SOURCE: "Ghalib's Thought and Poetry," in Perspective, Vol. II, Nos. 8 and 9, February-March, 1969, pp. 107-10.

In the following essay, Ali provides a short overview of Ghalib's thought and approach to writing poetry.

Ghalib died a hundred years ago in Delhi at the age of seventy-two, having lost his sense of hearing and all interest in life which, anyway, had not treated him too kindly. Not fully appreciated in his own day, he stands very high today wherever Urdu is read, including the Soviet Union. This should give us food for thought, not so much for the sake of Ghalib as that of poetry and ourselves. Whether we like him or not, whether we understand him or do not, Ghalib's poetry has a quality which, in the essence, is for all time, having been in his own time far in advance of the age, so that it strikes us as...