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MIR TAQI MIR
(1723-1810) |
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Mir Taqi Mir is one of the immortals among Urdu poets. A specialist of the
ghazal, he has left behind six poetical collections callled
Dewans, containing a total of 13,585 couples. He has also written
masnavis, marsias, and qasidas, besides a Dewan in Persian poetry, and at least three important works in Persian prose-
Nikaat-ul-Shora, containing lives of Urdu poets, Zikar-e-Mir, an autobiography, and
Faize-e-Mir, a book specially written for the edification of the poet's son.
Mir is basically a poet of love, more specially, of love unfulfilled, which has lent to his poetry a peculiar tinge of sadness, not depressing or morbid, but soothing and
humanising. Transience of lfe, hollowness of earthly achievements, inevitability of death, immanence of God, helplessness of man, and value of humanity, humility, and compassion, are some of the recurrent themes of his poetry. His chief strength lies in expressing deep thoughts in a simple, conversational style, which seemingly deep thoughts in a simple, conversational style, which seemingly artless, yet represents the acme of poetic skill and perfection. Mir is also one of the early architects of the Urdu language. He lived at a time when Urdu poetry was at a formative stage- its language was getting reformed, and its texture was being enriched with borrowings from Persian imagery and idiom. Aided by his aesthetic instincts, Mir struck a fine balance between the old and the new, the indigenous and the imported elements. Knowing that Urdu is essentially an Indian language, he retained the best in native Hindi speech, and leavened it with a sprinkling of Persian diction and phraseology, so as to create a poetic language at once simple, natural and elegant, acceptable alike to the elite and the common folk.
It is a commonplace criticism that Mir is a poet of pathos and melancholia. His pathos, it should be remembered, is compounded of personal and public causes. His life was a long struggle against unfavourable circumstances. He lost his father,
Mohd. Ali Mataqqi, at the age of 10, and his godfather, sayed Aman
allah, at about the same age. Thus orphaned, he moved from Agra to Delhi, and went from pillar to post in search of financial and emotional support.
At the age of 17 Mir suffered a stroke of madness, a consequence of cumulative mental tension, precipitated, one may surmise, by frustration in love. In this state of manic depression the boy-poet would be haunted by a fairy-faced apparition, that would descend to him every night from the moon, and disappear at dawn, leaving him restless during the day. This hallucinatory experience is the basic of Mir's
masnavi, "Khwab-o-Khayal", which is included in this book in an abridged form. Apart from being a fine piece of narrative art, this poem contains a moving account of the plight of psychic patient, and the callous way this sickness was treated in the past. It is remarkable that even when the poet is passing through the worst phase of mental and physical agony, he doesn't lose his hold on love and beauty which glimmer every now and then through the generally dark imagery of this poem, as in the following couplet:
Carking cares of life my mental peace did foil,
My luck, like my darling's locks, was always caught in coils.
Mir's sorrows were further strengthened by the circumstances of his age. He lived at a time when Delhi was subjected to the devastating raids of Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah. Mir was a helpless witness to these traumatic events which have left a deep imprint on his mind and art. When life became unbearable in Delhi, Mir, like many other peace-loving folk, migrated to
Lucknow, but so sensitive was he to his personal
honour, and so attached to the streets of Delhi, that he felt ill-at-ease in the new dispensation. He died in Lucknow in 1810 at the age of 87.
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