Mirza Ghalib: A Self-Actualizing Poet with Poetry of Nihilism

Literary criticism is a distinctive discipline that evaluates, explores, and elucidates the merits of all aspects of literature which includes the piece of literature, the characters or concepts there in, and the author ¹ . As a discipline it is as old as literature itself. There are several approaches to criticize literature, amongst which the psychological approach is the most popular and relatively modern especially while analyzing poetry of mystic and philosophical nature. ² Psychological criticism investigates the creative process of the artist, analyzing not only his literary genius but the biographical circumstances that seem to influence his work. It explores the ulterior meaning as well as motive of an art, the nature of creation, the selection of words, the psychological makeup of the author, and his bio-social circumstances all of which influence his creation.

Abundant work of this critical analysis has been extensively carried out in western literature, both Prose and poetry, which threw light on the psyche of the authors, their writings, thereby enabling common readers to gain insight into the hitherto mystic works at the same time contributing to flourishing of a literary culture ³ . The common reader rejoices with pleasure in acquiring new depths into the creation which was adorable but elusive in its meaning.

Historically, Plato (Greece 384-322 BC) and Aristotle (427-347BC) have known to observe critical aspects of literature. Especially Aristotle is quoted for his thought on tragedies as a combination of pity and terror to produce catharsis. ⁴ But undoubtedly it was Sigmund Freud who initiated a new form of critical approach to the masterpieces of western literature when he applied principles of psychoanalysis to the works of the likes of Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson etc. ⁵ The psychoanalytic school of thought further found the likes of Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, Karen Horney, and John Lukas who analyzed master pieces in literature exploring its Psychic depths ⁶ while Carl Jung applied his own concepts of Archetypes in critical comprehension of mythological epics. ⁷

Indian literary world, rich in epics and philosophy, has had a historical tradition of critical treatise. Bharatmuni wrote an all encompassing master piece on dramatics while Dandi, Poet Jagannath, wrote abundant critical literature. ⁸ However instances of purely psychological approach are rare. After the establishment of Psychology as a modern discipline, there have been few noteworthy attempts to evaluate aspects of Indian mythology and literature in the light of modern Psychological principles, which include Sudhir Kakar, ⁹ O. Somusundaram,^10,11 Rajan S.K., ¹² to name a few. Considering the rich heritage of prose and poetry in Indian languages from time immemorial, there appears to be a dearth of Psychological appraisal of these literary works.

Aim

The author attempts to analyze an all time legendary poet belonging to the 19th century, Mirza Asadulla Khan Ghalib’s Urdu poetry from his famous compilation “Diwan-E-Ghalib” using Psychological theories of Humanism and Existential Nihilism.

Biography

Mirza Asadullah Khan “Ghalib” was born in Agra on 27 December 1797. His ancestors belonged to the family of army men from Samarkand in central Asia who came to India to serve the prevalent dynasties and later served the British. “Asad,” as he was known in childhood, lost his father when he was just 5 years old and was looked after by his uncle Nasirulla Baig who served the British. However, his uncle died when Asad was 9 years old, leaving him almost an orphan from the father’s side. However, he was looked after by his maternal grandfather and had a comfortable childhood. From the age of 5, he was tutored in all the important subjects of those times, which included astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and theology. Young Asad excelled in all of them, but his liking was in language, especially the Persian literature. He started writing poems (sher and ghazals) in Persian, and later in Urdu, right from the age of 8 years; He had written a Masnavi (long narrative poem) at the age of 10.

At the age of 13, he married Umrao Begum who belonged to a reputed family that served the Mughal royalty in Delhi. After the marriage, he left Agra and shifted to Delhi. After changing several tenancies in quick succession, he finally settled in the Ballimaran area where he spent the rest of his life. ¹³

Asad was a broad built, fair complexioned, handsome man. Outwardly, he had a hedonic pleasure-seeking disposition and indulged in drinking and gambling. However, he was a genius with gifted prowess in poetry and prose.

