcontinent and

was detained on a few events prior and then afterward Partition. He was prepared at

39
Rabindranath Tagore's Shantiniketan Academy in painting and model. He passed away in

1996.

While talking at a question and answer session at Peshawar Press Club, Fikri Tarrun's

focal sorting out council introduced a rundown of occasions they have wanted to observe

Khan's century. This incorporates classes, verse presentations and music appears.

As a part of the centennial festivals, they additionally anticipate setting up representations

of Abdul Ghani made by different craftsmen everywhere throughout the territory.

Unmistakable Pashto artist Rehmat Shah Sayel said Abdul Ghani was a dynamic artist

and his summon over verse and expression was second just to Khushal Khan Khattak. He

included the abstract association had framed two advisory groups – a focal one and a

worldwide one to manage diverse occasions being held inside and outside the nation

2.3 Mirza Ghalib

One of the best-known Urdu poets of all times, Mirza Ghalib is a name that is

synonymous with Urdu poetry. Born Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan, Ghalib was a pen

name he adopted. It is like a pseudonym that most poets and writers adopt in the literary

world. The life history of Ghalib is truly interesting and Ghalibs biography indeed makes

a good read. Ghalib was born in Agra, India in Turkish aristocratic ancestry on 27th

December 1796. Not much is known about Ghalib's education and it has always confused

scholars, as there are no written records of his formal education and early life. However,

it is said that his friends were some of the most respected and intelligent people of Delhi.

To know more about Ghalib, continue to read this insightful biography on him.

40
Ghalib got married at a very young age in a noble family around the year 1810. It is said

that Ghalib had seven children, but sadly none of them survived. This pain has found its

way into his poetry. His spouse was a contrasting personality when compared to him. She

was a god fearing and a very reserved person as compared to Ghalib, who was a carefree

and unrestricted person.

It is said that Ghalib had a weakness for drinking and gambling. These two vices were

something that he was truly fond of in his lifetime. Though gambling was considered an

offence at that time, Ghalib never seemed to have bothered about it. He himself said that

he was not a strict Muslim in the true sense of the term. Ghalib also had a scandalous

affair with a courtesan who was a fan of his poetry. In fact, one can find a record of an

FIR filed against Ghalib in a police station in Delhi regarding his affair with the woman.

Ghalib never strived for earning a decent livelihood and led his life on the generosity of

his friends or state sponsorship. Though no one gave him due importance then, fame

came much later. Today, he is the most written about poet and the most read poet in

Urdu. On February 15th 1869, this great poet breathed his last.

Ghalib, was a royal poet,

“because of me, the style of Zuhuri’s diction has come alive

With my song, I’ve poured spirit into the body of his words’ instrument”

Ghalib was one of the important court poets in the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar II. He

honored Ghalib with the royal titles of Dabber-ul-Mulk and Najm-ud-daulah. These titles

ensured Ghalib enter into the nobility of Delhi. He suffixed his name with Mirza after

Ghalib because of another title that the emperor added to his honor, Mirza Nosha.

Bahadur Shah Zafar was a great poet himself and was very interested in writing and

41
reciting poetry. Therefore at first, he was tutored by Ghalib in the year of 1854 and then

Zafar invited him to sit in his court as an honorable court poet. He also tutored Bahadur

Shah Zafar is eldested son Fakhr-ud-Din. Ghalib was also the royal historian in the court

of Zafar.

It is said that Ghalib was inclined towards poetry since his early years and he wrote him

poem for the first time when he was only 11. He knew many languages like Urdu, Persian

and Turkish. There was a time in the life of Ghalib, when he was in his young age, when

a traveler came from Iran to stay in Agra. This traveler was called Abdus Samad and he

stayed with Ghalib and his family for 2 years. During this time, it is presumed that,

Ghalib learnt many things from him like: Persian and Arabic language, logic, philosophy,

etc. as this traveler was a very learned man. Ghalib liked his work in the Persian

language, but his most famous work is in Urdu. A lot many Urdu poets elucidated Ghalib.

The first person to elucidate Ghalib Urdu poetry was Ali Haider Tabatabai from

Hyderabad. His poetries did not only depicted his failed loved and its agony but also the

philosophy of life and world and the mysticism.

His poetry is said to have a muddled description of his lover, which is considered to be

the most beautiful part of his poetries. Instead of having a definite lover, he depicts an

idea of the lover which takes the realism part of the writing away, which essentially gave

Ghalib the independence of the idea and expression. He could express his anguish in

bigger depths because he made his lover in his poetry less important than the feelings and

emotions. His poetry has been translated into English language as well. This was first

done by Sarfaraz K. Niazi in India by the publication company calle Rupa & Co and in

Pakistan by a company called Ferozsons. This book was called the Love Sonnets of

42
Ghalib and had Roman transliteration alongside English language translation. His poems

are considered to be the poems about love and not the love poems in the conventional

sense of word.

Ghalib knew that there was poetry in his blood for he started writing verses at the tender

age of ninepin one of his letters he writes,

“Composition of poem is not possible through the bodily organs. It

Needs a heart, a mind, a taste and an urge.”

