Metaphysical Dimensions of Mirza Ghalib’s Poetry: A Philosophical Evaluation

https://doi.org/10.55966/assaj.2025.4.1.042

Abstract

Ghalib has been regarded as a towering and celebrated figure in Urdu and Persian poetry for the last one hundred and fifty years. His poetry has multidimensional approaches, besides conventional issues of love and romanticism. The poetry includes meta-physical, philosophical, theological and mystical elements. Moreover, the universality of vision, deviation from the conventional ordinary themes, versatility of thoughts, all have given his poetry an everlasting fame and recognition. Due to these qualities, Ghalib’s poetry has been a source of inspiration for all types of intelligentsia belonging either to romantic poetry or philosophy, theology, mysticism etc. His rich imagination, using of metaphors, paradoxes, irony, depths of thoughts, hinting the combination of Persian and Indian literary customs and culture, focusing the problems of the Self in transitory life and existence, deliberations on the mysteries of death and here-after, have given him unique place not only among the contemporaries but a status of lighthouse for the coming generations of poets. The objective of this research paper is to discover, in his general poetry such metaphysical thoughts, theosophical issues, mystical, epistemological revelations which elevated him form the rank of just a poet and has given him everlasting fame and ‘Ghalib’ on others. 

Keywords: Epistemology, Existentialism, Fatalism, Metaphysics, Ontology, Pantheism, Pantheism, Theology