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ABSTRACT
In the poem ‘The Caves of Ajanta,’ Urdu poet Miraji (1912–49) presents a sensuous experience of imagination as a type of terrain, the features of which are formed from time itself. Underlying this impersonal geography is an understanding of permeable personhood that is central to Miraji’s creative and critical practices. Miraji’s poem describes imagination as having a texture, a speed, and a disposition. By drawing on Buddhist technologies of the self and conceptions of temporality, he complicates the inherited sense of a coherent and continuous individual, along with the geography of Ajanta itself, through the medium of imagination. This article situates this movement towards impersonal imagination within Miraji’s larger poetic and critical oeuvre, including how it contributes to a larger project of reimagining the categories of life and creativity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Thank you to the minds who did not simply dip into this essay but dove headfirst. I thank Professor Geeta Patel for our many walks along the Rivanna River discussing Miraji and his endless creativity. You listened with great patience and acuity to the nascent stages of this essay. Without you and your initial foray into Miraji’s work, I would not have been able to dive into Miraji. And thank you to Professors Sean Pue and Krupa Shandilya who initially approached me to write this essay. Your support and faith helped me through this process.
2. Here, I draw inspiration from Guy Davenport’s essay ‘The Geography of the Imagination,’ especially the opening line: ‘The difference between the Parthenon and the World Trade Center, between a French wine glass and a German beer mug, between Bach and John Philip Sousa, between Sophocles and Shakespeare, between a bicycle and a horse, though explicable by historical moment, necessity, and destiny, is before all a difference of imagination’ (3).
3. Malik, “Miraji ki Kitab-e Pareshan,” 267.
4. Jalibi, “Miraji: Ek Mutālaʻa,” 36–37.
5. Malik, “Miraji ki Kitab-e Pareshan,” 260. The same passage that Malek quotes in his essay can also be found in the compilation of Miraji’s column ‘Baaten’ (658).
6. Patel, Lyrical Movements, Historical Hauntings, 295–6.
7. Nayyar, Us Ko Ek Shakhs, 107.
8. Nayyar, Us Ko Ek Shakhs, 113.
9. Nayyar, Us Ko Ek Shakhs, 111.
10. Nayyar, Us Ko Ek Shakhs, 113.
11. Nayyar, Us Ko Ek Shakhs, 108.
12. Ellman, The Poetics of Impersonality, 34.
13. Ellmann, The Poetics of Impersonality, 3.
14. Ellmann, The Poetics of Impersonality, 46–7.
15. Tahrik is a form II infinitive of the Arabic root h-r-k. The second form pattern of the verbal root always connotes an intensification. Since the verbal root h-r-k means movement, the second form tahrik means something that incites movement.
16. Sharon Cameron, ix.
17. Miraji, “Apni Nazmon Ke Bare Men,” 476.
18. Miraji confesses to his enthralment in Einstein’s theories of space-time, though he admits that he may not have understood all of it! (Miraji, ‘Kuch Apne Bare Men,’ 473). Whether or not Miraji’s understanding of physics is correct is another matter. I leave it to the physicists to decide. What matters is the salience such theories had on his writing, for they clearly kicked up some dazzling intellectual dust.
19. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), my translation masks the brilliance of the Urdu. The word for elixir is amrit (امرت), coming from the Sanskrit amritam (अमृतं), the beverage of choice for the gods. Quite literally, the etymology of the word amrita breaks down into a + mrita, meaning ‘not dead.’ Humans do not drink the elixir. The second word for woman is naari, or ‘the one who leads,’ coming from the verbal root Nr (नृ). That Miraji chooses to draw from heavily Sanskritic words is not by accident. The Urdu language has also inherited many Arabic and Farsi words, but Miraji rejects them and opts for the Sanskrit, the older language associated with religious traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
20. Morton, 28. ‘Mesh’ can mean the holes in a network and threading between them. It suggests both hardness and delicacy”
21. This idea of an extruded mind beyond the human particular is a common Buddhist formulation most uniquely articulated by Shantideva, the eighth century Buddhist monk, scholar, philosopher, and Sanskrit poet. In his Bodhicaryavatara, he famously writes: ‘In the same way that someone in the midst of a rough crowd guards a wound with great care, so in the midst of bad company should one always guard the wound that is the mind.’ Shantideva implores us to treat our mind as the most outward, exposed part of our body. Later, he goes on to articulate a deindividuated type of persona, where we begin to think beyond the measurement of an individual and exist in impersonal emotions. Most famously, he asks, ‘Why can I not also accept another’s body as my self in the same way, since the otherness of my own body has been settled and is not hard to accept?’ (98).