Like William Blake, it is generally believed that poetry was dictated to him by some

divine power. He himself proves this fact in one of his magnificent verses:

“These ideas come to me from the unknown

O Ghalib, the sound produced by the scratching of my pen

Is the voice of an angel?”

To a non-poet the spectacle of a flower and a thorn does not extend beyond a flower and

a thorn.

Contrary to this, a poet's eye (and more particularly to that of Ghalib), discerns in the

mirror of flower and thorn all sorts of pleasures and pains, spring and autumn, youth and

age, hope and despair, victory and defeat, light and darkness, smile and sigh and so on.

Precisely, a minor spectacle sets the seed of a poet’s imagination on such swift course

that it traverses the vast realm of meaning. This is all evident in the following verse of

Ghalib:

“If a discerning (poet's) eye cannot visualize

The sea in a drop of water or the whole in a part,

Then it is not an eye, it is a plaything.”

43
Ghalib was conscious of his greatness as a creative artist. He was so sure of winning

recognition if not during his life time then after his death:

“The stars of my destiny has been in ascendance;

The fame of my poetic art shall spread in the world after my death”

In 1905, Allama Iqbal wrote a poem on Mirza Ghalib, in which he eulogizes Ghalib's

poetic art like this,

“Matching you (Ghalib), in literary elegance is not possible

Till maturity of thought and imagination are combined”

Ghalib is the emperor in the domain of poetry and interprets civilization, culture,

education, nature, love and beauty – almost every aspect of human life. The readers are

simply wonderstruck at his energy, imaginative penetration, creative faculty and power of

expression. It is the element of philosophy in his poetry that stirs our sense of wonder and

appreciation. His philosophy is not just an abstract speculation, but a thoughtful

presentation of the reality of life.

'The magician' as many poetry zealots would call him, is better known to the world as

Mirza Mohammad Assadullah Khan Ghalib, Ghalib being his nom de plume.

He had an unsupervised childhood as first his father and then his uncle died. Married at

the age of thirteen to Umrao Begum, Ghalib moved on to settle in Delhi. Never able to

cope with his marriage, he went ahead to describe marriage as his second imprisonment,

life itself being the first. The agony of losing all their new born children dented the

couple beyond repair as none of their seven children survived infancy. However, the

torment somewhat faded away when Ghalib adopted his wife's nephew Arif. But the real

shock was yet to take place. Arif too died at young age. When this unfortunate incident

44
happened, Ghalib was in Kolkata and got acquainted with this news on his return home

back. Stupefied, this tragedy pushed Ghalib into writing one of the most critically

acclaimed and perhaps the most despondent Ghazal ever;

“O, Eternal sky.

Arif was still young,

How would it have harmed you?

Had he lived a little more

You were the moon-light

That illuminated my home;

Then why could this happy picture

Not least a little more”

It was the wounded heart within and the world of beauty that inspired the poet to

compose his Ghazals. The dominant note in the poetry of Ghalib is that of gloom, sadness

and pessimism. The art of Ghalib lies in making the personal universe. The idea that life

is a continuous painful struggle which can end only when life itself ends is a recurring

theme in his poetry. He puts forth this concept beautifully in the

Following verse:

“The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same

Before the onset of death,

How can man expect to be free of grief?”

And again,

“O Assad, none but death can cure the sorrows of life;

The candle burns as it must until the break of dawn.”

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Urdu poets are notoriously popular for being poets of love. It may be love divine, love

profane or just simple love of youthful man and woman. Love is a popular topic with the

writers of Ghazal and Ghalib is no exception to it. It may be asserted that love and life are

the two important themes in Ghalib's poetry. He is essentially concerned with love and

faithfulness of lovers to one another. He was primarily a love poet, which is tangible in

this verse,

“I do not know the story of Alexander or that of Daraius.

Ask me not anything but the legends of love and loyalty”

Ghalib is a poet of beauty and found beauty around him and more particularly in the

objects of nature like the stars, the sun and the moon, the waves of the sea, spring and

autumn etc. His love for nature is conspicuous in this verse:

“The air is full of intoxication

To move in it is like drinking wine”

For poet like Ghalib, beauty is not external but internal. It does not lie in the mass of the

matter, but in the eyes of the beholder. He presents life as the manifestation of the Divine

beauty. He believes that everything in the world is a design of the creator. It is He who

appears in the flowers, in the sunset, sunrise, the

Moon etc.

“When nothing exists in the world without Thee

Then O God, what is all this tumult for?”

Ghalib is known for his using complex, sometimes stupefying symbols. In just a single

verse he is able to create images that requires paragraphs to explain adequately. The most

important symbols he uses are: Chaman (beauty of the flower garden), Aag (fire),

46
Jamsheed (beloved), Priests (priests are the symbols of ignorance regarding love, life and

religion), Wine, Madness, Madness in the desert (the desert is a traditional image for the

intense loneliness of being without a lover), the Rose and the Nightingale etc.

Ghalib was fundamentally apolitical. Both his Persian poetry and Urdu Diwan are almost

entirely devoid of explicit political verse. But it is in his Letters he talks about the

political events of his era. There is no ceremony, no formality in his letters. There is a

direct contact between the writer and the addressee. The simplicity, informality and

directness endear his letters to the reading public. His letters provide us a truthful picture

of the events around him and his own privations and sufferings. The poverty and misery

that he faced during the turmoil is faithfully reflected in his letters. The letters of Ghalib

also throw revealing light on his religion and humanism- that was his religion. He was a

lover of mankind. The world knows him as a legendary poet, diehard romantic and

philosopher, but above all, he was a fine human being.

