Vijay Sheshadri's terrible Ghalib translation

This is a translation of Ghalib's 'yeh na thi hamari qismat' by Pulitzer Prize winner, Vijay Seshadri.

“No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved”

 BY VIJAY SESHADRI

    No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved.  

When one says 'I wasn't meant for x, nor was x meant for me, ', the meaning is I lack the temperament for x, I could not possibly succeed in x. In general, one would say this if one's association with x has been calamitous. Thus, a Surgeon who is found to have killed a lot of his patients might ruefully say, 'I should have known Medicine wasn't for me, nor me for it. Dad pressured me into following his footsteps. Wifey kept spending every penny I earned like a drunken sailor. So, though I knew in my heart that I was no good, I had to keep performing the operations.'

The American reader would naturally suppose that this Ghalib dude was saying 'My love life has been a horror movie. I was never meant to be a Romeo. Should have just paid for it like all the other sad fucks.'

However, Ghalib was saying something different. 'It wasn't my fate to be united with my beloved.' In other words, Ghalib had the right temperament but circumstances were adverse. True, if Ghalib were a pious man, he might go on to say 'Well, if God didn't allow it to happen, maybe there was something wrong with me and so things turned out for the best.'

But, if this were the case, he would next declare- 'In future, I won't give Love another thought. I'll devote myself to Charity and Prayer.'

Sheshadri translates the next line correctly-

If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer.   

In other words, Ghalib is dying of disappointed love right now. Even if, by some miracle, he was kept alive, he'd still be dying of longing.
The trouble is Sheshadri has not bothered to link the thought in the second line to what he has said in his first. It is not true that Ghalib wasn't meant to love. He was meant to do nothing else as he, at the point of death, clearly understands and, in articulo mortis, expresses in a crystalline manner.

In short, Sheshadri has written illogical nonsense. A guy who thinks he wasn't meant to love does not say 'it was my destiny to love'. There is the added suggestion that if Ghalib had himself been loved perhaps he wouldn't have been doomed to love without hope of tryst all his days.

The American reader might think Ghalib was stupid- perhaps all them rag-heads are- but Ghalib was not stupid. He didn't write like shit. That is Sheshadri's specialty.

Ghalib's next line is 'tire vaʿde par jiye ham to yih jān jhūṭ jānā'- 'For kept alive by your promise (of union) to know that promise was a lie'- and has a theological meaning associated with the 'imkan e kibz' controversy in which he participated. The question was- can God break His own promise? Can He Lie? Currently, there is 'ijma'- consensus- that the answer is no. But this was not always so. Ghalib offered a 'modal' solution, not because he was antinomian, but because he genuinely wanted to serve the dynasty by removing a contentious political issue into the abstract realm of speculative philosophy. Ironically, he helped shut a possible gate by which the Mughal Emperor could have escaped his fate- viz. by claiming to be not just 'tafzili' but anti-'Wahabbi' (as the Brits termed the indigenous school of Sirhindi) and thus 'takfir' to the militants who were spearheading the Islamic portion of the Mutiny (which alone worried Whitey, so closely did the Sikh and the orthodox Hindu and the Jain and the Brahmo cluster to their, if not Christian precisely, then Maritime and Mercantile Masters).

Of course, the American reader cares nothing for Indian History or Islamic Theology. Sheshadri, an American, must serve his audience. Thus, he would be perfectly justified in taking a reductionist, psycho-sexological, course. After all, furriners are awfully queer. That's what makes their vaporings instructive.

With respect to popular 'Mushaira' ghazals, it is quite true that, as a matter of common knowledge,  the actual inspiration of a particular couplet might have to do with  particular cheating catamite or notorious courtesan whose services, like that of the faithless Odette to fastidious Swann, thereby become more valuable. However, the art form requires that no mere psychologism of perversity is depicted. The thing has to express a theological scandal.

Sheshadri's Ghalib does no such thing-

          Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry.  
In other words, this jaded old roué is only staving off expiration from ennui by getting aroused at the thought of all the other studs his boo dun bin banging.

             Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy.  

The Hubb al Udhri is not concerned with whether the beloved is faithful.  A character in a French farce may have this attribute but Ghalib wasn't writing farce. Nor was he a playboy remarking how he can only get it up if he thinks the prostitute pegging him is pining for somebody else.

The Udhri dies on the path to the beloved- like in Heinrich Heine's 'the Beni Asra'.  The Udhra were the ultimate monotheists, worshiping the Sun. Qais goes 'majnun' (mad) because he loves Lailah (Night).  He dies when the obstacle to their marriage is removed.

