Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
ghalib, iqbal, kiernan
do you mean to say “hit me baby one more time” was lifted from ghalib? if so, i’ll have much greater respect for him now. what a classic lyric it is.
funny you should mention ghalib - i picked up a book of his poetry, and another of iqbal’s - at the library last weekend. english translations usually fail to impress, so i was lucky to find books with parallel urdu and english text.
the iqbal book is translated by v. g. kiernan, a marxist historian who also translated faiz, as atomsmasher pointed out to me once many months ago. it seems he’s disappeared off the face of the internet, and i don’t even know if he’s still alive, though he did have a book, "america: the new imperialism", published in 2005.
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