By the age of 19, he had become an accomplished poet. Quite a few of his verses written at this age found a place in the final collection published in later life. He had seven children from Umrao Begum, none of whom survived for more than 15 months. Thus, death constantly followed him in Delhi too. ¹⁴ He was a Sunni Muslim but greatly admired the Shia Hazarat Imam and borrowed from him his pen name Asad, which means a lion. However, later, on knowing that there is another poet of the same pen name, he changed it to Ghalib, meaning “the superior.” He was influenced by his predecessor poets Abdul-Qadir “Bedil” (1642–1720) and Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810).

Following his uncle’s death, Ghalib had been receiving a pension from the British government, which was his only source of income. This was later cut down to half and then withheld, on suspicion of his loyalty to the British. To plead the governor, Ghalib traveled to Kolkata around 1825 and for almost 8 years, was away from Delhi. He met and interacted with many Urdu poets in Lucknow, Banaras, and Kolkata, but he did not succeed in restoring his pension.

Ghalib wrote extensively to his friends. The collection of these letters is also an important part of his literature. The last 12 years of his life were extremely stressful, being witness to the 1857 mutiny and its aftermath, when there were extensive destruction and bloodshed following British accession to power. Delhi was in ruins; his own younger brother Mirza Yusuf Ali, who was mentally afflicted, was a victim of a bullet and had to be buried surreptitiously. Greatly in debt, frail in health, and mentally stressed, Ghalib died on 15 February 1869, at the age of 71 years. ¹⁵ In all forms of poetry combined, he had penned around 4000 lines. However, he gained colossal fame for his 276 ghazals that are available today. The rest of his creation was lost in the mayhem that followed the Indian mutiny in 1857. His Persian poetry amounts to four times that of Urdu. However, most of his Persian verses are plain and simple to follow, and it is the Urdu couplets that continue to equally amaze and challenge readers and scholars because of their brilliant obscurity.

Tryst with Misfortunes

Ghalib was a poetic genius who took birth when India was going through a period of sociopolitical turmoil. There was a string of deaths and misfortunes that acted as stressors throughout his life.

1. He lost his father when he was 5.

2. He lost his caretaker uncle at the age of 9.

3. Married at the age of 13, he lost all seven of his children in their infancy.

4. His adopted son Arif died at the young age of 31 years.

5. His younger brother Mirza Yusuf, who had mental illness, was a victim of a stray bullet during the 1857 mutiny.

6. Ghalib consumed alcohol regularly, so much so that he confides a state of psychological dependence in his diary, in which he accepts that he cannot sleep without his regular dose of alcohol. ¹⁶

7. Ghalib indulged in gambling and was jailed for a month for conducting an illegal gambling den. ¹⁷

8. In the mutiny of 1857, Ghalib was a helpless witness to the death of several of his friends and relatives, the deportation of the Mughal King Bahadur Shah Zafar, and rampant destruction of the city of Delhi.

Creativity in Adversity

Bereavement is a life event often associated with a period of intense suffering and an increased risk of developing mental and physical problems. ¹⁸ Death and grief had chased Ghalib throughout his life, starting from childhood. The family pension, his main source of subsistence, was cut down drastically, leading to a never-ending economic instability. Such events are likely to complicate the grief process. Studies have reported a link between losing a significant person and substance use. ¹⁹ Early parental death is a powerful experience that can alter emotional or behavioral responses to the environment and later-life stressors. Losses at an early age have an important impact on the development of people, in relation to addiction and other disorders. The diagnoses most frequently associated with early bereavement were depression and alcoholism. ²⁰

However, Ghalib was an inborn creative litterateur. Creative crafts have known cathartic capabilities in resolving grief, loss of loved ones, and separation. They are, in fact, known tools of therapeutic intervention. ²¹ Vincent Van Gogh, the legendary postimpressionist Dutch painter of the late 19th century, observes, “Intense psychological conflicts may motivate a talented novice to become a great artist.” He too had faced adversities like financial difficulties and mental stress in his short life, in which he had reached great heights of creativity. ²²