The world of poetry is in debt of this mystic, legendary poet and will ever remain; for

none can replicate what Ghalib offered to us.

Mirza Ghalib mostly was fascinated with love and feelings of melancholia and this

clearly reflected in the ghazals written by him. Therefore it is not surprising to see how

the ghazals written by Ghalib continue to remain favorites with the current generation

too. He was a scholar well versed in Urdu, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. He was known to

be the last of all the greatest scholars of the Mughal court and recognized all across the

world for his timeless ghazals. Love and poems of love are universal; how an Eastern

mind presents its dilemmas of love are remarkably rendered by the most famous poet of

47
the East--Mirza Ghalib. Beautiful Urdu calligraphy with ample English explication

makes reading this poetry from a distant culture a true delight.

Ghalib wrote initially in Persian, while he became more famous for his ghazals written in

Urdu. It is said by the various authors e.g. Sarfraz (1990) that he wrote most of his very

popular magnum opus or ghazals by the age of nineteen. His ghazals, unlike those of

Meer Taqi Meer (1723-1810), contain Persian language in its highest dialect, and are

therefore not easily empathized and appreciated by a vast majority of people despite of

their tendencies toward Urdu poetry and literature. Before Ghalib, ghazal was primarily

an expression of tormented and anguished love where the lover experiencing intense pain

especially mental pain but he expressed philosophy in his Ghazals, the travails and

ventures of life and many such subjects which include lament, melancholy,

impoverishment, and other possible eventualities of life of a common person, thus vastly

expanding the scope of ghazal. In keeping with the conventions of the classical ghazal, in

most of Ghalib’s verses, the identity and the gender of the beloved are not precisely

determined or established or not fixed or known in advance.

The beloved could be a beautiful woman, or a beautiful boy, or even God. According to

critic/poet/writer, Faruqui (1989), the convention of having the “idea” of a lover or

beloved instead of an actual lover/beloved in Ghalib’s magnum opus freed the poet-

protagonist-lover from the calls for “realism”.

Love poetry in Urdu literature from the last tail of the seventeenth century onwards

consists mostly of “poems about love” and not “love poems” in the Western sense of the

term and Ghalib’s poetry is a fine exemplification of this. Ghalib also excels in deeply

48
introverted and philosophical verses. Ghalib always tried to convert his everyday feelings

and occurrence into the momentous events.

Ghalib was mostly inclined toward philosophical dictions and hence, he was considered

as the first philosophical poet in Urdu literature. Ghalib (1796-1869) like Fani (1879-

1941) and Asghar (1884 - 1938) but unlike Hasrat (1875-1951) and Dagh (1831-1905)

was a philosophical poet who expressed his poetry through the reflection of philosophy

of life. He was also like philosophical poets who were rummy by nature and always

discovered new path to express them. Ghalib Clearly admitted that he knows the reward

of piety and orison but somehow he says, his heart still is not tended toward them. Ghalib

also had a great ego, with an unprovoked style often aimed at himself with his heart’s

discontent. There is an elusive queasiness, a vein of mercurial displeasure that runs

deeply throughout his poetry. Mirroring his personality Ghalib’s poetry is immensely

rocky and filled with slopes and inclines, peaks and has an extreme state of hard knocks.

Ghalib poetry can best be classed around four central figures:

1- The difficult, almost indecipherable poems in Bedil style.

2- The verses that create a kind of linguistic magic out of words, here he

seems to follow the Nasikh style.

3- The verses that work like arrows and pave the way for agonic feel with

poetic meaning, creativity, thought and choice of words: theses were done

in the style of Mir Taqi Mir.

4- The expressive and emotive style which is so to speak as the thematic

style of Momin.

49
It is notable, as stressed by Sarfraz (1990) that from 1809 to 1821, Ghalib was highly

influenced by Persian language, from 1821 to 1827, he paid less attention to his Urdu

poetry and highly influenced by Naziri (1560-1614), a Persian poet, from 1827 to 1847

Ghalib continued his efforts in Persian poetry but he wrote some of his best ghazals

during this period. From 1847 to 1857 Ghalib was associated with King Bhahadur Shah

Zafar’s court and he paid more accentuations to Urdu writings. This period observes a

mature style, an extremely careful choice of words, and symbolizes with the style of Zauq

(1789-1854). While from 1857 to 1868, the simplicity in his writing is remained

continued and we find a great sense of wit.

To say that the appeal of Ghalib is timeless is to say the obvious. Indeed it is a ranked

understatement. Ghalib’s poetry has fascinated generations of Urdu lovers. His poetry is

one of those rare phenomena that never face the threat of getting antiquated. The life and

times of Ghalib have been thoroughly researched and written about in the subcontinent,

as has been done elsewhere, albeit on a smaller scale. But such is the disarming charm of

the man that every now and then someone sets out to do it all over again.

