S. R. Faruqi:

We've already had some discussion about the imagery of the destructiveness and turbulence of the sea in Mir's poetry-- see:

{239,1}.

This verse too is of that same kind, one which shows an uncommon feeling for the breadth and power of the sea. Atish has, as usual, taken direct advantage of Mir's verse:

taḳhtah pārah kī t̤araḥ se hai dil ātish tabāh
be-qarārī laḥjah-e daryā-e t̤ūfāñ-ḳhez hai

[like a fallen plank, Atish, is the heart destroyed
restlessness is the cadence of the typhoon-creating sea]

In addition to the present verse, Atish has also made use of this verse from Mir's fifth divan [{1658,5}]:

mauj-zanī hai mīr falak tak har laḥjah hai t̤ūfāñ-zā
sar-tā-sar hai talāt̤um jis kā vuh aʿz̤am daryā hai ʿishq

[there is wave-crashing, Mir, up to the sky; at every moment it is typhoon-creating
in which there is turmoil from end to end-- that great sea is passion]

But it's obvious that simply by collecting words together, the task is not accomplished-- not until the words would be made alive on the level of meaning. In Mir's verses, the words taḳhtah pāre and laḥjah have been situated at a high level of meaning, and in Atish's verse these same words are in a superficial and conventional situation. Then, in Mir's present verse, the rhetorical question in the second line is devastating.

Jur'at doesn't have an Atish-like attempt at loftiness. But Atish's attempts at loftiness usually remain unsuccessful, and he falls to the ground with a thud. In many of his verses there's a great deal of pomp and circumstance, but if you look carefully then you realize that the idea wasn't worth mentioning. Jur'at's boat doesn't go far from the shore, but it also doesn't sink. Jur'at says his light and trifling things with great clarity and success. Thus he has a verse:

aise daryā meñ bah'h chale haiñ kih āh
jis meñ ṭāpū nahīñ hai nāʾo nahīñ

[we've floated away in such a sea-- ah!
in which there's not an island, not a boat]

In Mir's verse, there are more aspects of meaning as well. He has made the boat a metaphor for the heart. In this regard, to use 'fallen planks' as a metaphor for the pieces of the heart broken by griefs, is extremely superb. Then, along with the tears, parts of the heart too float away, and vanish like the tears. Thus the destruction of the boat of the heart, and its planks' breaking away and disappearing toward unknown destinations, has a splendid 'affinity'.

Zafar Iqbal has taken this latter aspect, and composed a good verse:

dil kā patah sirishk-e musalsal se pūchhiye
āḳhir vuh be-vat̤an bhī usī kāravāñ meñ thā

[the whereabouts of the heart, ask from the continuous tears
after all, that homeless one too was in the very same caravan]

The image of a taḳhtah pārah Mir has versified in the first divan too, but not with such excellence [{260,5}]:

nah gayā mīr apnī kishtī se
ek bhī taḳhtah pārah saḥil tak

[there didn't go, Mir, from my boat
even one fallen plank, to the shore]

Here the meaningfulness is nevertheless greater than in Atish's verse. In the following verse from the second divan, by means of the sea Mir presents his yearning in an absolutely new style;

{950,9}.

This verse will be discussed in its place. For the present, the final point to be made is that Talib Amuli too has very well versified [in Persian] the image of a taḳhtah pārah :

'All the hundred fallen planks of my heart are under my arm,
I am the kind of sea such that the dryness of my lips is my shore.'

Since the theme of Mir's verse has a rough similarity to Talib Amuli's theme, it's possible that Talib's verse might have been before Mir's eyes [when he composed his own verse].

[See also {552,9}.]

FWP:

SETS
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == AFFINITY; THEME

The speaker has been in his own boat, but he isn't there any longer. The boat has fallen apart, its planks have floated off in all directions-- the speaker can't possibly keep track of them. They are long gone-- 'in the water'. Of course, we automatically think of the water of the deep, turbulent sea, and the many ways in which it could cause a shipwreck. But the first line has made it clear that the speaker has generated his own salt water and caused his own shipwreck: he has wept so excessively or extravagantly that he himself has caused his boat to disintegrate and its planks to float away to parts unknown.

The speaker is reporting past events-- but from what vantage point? Even though his boat is utterly lost, he doesn't seem to have drowned. But neither does he have any power to rectify the situation: he rejects the very possibility that he could even know in which direction(s) the planks of his boat have gone. Perhaps he's just drifting along in the flood of tears and ocean waves.