22. Think Spinoza in this case. Spinoza sets out to define what a body is by approaching it as a mode. In this case, a mode highlights the relationship between various things (bodies, thoughts, etc) in terms of speed, slowness, and their capacity to affect others and be affected. It is about relationships and not form or function. By setting the criteria for bodies in terms of affective capacity, a term coined by Deleuze reading Spinoza, we do not need to distinguish between things that we call natural or artificial. In other words, this new standard of criteria for bodies re-conceptualizes the category of what a body is. I understand Miraji to be doing something similar to Spinoza, but he phrases it in terms of the category of life. He is interested in trying to achieve the (impossible) perspective of the category of Life in two places: first, in this poem by attuning himself to various motion, speeds, velocities, and forces expressed through various mediums; secondly, in his personal essays with his attunement to light, dark, and achieving the perspective of time itself.
23. The Arabic root of q-l-b – which I translated as ‘heart’ connotes turning, rotating, or inversion. This word, qalb, hails from Qur’anic Arabic. In later Sufistic discourses, most significantly in ibn al-Arabi’s Fusus al-Hikam (The Bezels of Knowledge), the heart (qalb) is the locus which is receptive to both inner (baatin) and outer (zaahir) truths. As Michael Sells writes, ‘The heart that is receptive of every form is in a state of perpetual transformation (taqallub, a play on the the meanings of the root q-l-b, heart and change). The heart molds itself to, receives, and becomes each form of the perpetually changing forms in which the Truth reveals itself to itself. In each moment the possessor of such a heart encounters a new form of manifestation (tajalli)’ (293).
24. Verses 1.1–2 depict the lineage of the Shakya dynasty which lived in Kapilavastu: ‘In Ikshvaku’s line, equal to Ikshvaku in might,/among the invincible Shakyas, was born a king,/loved by his people like the autumn moon,/pure in conduct, Shuddhodana by name’ (Ashvaghosha, 3). The geographical location of Kapilavastu is not clear and archaeologists have not yet come to an agreement. Some believe the location is in Tilaurakot, Nepal while others believe Piprahawa, India is the correct location. Since many Chinese Buddhist pilgrims travelled to India to visit the birthplace of the Buddha, Faxian’s (approx 400 C.E) and Xuanzang’s (approx. 630 C.E.) travel records are often used as reconstructive evidence. For a brief overview of the potential archaeological sites, please see Coningham and Young, 438–440.
25. The Arabic root for both surat and tasawwur is s-w-r. The root has to do with formation, specifically of images in mental formations.
26. Originally this work was simply entitled ‘Dibacha’ (Introduction), ushering in the first edition of Miraji ki Nazmen (Delhi, 1944). I am indebted to Asif Farrukhi for showing me his personal copy of the first edition during my trip to Karachi in July 2019. Not until Jamil Jalibi collected various writings from Miraji do we encounter the title ‘Apni Nazmon Ke Bare Men’ (About my Nazms).
27. Miraji, “Apni Nazmon Ke,” 473.
28. Miraji, “Apni Nazmon Ke,” 473.
29. The Qur’an, 483–484.
30. The perpetual dance of night and day ultimately emanates from one larger eternal Day belonging to God. This notion was popularized by ibn al-’Arabi. For more, please see Böwering, “Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Concept.”
31. Miraji, “Apni Nazmon Ke,” 473–4.
32. Miraji, “Apni Nazmon Ke,” 474–5.
33. Perhaps think more of the sense of virtual coming from its root: virtue from the 11th and 12th centuries, where virtue connoted a divine event whose influence permeated, cascading through the human realm like the wind sweeping through a forest. Please see Oxford, OED Online.
34. Miraji, “Apni Nazmon Ke,” 475.
35. For more on mental spaces laden with their own geography, please see Mikkelson and Kachru, ”The Mind”
36. It is thanks to Geeta Patel for coining this elegant and generative phrase.
37. Miraji, “Apni Nazmon Ke,” 476.
38. Miraji, “Kuch Apne Bare Men,” 471.
39. Miraji, “Kuch Apne Bare Men,” 466.
40. Miraji, “Kuch Apne Bare Men,” 471.