There is something about the man that makes us love him. And it is not too difficult to

locate what that ‘something’ is. His life — dotted with everyday financial difficulties and

the wider denial of his craft — had shades of experiences that mark the existence of the

common man even today. It is not without reason that he is known by such terms of

endearment as ‘Chacha Ghalib’ and ‘Mirza Nausha’.

The birth of a genius in any case is not an everyday happening. If Allama Iqbal is to be

taken on face value, it takes “thousands of years”. But even if you take out the element of

50
overstatement that is an integral part of our poetic tradition, it still takes a century to

produce a poet of real substance. Ghalib, for sure, was one.

Without much of a debate, the last three centuries have belonged to Meer Taqi Meer,

Ghalib and Iqbal in the realm of Urdu poetry. It is a glittering chain that linked the 18th

century to the 20th. The world of Meer, generally speaking, is one of crippled and

helpless creatures wailing over a litany of woes, while that of Iqbal is inhabited by super-

humans almost in denial of their ground reality.

Compared to these two, the world of Ghalib is that of perfectly normal human beings that

we come across in our everyday life. That immediately facilitates the reader’s connection

with Ghalibian cosmology regardless of the linguistic barriers that a modern reader would

sometimes find difficult to decipher.

It may sound like a bit of a conundrum, but Ghalib, for sure, is everyone’s genius next

door. To capture a life so unique is, to say the very least, tricky. You want to underscore

the ‘genius’ part but without diluting the ‘next door’ qualifier. The slightest tilt towards

the latter, however, entails the serious risk of compromising the former. It is like having

to walk the tightrope all through the process.

The fact that Gulzar, the much decorated craftsman and himself a poet of some

distinction, was able to do it with absolute adroitness for television audiences some

quarter of a century ago is now part of the larger Ghalibian folklore. The serial portrayed

the life and times of Ghalib for all times to come and for audiences around the globe. To

date, it remains a reference point for many.

The puritans might have scoffed at the idea of putting the legend of Ghalib on television

— especially with the character shown singing his own verses — but it was every bit

51
worth the effort. A thousand books on Ghalib could not have taken the lore forward like

the movie did and continues to do even for those who may not be as comfortable with the

literary finesse otherwise.

Every age has its preferred mode and medium of expression, and when it was done back

in 1988, film and television, indeed, were well on their way towards overtaking the

written word. In today’s online world, it is ‘Ghalib’, the tele-serial, which is introducing

Ghalib, the poet, to the young, helping keep the man alive for posterity, and enchanting

millions of those who are already awestruck by the creative output of the master crafter

that Ghalib, indeed, was. The credit must go to Gulzar for having thought of something

so unique and for having the belief to execute it in practical terms.

It is some accomplishment that in the domain of moving images, Ghalib arguably rivals

the still image painted in Yaadgar-e-Ghalib by Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali that remains a

landmark in literature on the poet. Hali’s lucid, everyday diction had much to do with the

distinction that the book achieved.

While summing up, Hali had indulged in a bit of sarcasm about the changing social ethos

of the time, saying: “I concede that I undertook this gigantic task neither to fulfill some

immediate public necessity, nor in the larger national interest. It has been a labor of love

and that needs no further motive. It is something like the breeze which just blows, like the

river that just flows.”

The story, as narrated by Gulzar in the preface to the screenplay that has been published

recently, is no different. It remains a labor of love for him as well. Taking on the

generally held belief that the Ghalib household had two domestic servants; “Kalloo, who

remained with him till the end, and Wafadar, who used to heavily stammer”, Gulzar had

52
insisted that there was a third servant there. “I was the third one. The other two earned

their freedoms with their physical deaths; I remain Ghalib’s servant to date.”

Had it not been for such emotional attachment and, indeed, the intensity of such

attachment, Gulzar, or anyone else for that matter, could not have penned the script with

such poise and aplomb.

Having spent time with Ghalib as his disciple, Hali had enough material to paint his

sketch with. Gulzar was not as lucky. He had to depend on indirect sources. The pain he

must have taken for “10 or 11 years” in gathering his raw material is evident by the

simple fact that the Ghalib we see in the movie is remarkably, almost incredibly, close to

the image we think of while going through volumes and volumes of letters that the poet

had written in his life.

From Wali Deccani and through Meer, Zouq, Momin and right down to Daagh, all those

great lives have been described by others in their own different idioms. It is Ghalib that

we know in person through his letters. And therein lies the thrill. They must have served

a great purpose for Gulzar, but simultaneously it would surely have been a killing

limitation.

“Since Ghalib had reinvented the art of writing letters — converting them from

monologue to dialogue — the true spirit of his life, his struggles, his frustrations and his

great capacity to keep intact his characteristic humorous undertone, any image of Ghalib

other than what Gulzar portrayed would have simply been a crime in the eyes of all those

bewitched by the charm of Ghalib”

Humair Ishtiaq — Published in Dawn news Oct 20, 2014 02:34pm

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“Philosophy of Urdu literature has been expressed by exceptional individuals. Mirza

Ghalib is one of the famous individuals and in fact one of the greatest poets, who has

exalted the Urdu literature as a whole and in specific Urdu poetry. His Urdu poetry can

be defined as a combination of absolute expression of intellectualism, philosophical and

futurist state of mind. He has been associated with Urdu language as a contemporary

poet. He crossed the leading poets of his times and became the literate legacy and

founded modern trends to Urdu writing and that is he still dominates the Urdu Literature”

Legacy (Asrar, 2010).

