The Formality of Form: Reading Ghazal as a Contact Zone

Abstract

The near impossibility of translating or reproducing the ghazal within the context of American-English modern poetry has resulted in several prefixes and adjectives that claim an innovative break from the form of the traditional ghazal. While Aijaz Ahmad’s project of translating Ghalib into English operated on the principle that true translations of the ghazal could only be made possible by sacrificing its formal sturdiness, Agha Shahid Ali, writing almost thirty years later, criticised these attempts as failed imitations of the form that disqualified them as ghazals. While Ahmad and Ali both act as carriers of the form of the ghazal from one culture to another, the contact zone between these cultures could not be spatially or temporally located. Instead, in this article, I read the ghazal itself as a contact zone — as the site of translation, negotiation, and adaptation between distinct cultures, languages, and contexts — that has created the possibility for fresh expressions within the traditional strictures of the poetic form while also keeping alive the playfulness that the form of the ghazal inspires in its practitioners.