“My Selection of Verses Earned Me a (Bad) Reputation!”: A Reflection on Ġhālib’s Published and Unpublished Verses

The great nineteenth-century poet Mirzā Asadullāh Ḳhān Ġhālib was a strict editor of his own work. As a result, he excised more than half of the verses when he published his Urdu dīvān in 1841. Most of these so-called rejected verses have been recovered and are available in comprehensive, scholarly editions of Ġhālib’s dīvān. In this paper I have examined the dynamics of selection by comparing and analyzing, verse by verse, Ġhālib’s process of selection. I chose Ġhālib’s published ġhazal that he constructed by cherry-picking verses from two ġhazals. My conclusion is that Ġhālib’s editing was personal. While in some cases it is possible to see the reasons behind making the choice, it seems arbitrary in others.