S. R. Faruqi:

Some people will consider phūle hai jaise sāñjh to derive from Mir's Prakritic inclination. The claim is true, but here there's more than just this going on. The meaning of sāñjh can also be 'redness of the evening', while 'evening' [shām] doesn't mean 'redness of the evening'. There's an idiom shafaq phūlnā -- that is, 'for the redness of sunset to spread over the sky'. There's also an idiom shām phūlnā ; but its meaning is 'for the shadows of evening to spread all around'. In sāñjh with the meaning of 'redness' a relationship has been created with shafaq phūlnā meaning 'for the redness of sunset to spread over the sky'; thus the metaphor sāñjh phūlnā has been opened out.

Even before the the spreading-out of the dawn, for the scene of the spreading of the redness of sunset to be created because of weeping-- this too is fine.

Dr. Abd ul-Rashid has presented one example apiece of sāñjh phūlnā from 'Qissah-e Mihr-afroz o Dilbar' and Sauda. In fact, in 'Qissah-e Mihr-afroz o Dilbar' there's even sāñjh phūlnā with the meaning of 'twilight redness'. Alas, that later people gave up such beautiful and fresh words!

[See also {1177,7}.]

FWP:

SETS == IDIOMS; WORDPLAY
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == FRESH WORD; IDIOMS

Well, this is the kind of verse I find it hard to warm to. The evocation of two idioms at the same time is no doubt a fine feat, and even if ahl-e zabān like SRF can enjoy it more than we outsiders can, there's still no reason we can't learn to appreciate it. But a verse like this, so lacking in intellectual energy or 'meaning-creation', feels tiresome and trifling. The latter half of the second line is also annoying: 'only/emphatically that here equal/same is now'. It's not eloquent, flowing, meaningful, whatever; it feels like padding and fluff, a waste of a whole chunk of prime poetic real estate.

'I weep so many tears of blood that the pre-dawn sky looks like the sunset sky'-- well, what a yawn. It could almost be grotesque, except that it isn't plausible enough. We have to work hard to imagine something not easy to imagine, something that doesn't have a good physical correlative (because tears basically don't resemble sunlight in either appearance or behavior)-- and then we aren't even rewarded for it.

Compare this verse of Ghalib's, which takes a very similar line ('my passion mirrors the whole cosmos') but does reward us:

G{62,8}.

Ghalib's verse is immensely richer and more satisfying. It has action, it has 'dramaticness', it has a slyly enjoyable multivalence that's a treat in itself.