Shāh Abdul Latīf Bhittāī#Shah
A figure from the books
#Shah
Shāh Abdul Latīf Bhittāī · 1689–1752
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Poetry — the master of the Urdu ghazal in its first great century, and the language's first memoirist and first anthologist.
“Ghālib — the greatest of Urdu poets, and famously stingy with praise — looked back at Mīr and conceded in verse: you are not the only master of Rekhta, Ghālib; they say in a past age there was someone called Mīr.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Poetry does not need ornament; it needs a wound and the courage to speak plainly about it. Mīr took the polished Persian lyric, filled it with street Urdu and personal grief, and made the record of what it felt like when Mughal Delhi died.”
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