“There were two sides of Urdu Literature and poetry visible from his poetry – one was

his own ambivalence personality, which was a cause of his own upbringing and second

was his independent strength that had a lot of contribution in his poetry that was not

confined to the society’s traditions and was more realistic and an open extent of Urdu

poetry. True to life were his writings as in the early years of his poetry, which solely

depicts his psychological input as being deprived of a normal family life and being

dependent on his maternal grandparents’ socio-economic wise. He had gone through a lot

in his life, which was clearly depicted through his verses. Urdu Philosophy has had a new

meaning as Ghalib introduced a mark of brilliance in Urdu poetry that is the everlasting

fashion of writing style”

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 CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter contains discussion of Research Methodology. The discussion will be

related to; design, population, sample of the study, instrument for data collection and data

analysis.

3.1 Research design

This research is descriptive, comparative and qualitative in nature. This type of research

is helpful in modifying existing theories and understanding of it. It can be helpful in

developing new theories. It is useful in making probable predictions it may eliminate

confusing aspect of a theory. In this type of research, data analysis is less time

consuming. The research results are relatively independent.

3.2 Population

All works of John Keats, Mirza Ghalib and Ghani khan formed the population of this

study.

3.3 Sample

Purposive sampling technique was used and those passages which were related to love

poetry of the poets were selected as sample.

55
3.4 Instrument

The instrument of the study was Electronic and Print media.

3.5 Data collection

Data was collected from secondary sources including print and electronic media.

3.6 Data analysis

Data was analyzed qualitatively through content analysis. This technique was developed

in 1967, the technique enables the researcher to include large amount of textual

information and systematically identifies its properties. Content analysis is widely used in

researches related to language and literature as well as many social sciences. A researcher

tries to determine the presence of certain words and make inferences about their meaning

in that text.

3.7 Findings and conclusion

Finding and conclusions were drawn from content analysis of data.

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 CHAPTER 4

PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

Poets do share the elements of universality in their poetry which transcend the limits of

time and space. Poets are born geniuses that live forever and get secure place in the hearts

of people because the message they give is universal, timeless and space less. They

represent all that is inner and they express all those feelings of hearts which appeal to the

soul. The universality in the poetry of Abdul Khan, Mirza ghalib and John Keats has

made them immortal and for all times to be read and to be impressed by. Despite the fact

that both belong to different time periods, different back grounds, different cultures and

they have even different languages altogether and they are even of different ages, mirza

and Ghani lived to see the ripe days of his life while Keats did not even see the beautiful

days of his youth fully and the cruel death cut him up in the very bud and prime of life.

Ghani had at least the opportunity to visit the birth place of Keats but on the other hand,

Keats might not have even heard of Ghani`s people and homeland.

Despite having so many differences in their cultures, languages, backgrounds, ideologies

and even huge difference in age, there are still many points of similarity between the

poetry of mirza ghalib, Abdul Ghani Khan and John Keats, besides they were also alike

in many ways.

The core and crux of their poetry is basically one, they were highly romantics and

staunch believers in beauty. Quite surprisingly, these romantic poets were not appreciated

in their lives for their poetry.

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4.1 Life and works

Keats was severely criticized for his poem, “Endymion” by the reviewers. Even Keats

admitted the faults he had in his poem but he was still not spared. His fame started to

grow when Shelley treated him in glowing terms in his elegiac poem, “Adonais”.

Similarly mirza ghalib started writing verses in Urdu at the early age of ten without ever

having become anyone's disciple, contrary to the established practice. Very early in his

poetic career he became the talk of the town, and many spoke of him with sarcasm and

ridicule and said, as the University Wits had done of Shakespeare, that an insolent poet

had appeared on the scene, who took his stand on ways other than those of Shah Naseer

and Zauq (the two most popular poets of the day), who talked of unbeknown and absurd

worlds. Unsympathetic criticism and the indifference of people left him with a sense of

frustration, even bitterness:

“There is no place for me in any heart;

Melodious is my work, but still unheard.

As a man bitten by dog dreads water,

I dread the mirror for 1 have been bitten by man.”

Comparative was the situation with Ghani Khan whose genius, talent, potential as a poet

and philosopher was not recognized and he remained unappreciated during his life.

There were very few persons around him who had sympathy and love for his works and

were also able enough to comprehend him and understand his poetry and to see in him

A philosopher of high rank. His grandson Mashal Khan, in one of the articles in the

Frontier Post31stMarch 1997, is quoted in these words:

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“We do not remember, appreciate and evaluate people when they are around but extol

them when they retire to the hereafter.”

This was true in Ghani Khan’s case, when he died, a host of his fans thronged to his

residence and still keep coming to record their feelings about this great Pashto romantic

poet, but they were nowhere when he was alive.

There were certain groups which thought him to be a threat to their interests but when he

died, they took a sigh of relief and then canonized him to the maximum as Ghani Khan

himself says about such things in the following verses:

Translation:

“I got closer to my beloved only by leaving

I understood only as I heard them not.”

