Poems from Iqbal Renderings in English Verse with Comparative Urdu Text

by Iqbal, Allama Muhammad; Kiernan, V. G.

• ISBN13: 9780195799743
• ISBN10: 0195799747
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-02-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Allama Muhammad Iqbal was acknowledged during his lifetime as the most important poet of Muslim India in the twentieth century, both for the quality of his verse and for the influence exercised by his ideas. Since his death in 1938, his fame has continued to grow and has reached the West through a number of English studies and translations. Most of the latter have been his philosophical poetry in Persian. This volume contains a rendering in English of over a hundred poems chosen from the four collections of Iqbal's poetry written in Urdu, which include religious, lyrical, satirical and other themes. the English versions are accompained by the original text.

Author Biography

Born near Manchester, V. G. Kiernan was a pupil of the Manchester Grammar School, and then of Trinity College, Cambridge. He then went on to undertake research work in modern diplomatic history, and won a College Fellowship. He was in India for eight years before the Partition, involved in radio broadcasting during the war, and in teaching at the Aitchison College in Lahore. During his time there he got to know Faiz Ahmed Faiz and other Urdu writers, and began his verse translations of Iqbal, who had died recently in Lahore, and of Faiz. In later years he was given a Personal Chair in Modern History at the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote a number of books and essays on Asian and European history, and on English Literature. Now retired, he lives in the Scottish Borders, with his wife, Heather.

Table of Contents

A withered rose	p. 2
New moon	p. 4
Man and nature	p. 6
Virtue and vice	p. 10
The moon	p. 14
Morning star	p. 16
A new altar	p. 20
On the bank of the Ravi	p. 22
Beauty's essence	p. 24
Moon and stars	p. 26
One evening	p. 28
Solitude	p. 30
Sicily	p. 32
Two planets	p. 36
On a flower-offering	p. 38
Before the prophet's throne	p. 40
I and you	p. 42
Khizar, the guide	p. 44
Seventeen Ghazals	p. 60
Six Ruba'iyat	p. 98
The mosque of Cordoba	p. 100
Lenin before God	p. 114
God's command to his angels	p. 118
Heaven and the priest	p. 120
The earth is God's	p. 122
Counsel	p. 124
Poppy of the wilderness	p. 126
To the Saqi	p. 128
Time	p. 136
Gabriel and Satan	p. 140
The prayer-call	p. 144
Sestet	p. 146
Love	p. 148
At Napoleon's tomb	p. 150
To the Punjab peasant	p. 152
Nadir Shah of Afghanistan	p. 154
The tartar's dream	p. 156
Cinema	p. 158
To the Punjab pirs	p. 160
Separation	p. 162
Satan's petition	p. 164
The hawk	p. 166
Disciples in revolt	p. 168
Reason and love	p. 172
Jehad	p. 174
Dazzled by Europe	p. 176
Islam in India	p. 178
Fate	p. 180
The way of Islam	p. 182
Preaching of Islam in the west	p. 184
Modern man	p. 186
Eastern nations	p. 188
A student	p. 188
The schools	p. 190
A question	p. 190
To my poem	p. 192
Paris mosque	p. 192
To the artists	p. 194
Dawn in the garden	p. 196
Persian poetry	p. 198
India's artists	p. 200
Dancing	p. 200
The voice of Karl Marx	p. 202
Revolution	p. 202
Flattery	p. 204
Government jobs	p. 204
Europe and the Jews	p. 206
Slave mentality	p. 206
Bolshevik Russia	p. 208
Today and tomorrow	p. 208
The east	p. 208
European politics	p. 210
To the Egyptians	p. 210
Abyssinia	p. 212
Satan to his political offspring	p. 214
An eastern League of Nations	p. 216
Everlasting monarchy	p. 216
Europe and Syria	p. 216
Mussolini	p. 218
Reproach	p. 220
Civilization's clutches	p. 220
League of Nations	p. 222
Syria and Palestine	p. 222
Political leaders	p. 222
Slaves' prayers	p. 224
East and west	p. 226
Psychology of power	p. 226
Satan's parliament	p. 230
An old Baluchi to his son	p. 246
From death to resurrection	p. 248
A deposed monarch	p. 254
Litany of the damned	p. 254
Three Ruba'iyat	p. 256
Fragments from Kashmir	p. 258
Song of the stars	p. 266
God and man	p. 270
Solitude	p. 272
Houri and poet	p. 276
Life and strife	p. 278
Slavery	p. 278
Quatrain	p. 280
Epilogue	p. 280
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