خردمندوں سے کیا پوچھوں کہ میری ابتدا کیا ہے
اگر ہوتا وہ مجذوب فرنگی اس زمانے میںتو اقبال اس کو سمجھاتا مقام کبریا کیا ہے
English translation
Only if that majzub* of the West were living in these times, Iqbal could have explained to him the ‘I am.’
* Allusion to Nietzsche: the famous self-absorbed German philosopher who could not interpret his inner experience correctly and was therefore misled by his philosophical thoughts.
Translated by Syed Akbar Ali Shah
About this couplet
This is couplet 5 of 6 in “خردمندوں سے کیا پوچھوں کہ میری ابتدا کیا ہے” (Khiradmandon se kya poochhoon ke meri ibtida kya hai) in the section Odes Part-II, from Allama Muhammad Iqbal's Urdu book Bal-e-Jibril (بالِ جبریل), published in 1935.
Read it in the poem۵ / ۶