What Ghalib says is 'tire vaʿde par jiye ham to yih jān jhūṭ jānā/ kih ḳhvushī se mar nah jāte agar ětibār hotā.' It is not a declarative statement. It does not say 'Knowing x causes me to be y'. Rather, it is a conditional statement- a counter-factual. It is of the form 'If x were the case and y were to occur then x could not be the case because the condition for y to occur is that x had ceased to be the case.' In plain words- 'If we living upon your promise and then if we learned your promise was false...actually, we'd already have died of joy if we had ever had faith in you (so the thing is impossible).

My translation is 'Did I live on thy oath, know, my life were a lie

Of happiness I'd die! held thy troth to a date

This is 'romantic' as well as Hubb al Udhri because it appeals to a Sufi notion of two orders of time- one in alam al amr (the realm of command) where the 'troth' is valid, and the other in alam al khalq (the realm of creation) where the troth may not correspond to anything in the order of temporal succession. 

Sheshadri isn't saying anything like this. He describes a guy who gets 'hungry' thinking of how what a slut his g.f is. It is not psychologically plausible that a shithead of this sort would really 'die of joy' if his suspicions were removed. It's the sort of thing a wife-beater might say. 'My heart would literally explode with delight if, just for one moment, I could be sure you truly loved me. But you are such an irremediable ho-bag that I simply have to keep knocking your teeth out- coz hon, I luv u soooo much.'

Next comes-

tirī nāzukī se jānā kih bañdhā thā ʿahd bodā/ kabhī tū nah toṛ saktā agar ustuvār hotā
Sheshadri renders this-

Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too,   so easily do they break.   

which is wonderfully misogynistic in this age of political correctness. Ghalib's line can certainly be read in this way. But, Ghalib is known for delighting in metaphysical amphiboly. This couplet is too artfully contrived to be merely cynical.
Frances Pritchett writes- ;This verse has, to my mind, one more claim to fame. It provides a refutation to critics who allege that, in principle, any verse of classical ghazal can be addressed just as well to a Divine beloved as to a human one, and should be so interpreted. This verse would be extremely hard to read as addressed to God. God might be as cruel, fickle, capricious, disdainful, etc. as any human beloved; we might even consider God just as likely to be a promise-breaker. But can we really tease God for being so 'delicate' and weak that He could only break a promise that had not been firmly 'tied' in the first place? It does seem a bit devoid of theological tact.'

In this case 'bandha' (tied) sounds like 'banda' (man, devotee, slave). This creates a different picture- a powerful being who is acting with great delicacy because the devoted creature is fragile and weakly knotted together. Thus a huge big wrestler will play with a tiny baby in an extremely delicate manner. The next line addresses the famous 'imkan ul kizb' controversy- can God break his Word? Ghalib's solution is that God's promise is something of as great finesse and delicacy as is exactly commensurate the frail fabric of humanity. This reconciles the Shia doctrine of 'bada' (revision) with Hanafi orthodoxy re. qadr (Destiny).  Did Ghalib spread his hands out wide- in allusion to Surah 5.64- as he recited the second line? This, at any rate, is the conventional way to resolve the dispute. The relevant passage is ' And the Jews say, "The hand of Allah is chained." Chained are their hands, and cursed are they for what they say. Rather, both His hands are extended; He spends however He wills.

This is subtle stuff. My translation is 

'For as feebly as fond entreaty, bindst thy Word
Its sequel, an equal treaty, art surd to sublate

Sheshadri next introduces the notion of a 'laconic marksman'. I was not aware that snipers or hunters were chatty. Indeed, not laconic, I imagine them to operate in silence.

You are a laconic marksman. You leave me   not dead but perpetually dying.   

Ghalib complains that the hunter had not drawn the arrow back all the way-  tiir-e niim-kash- and thus it had not dealt a mortal wound.

My translation is-

Why was that arrow drawn without brawn, not art?
That, in my heart, it stick, not sever it straight!

 Sheshadri's next line is laconic but is it the voice of a lyrical Sufi that we hear?

I want my friends to heal me, succor me.   Instead, I get analysis.  

My translation is-

Why admonishes like a priest, my old comrade and mate?If you haven't a pain killer, at least, my pain giver hate!

In what follows, Sheshadri appears to be genuinely affected by the source material. But what he has written is not a ghazal, it is not Indo-Islamic, it has no 'ma'ani afrini'- meaning creation- or 'taza gui'- novelty in expression.  Moreover, it lacks husn-e-talil- beauty in poetic aetiology.