Transcending the Deficit Needs

Ghalib belonged to a family of professional servicemen, but his innate ability to express human cognitive conflicts and existential anguish in masterly crafted words had thrust a pen instead of a sword in his hands. ²³

Ghalib was always indebted financially as the honorarium he received from the British was a paltry sum that was insufficient to meet his expenses. Throughout his life, Ghalib was ridiculed by the poets in the king’s court for his obscure compositions. However, he continued to express his philosophy in his masterly crafted poetry and received accolades from all over the country, though much later. Here he appears to be ascending to a state of self-actualization while struggling to meet his physiological and security needs in terms of the hierarchy of needs as described by Abraham Maslow.

Self-actualization represents a concept derived from the humanistic psychological theory, especially from Abraham Maslow. Maslow created a psychological hierarchy of needs in which, starting with physiological, security, and belonging needs (which he called deficit needs), a man ascends to the ultimate need to know the meaning of his existence. ²⁴ Maslow later mentions a need for transcendence, which includes a quest to know the spiritual dimension of life on earth and beyond. ²⁵ He also asserts that one’s needs may only be partially fulfilled at any given moment. Maslow makes a distinction between motivation for the basic needs and the needs of those aspiring self-actualization. He calls these as meta-needs, leading to “meta motivation.” The conflict of the struggle for fulfilling basic physiological needs and self-actualizing needs at the same time may create a state of depression.

Self-actualization, in a way, is the ability to transcend the levels of physiological, psychological, and social needs, to obtain fulfillment of personal needs in terms of life’s meaning. Maslow contends that the self-actualizing individuals are highly creative and demonstrate a capacity to resolve dichotomies inherent in ultimate contraries, such as life versus death and freedom versus determinism. ²⁶

The gratification of basic needs is not sufficient for meta-motivation. In fact, the gratification of basic needs may land some in existential neurosis and meaninglessness. Self-actualization requires an individual to be motivated by some values “outside themselves.” ²⁷ Art, although produced by human hands, is not created by these hands alone, but is something that wells up from a deeper source in our souls.

As Ghalib pens in a famous verse;

आते हैं ग़ैब से ये मज़ामीं ख़याल में/ ग़ालिब’ सरीर-ए-ख़ामा नवा-ए-सरोश है From the unknown descend the ideas in consciousness/Oh Ghalib, the rustle of the pen is the voice of angels!

His youth onwards, Ghalib’s life was a struggle to fulfill his security needs and find his artistic potential in the quest for the true nature of life. In a couplet, he writes,

बस-कि दुश्वार है हर काम का आसाँ होना/आदमी को भी मयस्सर नहीं इंसाँ होना

The ease of things is next to impossible/Even a man is not able to be a Human

If the deficit needs are difficult (दुश्वार), then the being needs are not easy (आसाँ), and the journey from mortal manhood to subtle humanity is next to impossible.

Existential Nihilism

Influenced by the Sufi philosophy from a very young age, Ghalib was in search of the meaning of life and human existence. His special artistic prowess in poetry led him to display his quest in poetry par excellence. Before Ghalib, Urdu poetry was mostly about affairs of heart, amour, Sufi spirituality, or traditional ethics. ²⁸ Faced with multiple deaths in his own life, Ghalib tried to express the inexplicable predicament of a man. Thus, a thin undertone of nihilism appears to significantly pervade his poetry.

The term nihilism, first used by Fredrich Jacobi (1743–1819), ²⁹ comes from Latin Nihil, meaning “nothing.” Though interpreted in different ways, it most commonly is existential nihilism, which says that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. ³⁰ It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism, which condemns existence. Ghalib depicts this emotion in a verse,

न था कुछ तो ख़ुदा था कुछ न होता तो ख़ुदा होता/डुबोया मुझको होने ने न होता मैं तो क्या होता

If nothing existed, the creator existed/I was condemned to being, had I not, what else?

