This is one of the first books in any language on the life and work of Miraji (1912-49), a member of the triumvirate of canonical Urdu poets of the twentieth century. Lyrical Movements,Historical Hauntings aims to unravel the paradox of an acclaimed modernist writer whose poems are widely regarded as impossibly difficult to comprehend. It alsograpples with the vexed issue of how to speak of a Muslim male poet who wrote under a Hindu woman s name, and whom contemporary critics described as mad, sexually perverse, and a voyeur. Miraji s short life spanned the final period of British colonialism in South Asia, and his work played a part in the nationalist struggle. This book locates Miraji s writings in the colonial milieu of his time by linking them to the literary and theoretical concerns of a prior generation of writers. By contextualizing Miraji s life and lyrics within a literary history of modernist poetry, it suggests new ways of conceiving modernizing nationalisms and their relationship to gender and sexuality.
In a manner consistent with Miraji s own poetics, the author traces the logic of nationalist discourses in order to identify multiple intersections and possibilities foreclosed in the process of state formation in India and Pakistan.