Conflagrations that would make stones drip blood   are campfires compared to my anguish.   

The problem is that we don't understand why a stone might drip blood because of the effect of fire.
Ghalib is drawing on a convention whereby the rock has 'veins' and the spark struck from it suggests that the blood of the rock is fire. But this reverses the arrow of causation. The hurt received by the rock caused a spark which led it to bleed out a great fire.
Ghalib says-
rag-e sang se ;Tapaktaa vuh lahuu kih phir nah thamtaa
jise ;Gam samajh rahe ho yih agar sharaar hotaa

A literal translation would be 'From the veins of the rock erupts that unstaunchable blood, which you understand to be grief, if, that is, it were a spark.'
This is tangled but it is comprehensible because the themes are familiar and the derangement in language is mimetic of a highly wrought emotional state. There is also an esoteric meaning similar to the Kabbalistic notion of the neshamah- i.e. the 'divine spark' within us.

My translation is

Were what it mock as 'woe wilful'- flint struck sparksThy Ark's veined rock, would ruck Red sans bate

In other words, if acedia can provoke a pitying reaction, then the impassable has no alterity. This is the Gnosis of Monism arrived at on the path of Madness in Love.

The next couplet is wry and deflationary- ;Gam agarchih jaa;N-gusil hai pah kahaa;N bache;N kih dil hai /Gam-e ((ishq gar nah hotaa ;Gam-e rozgaar hotaa

How can we escape sorrow so long as we have a heart/ If we escape the grief of Love, we have the grief of earning a living.

Sheshadri writes nonsense-

Two-headed, inescapable anguish!—Love’s anguish or the anguish of time.  

There are periods in most people's lives when they experience love's anguish. Very few claim to feel 'the anguish of time'. It is easily escapable. Have a drink or get a hobby.
Ghalib was writing at a time when courtier poets like himself were no longer munificently remunerated. He himself had contemplated getting a teaching gig at the English College.

My translation is-

Anguish is certain arson; know! -the heart must burn
If not to yearn, then to earn, or learn chalk's slate!

Next is either a very silly or a very clever couplet- kahuu;N kis se mai;N kih kyaa hai shab-e ;Gam burii balaa hai /mujhe kyaa buraa thaa marnaa agar ek baar hotaa. To whom can I relate what the night-of grief is, and how bad 'balaa' is/ How would it have been bad for me to die, if death came only once?

 I chose to take it as clever. Adam said 'balaa' (which means Grief or Assent) when asked 'Am I not your Lord'. Thus my translation-

By his assent, this night of grief, did an Adam create?
Death's a Thief, or Madam, my ruin can't sate

Obviously, in English, one can't bring in that old chestnut about the many deaths died by cowards, cuckolds and cunts wot rite pomes like Sheshadri who gives us this-

Another dark, severing, incommunicable night.   

Death would be fine, if I only died once.   

Ghalib's next couplet asserts that he would prefer to be drowned in a great deluge rather than suffer the ignominy of a meager cortege and neglected tomb.  There isn't much in it and so I substitute something less shite. There follows a conventional Sufi trope. The final line mentions his drinking. The irony here is that the Saints wrote wine poetry but their wine was symbolic. However 'La Ghalib ul Ullah'- God's realm of command is victorious as Possibility over the realm of creation. There is a sense in which Ghalib is  final lines are

My grave- ghazal's fresh ground?! Better I'd drowned!
My clay, they claim-jump, with elegies on 'the late'!
His vision can't anoint, who is but a singular viewpointWere a second scented... Ah! God alone is Great!
Since Sainthood has its Arabi seal, thy mystic spate
For Drunkard's weal, ope's a  Ghalibian gate!

Sheshadri gets hold of the wrong end of the stick. He thinks Ghalib wanted to be swept away by a flood not because he feared ignominy (which is what he says) but for some reason Sheshadri has invented. He doesn't get that poor old Ghalib wouldn't have got a 'lavish funeral'. The Sun had set on the Great Mughal. Ghalib might, like his brother, have been butchered in the street and left to the carrion crows.

    I would have liked a solitary death,   not this lavish funeral, this grave anyone can visit.   You are mystical, Ghalib, and, also, you speak beautifully.   Are you a saint, or just drunk as usual? 

So far, to my knowledge, two South Indian origin poets have translated Ghalib. Sheshadri's version is not worse that Parthasarthy's upon which I've commented elsewhere. My question- in view of my own efforts in this area- is whether South Indian Brahmans harbor some particular animus against Mirza Ghalib?  Or are we simply terrible poets?