Selected Ghazals and Other Poems by Mir Taqi Mir

Introduction: Mir’s Life & Times & Poetry, Selected Bibliography, On the Various Poetic Forms Mir used.ĬOMMENTS ON PAUL SMITH’S TRANSLATION OF HAFIZ’S ‘DIVAN’. This is the largest selection in English of most forms of his poetry with correct form and meaning kept, published for the first time.

He was a prolific poet, his complete works or Kulliyat consisting of 6 Divans, containing 13,585 couplets comprising all kinds of poetic forms: ghazals, masnavis, qit’as, ruba’is, etc He also composed in Persian a Divan, a unique autobiography and a book on Urdu Poets and a book of spiritual advice for his son. Like Obeyd Zakani and others before him Mir practiced the Malamati or ‘Blameworthy’ aspect of Sufism. This, with other earlier setbacks, lends a strong pathos and melancholy to much of his writing.

After moving to Lucknow his daughter died, then his son and wife. Like many Urdu poets Mir’s literary reputation is from his ghazals. After the sack of Delhi he eventually moved to the court in Lucknow where he stayed for the remainder of his life. At 17 he had a mental break-down and suffered from bouts of madness all his life. At Delhi he finished his education and joined a group of nobles as a court-poet. He was born in Agra and left for Delhi after the death of his father whose emphasis on the importance of love and the value of compassion remained with him, imbuing his poetry. He was one of the principal poets of the Delhi school of the Urdu ghazal. Mir Taqi Mir (1723 - 1810) was the leading Urdu poet of the eighteenth century and one of the pioneers of Urdu.

Selected Ghazals and Other Poems by Mir Taqi Mir