4.2 Beauty and nature:

The concept of beauty and nature in the poetry of Abdul Ghani Khan and John Keats and

mirza ghalib was almost the same, these great romantic poets of Pashto Urdu and English

were great admirers of nature and beauty. They loved nature and they had genuine

interest in it to express their inner most and deepest feelings. They found nature to be a

source to recognize and see God. Their godly feelings arose because of their naturalistic

description in their poetry. Keats’ Odes specially brim with the nature and its beauty

descriptions but in his

“Ode to autumn” he reached the height of his poetic genius and his poetic expression

finds the Best description of nature and beauty and is fully well explored.

As Leonard Unger finds,

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The words are descriptive in their phonetic qualities and rhythmical arrangement. The

Ode opens with the vivid description of autumn.

“How to load and bless with fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run,

To bend with apples, the moss`d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core,

To swell the gourd and plump the hazel shells with a sweet kernel to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has over brimm’d the clammy cells

(Ode to autumn)

The description of the nature imagery becomes stronger

Towards the end of the poem as the ode continues,

“Or by cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watches the last oozing hours by hours.

(Ode to autumn)

The poem is suggestive of the transitory and short-lived things. Similarly thoughts about

the description of nature and beauty imagery in “The Hymn to Pan”

In Endymion are presented.

As Keats says about the fruition in this Beautiful imagery

Laden lines:

“Broad leaved fig trees even now for doom,

Their ripened fruitage;

Yellow girted bees,

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Their golden honey combs, our village leas,

Their fairest blossomed beans and popped corn,

The chuckling linnet, its five young unborn,

Tossing for thee; low creeping strawberries,

Their freckled wings; yea the fresh

Budding year, all its completions (Endymion 1.252-260)

In Keatsian vision, everything,

Be it winter or summer, moves in consummate harmony,

Nothing is isolate, everything everywhere

Is moving in an orderly fashion. The emergence of one is

Dependent upon the fall of another –i.e., melancholy ensues delight.

Ghani Khan, also like Keats, has the similar feelings of joy and sadness in the cycle of

Seasons in the poem of spring (Sparlay). In this poem, we feel him shouting with joy at

the defeat of death by new life.

Translation

“O my beloved, come, see darkness has changed into light,

A new spring has created a new world of flowers,

The earth was utterly barren and dry,

The happiness and playfulness had departed from earth,

Leaves were yet to sprout; it seemed as if they were overshadowed by death,

Life was bereft of sound music,

The spring brought back and filled with laughter,

O my beloved, come, see the darkness has changed into light,

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Or life was desired or colored intoxication became different colours, the love laughed and

the flowers accompanied her.”

Similarly Ghalib is a poet of beauty and found beauty around him and more particularly

in the objects of nature like the stars, the sun and the moon, the waves of the sea, spring

and autumn etc. His love for nature is conspicuous in this verse:

“The air is full of intoxication

To move in it is like drinking wine.”

“Spring again is here with a style

Sun and moon watch awhile

Look, O you inhabitants of earth

this is embellishment with a high profile

Land has become heaven’s rival

in beauty and bounty mile to mile

When verdure outgrew flowerbeds

it spread on water like a carpet pile

Nature has granted narcissus sight

to savor efflorescence all the while

Breeze is imply breathtaking

is intoxicating like wine virile

Why shouldn’t world rejoice, O Ghalib

The king has recovered from a sickness vile”

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Keats once again very vividly and graphically expresses his feelings about beauty in his

famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn, “as he ends the Ode with these significant lines:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all,

Ye know on earth, and all Ye all need to know.”

Feelings like these are also given inn Ghani Khan`s poetry when he writes the following

verses:

Translation

“Beauty is beauty which is both God and Jaanan,

“In this mortal world, this is immortal thing,”

A single short look at a rose answers your many questions that are not to be found in the

books of logic.”

Similar things are meant by Ghalib when he says:

So O my child!

Beauty is good, so is loyalty.

The part of the lover is best, so is the beloved’s.”

4.3 Earthly Love Expression and Wine:

It’s Impact in the Poetry of Ghani Khan and John Keats and Mirza Ghalib.

Some critics blame Ghani and Keats and Mirza to be devoid of earthly love. But they are

wrong as these poets are very much aware of this love and through this love they want to

reach the ultimate end and highest levels of spiritual love.

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4.3.1 Beloved:

Ghani is noted saying in regards to this sort of adoration in the accompanying lines.

Translation:

“It is not easy to see the vision of God

But presence of spring

And my beloved face is the sufficient proofs of God’s existence.”

These poets have the imprint of women in their poetry but Mirza and Ghani`s approach

seems to be more mature than Keats’ as they lived to see the ripe days of life.

Ghani in his youth he was like any young person impressed by every beautiful face he

saw, as the following verses indicate:

Translation:

“The thorns and Nargis (Tulip or Narcissus) branches exist side by side,

Under the pretext of education, many roaming beauties are seen.”

But, in one of his poems, like any other traditional poet, he is found singing in praise of

his beloved and wanting to meet her as soon as possible.