The subtle meaning is that I had been part of the creator. The creator is, in reality, creation. Man’s existence is irrelevant to creation and meaningless. This is in keeping with the existential nihilistic view, which says that each individual is an isolated being born into the universe, barred from knowing why, yet compelled to invent a meaning to his being. ³¹ This being or existence precedes the meaning given to oneself during life, which is the hasti or persona in Carl Jung’s words. In a couplet, Ghalib pens these thoughts:

हाँ खाइयो मत फ़रेब-ए-हस्ती/हर-चंद कहें कि है नहीं है/हस्ती है न कुछ अदम है “ग़ालिब” /आख़िर तू क्या है ऐ नहीं है

Mistake me not for my Personality / Which, although exists, does not exist! Neither the Persona nor the other world exists/Who are you, Oh, the “Nonexistent?”

Yalom describes the existential depression that rises when an individual confronts certain basic values of existence like death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. ³² As Ghalib writes in a ghazal,

कोई उम्मीद बर नहीं आती/कोई सूरत नज़र नहीं आती/मौत का एक दिन मुअय्यन है/नींद क्यूँ रातभर नहीं आती

No Hope is in sight/No solution to my plight/Death is a certainty someday/why do days end in sleepless night?

For Ghalib, this existential depression takes the form of pain and sorrow, which is unavoidable and destined to inevitably culminate in death. In this unstructured world, one may seem to have the freedom to give a meaning to one’s life, but one cannot escape sorrow. Ghalib does not deny this feeling of sadness, nor does he conceal the frailty of human existence. He becomes an ambassador to the “cosmic sadness” that humans are destined to suffer:

इशरत-ए-क़तरा है दरिया में फ़ना हो जाना/दर्द का हदसे गुज़रना है दवा हो जाना

It’s the destiny of a drop to disappear in the deluge of the sea/The pain that crosses all boundaries brings relief in a strange way.

A sense of isolation is an integral part of existential nihilism. One who realizes the meaninglessness of life seeks to isolate himself from the contradictions and chaos of the world, as Ghalib expresses in his famous ghazal:

रहिए अब ऐसी जगह चलकर जहाँ कोई न हो/हम-सुख़न कोई न हो और हम-ज़बाँ कोई न हो/पड़िए गर बीमार तो कोई न हो तीमारदार/और अगर मर जाइए तो नौहा-ख़्वाँ कोई न हो

Let’s move to a lonely place in this universe/No one to communicate, nor anyone to converse/ If illness befalls, none be there to nurse or to look after/ And if one dies, no one to shed a tear.

There is a tinge of hopelessness that stems from existential quandary in Ghalib’s poetry, which yearns for death.

कहते हैं जीते हैं उम्मीद पे लोग/हमको जीने की भी उम्मीद नहीं

People, they say, live on hope/I have no hope to live

But death does not come easily!

मरते हैं आरज़ू में मरने की/मौत आती है पर नहीं आती

The desire for dying is death itself/Thus death comes but doesn’t come

Like a self-actualizing individual, Ghalib may have found meaning in confrontation with death. So did Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who never relinquished his search that culminated in meaning. ³³

Dialectical Creativity

Creativity is a hallmark of a selfactualizing person, which may be perceived to reside within a dialectical relationship. A creative person is also more likely to be subject to a state of existential depression that arises from the perceived inconsistencies in life, which upset a gifted individual. ³⁴ Ghalib had a unique quality of expressing these contradictions of life in a dialectical form in the most artistic way. The most stressful of all stresses of life is the state of uncertainty, a state of suspension between getting there and not getting, between ability and inability, between living and dying. Ghalib taps this excruciatingly painful stress in many of his couplets. This pain is like a half-drawn arrow stuck in the heart, which neither kills you nor allows you to live peacefully

कोई मेरे दिल से पूछे तेरे तीर-ए-नीम-कश को/ये ख़लिश कहाँ से होती जो जिगर के पार होता

Ask me the fate of your half-drawn arrow/Where would be the heart-rending pain, had it been through?

मिलना तेरा अगर नहीं आसाँ तो सहल है/दुश्वार तो यही है कि दुश्वार भी नहीं

Meeting you is no easy, that’s understandable/Difficulty is this, that it’s not really difficult!

