1646_03

{1646,3}

āge us ke furoġh nah thā jaltī thī bujhī sī majlis meñ
tab to log uṭhā lete the shitābī us ke ḥuẓūr se shamʿa

1) before her, there was no illumination/brightness; it [habitually] burned extinguished-ish in the gathering
2) then, people [habitually] lifted quickly and took away from her presence/hall, the candle

Notes:

furoġh : 'Illumination, light, brightness, splendour; flame; —glory, fame, honour'. (Platts p.780)

ḥuẓūr : 'Presence, attendance; the royal presence; the presence of a superior authority (as a judge, &c.); the person of the monarch or of any high functionary; —the presence chamber, hall of audience, the court; the government; government estate'. (Platts p.478)

*Platts Dictionary Online*

S. R. Faruqi:

In this verse, he's given to the theme of the opening-verse [{1646,1}] an extraordinarily dramatic flavor. The speaker's tone is such that he can be taken to be the lover, or some spectator in the beloved's gathering, or again some servant or attendant of the beloved. Mir has placed the words in such a way that they have an air of innocent surprise and simple admiration. It's an exaggerated idea; the event that he has narrated is itself based on exaggeration/hyperbole [mubāliġhah] (that is, on the idea that when a candle doesn't give light properly or begins to be extinguished, it is removed from the gathering and another candle is put in its place).

But the speaker's tone is so simple that there's no suspicion of hyperbole; rather, it feels as though the speaker himself believes that when a candle was again and again taken away from before the beloved, the cause was that before the beloved's radiant face the flame of the candle couldn't manage to burn. For bujhī sī jaltī thī there are two meanings: (1) its light seemed minimal; (2) it didn't manage to burn properly, it was giving off smoke, or it seemed that it was about to be extinguished.

The narrativity [maḥākāt] of the verse is devastating. And by narrativity is meant not only the painting of a picture, but also to describe some state of affairs in such a way that the speaker's point of view would prevail over the hearer's point of view. That is, the hearer would see exactly what the speaker had seen.

FWP:

SETS
MOTIFS == CANDLE; GATHERINGS
NAMES
TERMS == DRAMATICNESS; HYPERBOLE; NARRATIVITY

Here SRF provides a definition of 'narrativity' [maḥākāt]. It's a term he's used several times before. To me it seems to be probably related to 'dramaticness' (though not of course identical). For 'narrativity' he has found an Urdu counterpart word; for 'dramaticness' he hasn't even tried, and the term remains always in transliterated English.