Translation:

“Your isolation made my life very miserable,

And how this miserable isolation would be,

I love to be disgraced in your love,

Without you honor means nothing now,

Your one single lovely look,

Your short sweet wordings,”

“Can change my life into heaven,

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The heaven means nothing if I have your love,

Lying abject on the ground for your single glimpse of your eyes,

If he is there, who is going to praise you and your beauty?”

Ghani's idea of adoration got further when he wedded Roshan. In his adoration for her, he

needed to discover comfort. This solid sentiment adoration is found in these lines as he

had quite recently perused a letter from her in prison.

Translation:

“I made a new life and world for you from

Two handfuls of dirt, I got so much engrossed in your love, from that deep love I made a

new beloved for you,”

“With this deep feeling of love,

I entered the valley of madness,

I found you, my beloved, and (my gem)

The best than all the other gems,

This extreme madness in your love is the proof of my love, faith and belief,

As my soul got enlightened, then it made the two eyes shine.”

(Da Faridun da Moor Khatha, a letter from Faridun`s Mother)

Having such strong belief in love, still he considers the concept of women very

realistically.

In contrast Keats had little belief so far as women and love were concerned. In

“Endymian” he is not happy much with love. We find in book III, the moon goddess is

not presented very cheerfully but as a lovely maiden who....dost pine

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“For one as sorrowful, they cheek is pale,

For one whose cheek is pale.”

His concept of physical love realization could not fit into his spiritual idealization of love.

But it does not mean that his concept of love altogether too rigid that finds no place in his

poetry but rather it is so deep for Fanny that made him compose unique poetry for the

world.

His intense feeling of love he expresses in letter to Fanny in these words:

“I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my

death”,

“O, that I could take possession of them both in the same moment”.

“His fear like this might be interpreted in the lines from the sonnet,”

“When I have fears that I may cease to be.”

His poetry sometimes also is brim with the romantic feelings and the following lines from

St.Agnes clearly reflect his romantic love.

“Beyond a mortal man impassioned far,

At these voluptuous accents, he arose, Ethereal

L flushed and like a throbbing star,

Seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose,

Into her dream he melted as the rose

Blended its odor with violet,

Solution sweet, meantime the frost wind blows,

Like love’s alarum patterning the sharp sleet,

Against the window-panes, St.Agnes moon hath set.”(St.36)

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Ghalib like Keats and Ghani expresses his passionate love for his beloved,

In the couplets of Ghalib, this aspect occurs with astonishing regularity. He writes of

being overwhelmed by love, of powerlessness in the face of love, of the joy of loving

even if one’s love is not returned, the even greater joy if it is returned. He also speaks of

compulsions to love, even if the beloved spurns him or even if it violates all the social

and religious commands of the community in which the beloved lives. One of the

characteristic features of Ghalib, where he seems to have broken from the traditional

ghazal poets is that, while treating the experience of love in his poems (including his

own), he could express it as a detached non-participant observer.

Oh naive heart, what has happened to you?

What is the eventual relief of your pain?

I am eager, and she disinterested

Oh God! What is happening here?

Even I have a tongue in my mouth

wish someone would seek my opinion too on the matter.

When nothing is present here apart from you,

Why this commotion all around, O God?

How are these with beautiful visages?

What are all these side glances, airs and coquetry?

Why do the/her curls of the tresses smell of fragrance?

What needs do the surma blackened eyes serve?

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From where have the greenery and flowers come?

What makes the clouds and the air?

I am hoping for faith from her,

who does not know what faithfulness is all about.

Yes, you do good deeds for others and good things will happen to you,

what else is the call of the mendicant?

I offer my life to you

I don’t know anything else as a prayer.

“From hundreds of miles talk with the tongue of the pen,

And enjoy the joy of meeting even when you are separated”

4.3.2 Wine:

Keats and Ghani and ghalib fancied women and wine and wrote passionately and indeed

longingly about the two. Wine for them had magical powers as it stimulated thought

beyond thought as Keats said:

As Keats said:

Give me women, wine and snuff until I cry out ‘hold, enough’

An unrestrained Ghani lamented thus:

Translation:

Wine without intoxication is poison,

And to the mullah whom he spanked left, right and centre, he wrote:

“Come hither O wine-bearer,

Vanish thou from my sight O mullah for I cannot stand your stale rhetoric”.

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Mirza ghalib:

“An age has passed since I last brought my loved one to my house

lighting the whole assembly with the wine- cup’s radiance”

“When did the going-round of the cup, in her/his gathering, come as far as to me?

Might then cupbearer not have mixed something into the wine”

These great poets share their feelings for wine and its intoxicating effects upon them in

their poetry. As Ghani says about this in the following verses:

Translation:

“When I get intoxicated, my soul leaves my body,

Like a caged bird leaves its confinement,

My soul is then lifted like a flower raising its head in the graveyard,

I leave my physical body,”

And by the help of my imagination I sour to the seventh sky to roam about,

I come here in search of life source and the place of light.”