Here, Ghalib plays with the words like not easy and easy, difficult and not difficult—a dialectic display delineating the stress between the contradictions of life, which are part of our existence.

This dialectical spin given to the words and ideas makes Ghalib a master craftsman and, at the same time, an obscure poet difficult to understand. This is what Maslow calls the transcendence of dichotomies. According to Maslow, selfactualized individuals often do not make a choice between two apparently opposite behaviors but find a way of solving the problem that synthesizes the advantages of the two alternatives, without the disadvantages. This capacity for “dialectical synthesis” is perhaps the characteristic that most fundamentally distinguishes them from average people and makes it difficult to situate them in one of the conventional psychological classifications. ³⁵

Enigmatic Poetry

His poetry conceals more than what it expresses, and it is not difficult to see why Ghalib continues to be an enigma for readers, scholars, and researchers 150 years after his death. Because, as Ghalib himself said,

हूँ गर्मी-ए-निशात-ए-तसव्वुर से नगमा-संज/मैं अंदलीब-ए-गुलशन-ए-ना-आफ़्रीदा हूँ

Singing vivid imagery of poetry, I am a nightingale of a garden/That is yet to come into existence!

Ghalib was an avid letter writer. He wrote to his friends, amongst whom were both Hindus and Muslims. These letters have been published in two volumes. It is said that he would have been immortalized even if he had not written a single poem but only prose and that too, these letters. They mirror his nihilistic frame of mind. He wrote to Munshi Hargopal “Tafta,” a friend ³⁶ :

“Dear friend, You are learning the art of poetry while I am learning to die. Now I realize that all the scholarly knowledge and all the poetic epics are illusory and meaningless. At the most they lend you a little extra time to lead the life. All things are futile. Whether some god reincarnates for the Hindus or some prophet takes birth for the Muslims, what change will it bring? Whether someone becomes worldfamous or someone remains anonymous, what difference does it make? What is important is a healthy body and the bare minimum to keep the wolf at bay! The rest is all illusory. Shall I tell you something? Whatever I have said (just now) is also not the ultimate truth. Maybe it’s my illusion! It may just be my loud thinking. It’s all an illusion. This world is a mirage. It does not exist!”

Ghalib lived his death every moment. In a truly nihilistic sense, he was acutely aware of the emptiness of human existence. Struggling for the securities of life and caught in the mayhem of mutiny and the epic disintegration of the sociopolitical system, he went through every shade of depression, like:

Self-deprecation:

हमारे शेर हैं अब सिर्फ़ दिल्लगी के “असद”/खुला, कि फ़ायदा अर्ज़े-हुनर में ख़ाक नहीं

My verses are now a matter of derision “Asad”/ No gain in my ingenuity, I discern

Hopelessness:

न गुल-ए-नग़्मा हूँ न पर्दा-ए-साज़/मैं हूँ अपनी शिकस्त की आवाज़

Neither a song of a flower nor a string of music/I remain a voice of defeat

And a radically nihilistic yearning for dissolution:

हुए मर के हम जो रुस्वा हुए क्यूँ न ग़र्क़-ए-दरिया/न कभी जनाज़ा उठता न कहीं मज़ार होता ²⁵

A death of defame would better end with burial in river/Neither a funeral nor a tomb anywhere

But Ghalib’s tomb still stands witness to the existence of this great sculptor of words, a poet-philosopher par excellence, and a meta-critic of the existential tragedy of human fate.

Conclusion

Mirza Ghalib was a gifted poet of nineteenth-century India, who continues to be an enigma for study and research even after more than a century. This analysis of his ingenious creations with a humanistic psychological approach reveals that he was in a state of self-actualization while struggling to meet his security needs. His poetry reflects his existential nihilistic frame of mind, a theme that recurs throughout his ghazals and sher. The author finds his obscure poetry a challenge for further psychological exploration.

(All the Sher quoted in the text have been from the book “Diwan-e-Ghalib.” ³⁷ )