Fwd: Why Mir & Ghalib ‘Speak’ to me – a talk by Fran Pritchett

[Karishma Pais]

From: The Attic <mi...@theatticdelhi.org>

THE ATTIC 36 REGAL BUILDINGS, NEW DELHI  TEL: 23746050 www.theatticdelhi.org      'Monthly Monologue: Why it Speaks to Me?' Hindustani Awaaz, in collaboration with The Attic, presents a monthly series of monologues: poetry, literature, short stories, plays, essays, nazms, ghazals. On the last Thursday of each month, a series of eclectic speakers present/sing/recite their favourite Urdu text and explain why the text ‘speaks’ to them the way it does. They share their passion for a poet, a text, even a fragment and tell us why, from all they have read, those particular set of words speak to them with a familiarity that is at once unique and insistent. ================================================================================================    thursday 30th january 6.30 pm Why Mir & Ghalib ‘Speak’ to me  – a talk by Fran Pritchett Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810) whose real name was Muhammad Taqi is better known by his nom de plume or takhallus,   Mir.  He was the leading Urdu poet of the 18th century, and one of the architects of Urdu zubaan and arguably one of the foremost poets of the Delhi School of Urdu poetry. He was born in Agra (then called Akbarabad) but lived most of his life in Kucha Chelan in Mughal Delhi. After the sack of Delhi repeatedly after 1748 by Ahmed Shah Abdali, he eventually moved to the court of Asaf-ud-Daulah in Lucknow . His complete works, Kulliaat, consist of six Diwans containing 13,585 couplets, comprising all kinds of poetic forms: ghazal, masnavi, qasida, rubai, mustezaad, and satire. Mir's literary reputation is anchored on his ghazals on the themes of love.   Ghalib,  born Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan  ( 1797 – 1869),[1]  was a classical Urdu and Persian poet. . He saw the eclipse of the Mughal Empire and was present  at the victorious British take over and reprisals against the Muslim population in Delhi in 1857. He wrote about those events and was one of the greatest poets and composers of Ghazals in the Urdu language.   Fran Pritchett recently retired from the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University, thus becoming Professor Emeritus of Modern South Asian Languages. Her real claim to fame, however, is "A Desertful of Roses," an online commentary on the whole divan of Ghalib. She is now also working on "A Garden of Kashmir," an online commentary on an intikhab of Mir based on the work of S. R. Faruqi.  She speaks of why these two great poets ‘speak’ to her.    follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend  Copyright © 2014 The Attic, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have subscribed for it. Our mailing address is: The Attic 36 Regal Building New Delhi 110001 India Add us to your address book

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