Looking at Keats’s Nightingale, almost similar feelings are sought as the following

Keatsian verses indicate,

“O, for a draught of vintage that hath been,

Cool`d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance and Provencal song, and sun burnt mirth”

“O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles, winking at the brim,

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And purple-stained mouth,

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

it thee fade away into the forest dim”

Mirza Ghalib also shares his feelings for wine and its intoxicating effects upon him in his

poetry:

“Come that my soul has no repose

Has no strength to bear the injustice of waiting”

“Heaven is given in return for the life of this world

But that high is not in proportion to this intoxication”

“Such longing has come from your company

That there is no control over my tears”

“Suspecting torment, you are indifferent to me

So no love resides in these clouds of dust”

“From my heart has lifted the meaning of pleasure

Without blossoms, there is no spring in life”

“You have pledged to kill me at last

But there is no determination in your promise”

“you have sworn by the wine, Ghalib

There is no faith in your avowal”

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 CHAPTER 5

SUMMARY, FINDING AND CONCLUSION,

AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 Summary

The study was conducted in the form of a research, with sample data being

Gathered via books related to the study which are provided in library and also

Taken from educational websites. This research was conducted to compare the concept of

beauty and love in poetry of john Keats, Mirza Ghalib and Ghani khan. The objectives of

the study were to critically analyze and identify the differences, similarities in love

poetry. Population of this research consists of all works of john Keats, Mirza Ghalib and

Ghani khan. Content analysis was used as an instrument of analysis. Findings were drawn

from analysis of data.

5.2 Findings

Following are the findings of the present study,

5.2.1 Similarities

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; Poetry is the overflow,

utterance, or projection of the thought and feeling of the poet; or else (in the chief variant

formulation) poetry is an imaginative process which modifies and synthesizes the images,

thoughts, and feelings of the poet.

Quite surprisingly, all these three romantic poets (Mirza Ghalib, Jhon Keats and Ghani

khan) were severely criticized in their lives for their poetry

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All these three poets showed a desperate and restless accountability of their life occupied

sufferings and disturb relations.

These romantic poets (Miirza Ghalib, John Keats and Ghani khan) seem to share several

similar thoughts in their poetry. The core and crux of their poetry is basically one, they

were highly romantics and staunch believers in beauty

Their love for Beauty and Nature, and their concern for the Eternal and Political turmoil’s

were manifested in their poetry.

These poets loved nature and they had genuine interest in it to express their inner most

and deepest feelings. They found nature to be a source to recognize and see God. Their

godly feelings arose because of their naturalistic description in their poetry. .

These romantic poets by their poetic imaginative wings, flies to the world of ecstasy, they

talked of the romantic lands of pleasure, and happiness in palaces, music, beloved.

5.2.2 Differences

These poets lived in two different centuries and they dwelled in different countries with

different cultures

These poets have used different languages for expression, i.e., Ghani’s used Pashto

language and Keats’s used English while Mirza Ghalib used (Persian) Urdu

5.3 Conclusion

The rundown of similarities between these extraordinary sentimental monster artists of

writing of two totally assorted societies might be extremely long. Ghani and Keats are

like an incredible degree with couple of special cases. Both the writers offer expression to

sentiments and feelings, which can engage each one of all ages or time or place.

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It can be concluded from the present study that love poetry showed a common tendency

to discuss about the personal trauma in their poetry. Despite the diverse cultural

differences, they have some common themes and subjects in their poetry.

5.4 Recommendations

It is recommended that students of English literature may conduct further comparative

researches to explore similarities and differences between the romantic poets belonging

to different cultures. The diversity of cultures cannot affect the basic human capabilities

and that is the reason poets belonging to different countries can have similar tendencies

and universal applause

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 REFRENCES

Ghani Khan, Latoon, The Frontier Post Publications, 1995.

Abdul Ghani Khan, Da Ghani Kulyat, Da Pukhwani au Rozani Mathabah, 1986.

Abdul Ghani Khan, The Pathan, The Frontier Post Publications, 1993.

Blackstone, Bernard, The Consecrated Urn an Interpretation of Keats in Terms of Growth

and Form, London, New York , Toronto: Longmans Green and Co; 1959

Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, London : Secker and

Warburg,1968.
The Frontier Post, March 31 1997.

Howell, Evelyn and Caroe, Olaf, The poems of Khushal Khan Khattak, Pashto Academy

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/texts/txt_aziz_ahmed_1969.pdf

https://rekhta.org/ebooks/ghalib-a-critical-appreciation-of-his-life-urdu-poetry-ebooks

https://bhupindersingh.ca/2001/05/20/review-of-the-famous-ghalib-by-ralph-russel/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strains-Romanticism-Abdul-Poetry-
Comparative/dp/B0192TAIK6

https://www.amazon.com/Odes-Ghalib-Persian-Urdu-Translation/dp/1479177202

http://www.shodh.net/index.php?
option=com_phocadownload&view=category&download=150:16-john-keats-and-mirza-
ghalib-a-comparison-dr-z-hasan-&id=40:vol3-issue-2&Itemid=99

http://yneysuhr.esy.es/cheating-in-my-asignment/john-keats-essay-on-beauty.html

https://ssemadeni.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/literature-review-john-keats/

http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/hi-want-learn-about-john-keats-imagination-his-
153239

http://criticalliteraturereview.blogspot.com/2015/05/exploring-john-keats-philosophy-of-
art.html

http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/9245/nature-and-beauty-in-keats-great-odes

https://ghanikhan.wordpress.com/

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https://ghanikhan.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/kulliyaat-of-ghani-khan/#comment-3526

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