The three verses {10,2}, {10,3}, and {10,4} follow a strong thematic pattern. In each of these verses, the second line introduces a seed-like noun that experiences a remarkable, even exponential growth. These lines also follow the rhetorical pattern of 'elegance in
assigning a cause', in which the second line serves as a poetical explanation of the logically incomplete situation posed by the first line. We might even be able to extend this set to {10,1}, {10,5}, and {10,6}, if we consider the theme to be about something small and/or singular that is made large and/or numerous-- the bouquet that becomes a garden/paradise in the eye of the beholder, the singular ray of sun that becomes multiple in the drops of dew, the lightning of the harvest encoded in the hot blood of the farmer].
This theme strikes me as somewhat analogous to Ghalib's preferred form of poetic production. In certain meaning-creation verses, the meanings blossom exponentially in the light of the contemplative mind.
In {10,1}, we can also read the first phrase as: 'The praiser is an ascetic to such an extent...' Perhaps the praiser is so niggardly with his praise that even heaven is a trifling bouquet. Certainly, Ghalib's 'snide comments about paradise' which FWP has indexed below, encourage us to relinquish our desire to imagine paradise in terrestrial terms. Here, Ghalib seems to be suggesting that any imagining or depiction of paradise would be a pitifully limiting metaphor; anybody reacting to such a metaphor of paradise would be stuck in the transitivity loop of praising too much or too little either this depiction of paradise, or perhaps more subversively, paradise itself. This poetically instrumentalized confusion reveals itself, as FWP has noted, in Ghalib's usage of ek to suggest either a mere single bouquet, or a particularly noteworthy bouquet.
Ghalib has expressed a similar idea in his Persian divan:
رنگها چون شد فراهم مصرفی دیگر نداشت
خلد را نقش و نگار طاق نسیان کرده ایم
When the colors are gathered, one does not have another place to turn.
We have made paradise the ornaments of the niche of forgetfulness.
Again, playing on the ambiguity of naqsh u nigar as either lavish ornament or mere bric-a-brac, Ghalib shows us how any depiction of paradise makes us both over-estimate and under-estimate this world and the next.
It is also possible that Ghalib invites us to think about the bouquets of flowers that are often depicted inside niches at various tombs and Sufi shrines. Those with a Sufi outlook might praise these bouquets as invocations of paradise with their various leaf clusters representing the various sections of paradise as described in the Qu'ran. In {6,1}, Ghalib similarly relied on the reader to recall that Qais is always painted without clothes.
In {10,2}, every drop of blood evoked by the glance of the beloved becomes a bead [daanah] of a set of prayer-beads. However, the word 'bead' in Persian can also mean 'seed'. On this reading, each drop of blood grows exponentially into a coral set of prayer beads. That is, they become parts of an exponentially enlarged sea of prayer beads. In contemplative silence, unable or unwilling to complain, the lover undertakes the task of worrying this near-infinite number of prayer beads created by the cruel sword-like gashes of the beloved's sidelong glance. Medieval Sufis imagined coral as a mineral which undergoes plant-like growth 'like grass' (thanks to Pasha Khan for finding this reference in Qazvini's Aja'ib al-Makhluqat [((ajaa))ib al-ma;xluuqaat]). In the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity [رسائل اخوان الصفأ], these coral growths were likened to more substantive 'branches'.
In {10,3}, the straw that the oppressed lover takes into his teeth becomes a reed that spawns an entire reed-thicket. The nai or 'reed' is also the name of the pipe that Sufis used to play mystical music and metaphorically complain about separation with the beloved, as in the famous first lines from Rumi's Masnavi mentioned below. In this way, the lover almost taunts the murderer/beloved by saying that the straw that normally symbolizes submission will grow exponentially into a reed-thicket to complain on his behalf. If the reeds of this reed-thicket should remain unused, however, they would become a symbol of the lover's powerlessness before the beloved.
The pleasure of this device comes from the tension between the reed-thicket as a noisy army of lover-plaintiffs versus its more mundane manifestation as a place of quiet repose. In this way, the reader is left to choose whether the image is metaphorical or literal. As a metaphor, the lover's complaint power would grow to supersede the power of the killer/lover to suppress these complaints. In its literal sense, on the other hand, the reed-thicket becomes a symbol of the futility of the lover's complaints-- a quiet place whose significance has perhaps been forgotten.
The image of the reed flute and the reed-thicket are from the famous first lines of Rumi's Masnavi:
بشنو ازنی چون حکایت می کند
از جداییها شکایت می کند
کز نیستان تا مرا ببریده اند
از نفیرم مرد و زن نالیده اند
[Listen to the flute-- when it complains
about separations, it recounts:
'Ever since I was cut from the reed-thicket
man and woman have lamented by my sound.']
As for {10,4}, the verse clearly demonstrates the theme of a singular seed that undergoes exponential growth: the speaker claims that every wound of his heart is the seed for a tree-like fireworks display. One pleasure of this verse comes from the ironies between the relationship of the nouns. The imagination of the speaker breaks down certain logical categories: the remnant of a destructive process (a wound/scar with its fleshy and half-dead texture) acts like something vegetative and productive (a seed for a tree)-- which then evolves into something tree-like, sparkling and fantastic (a fireworks tree).
In his commentary on {10,5}, SRF explains: 'every drop of dew reflects the sun, and in that way itself becomes the sun. The glory of the beloved was reflected in this way in every mirror, so that in unity the aspect of variety began to show itself.' In this reading, the second line of the verse demonstrates how the singular ray of sunlight becomes exponentially multiplied in the drops of dew. Nazm describes the pleasurable twist: that the beloved vaporizes the mirror the way a sun evaporates dew drops. However, the main theme of singularity to multiplicity provides the backbone of the verse.
By the time we reach {10,6}, the schematic of the theme should be clear. The singular [ik] image of destruction in the farmer manifests itself as the multiple and exponentially vast lightning of the harvest. In this verse, however, the 'transitivity' of the second line gives us an added twist to the thematic pattern. Whereas previously the images' power came from an exponential expansion from small to large, the second line of this verse brings us from something visually immense (the lightning of the harvest) to something small (drops of the farmer's hot blood). Of course, once we pack this metaphorical powder keg, our realization of transitivity blows it up again by allowing the (small) essence of the hot blood of the farmer to result in the (large) lightning of the harvest. In this way, the effect is no longer mono-directional but rather an image of both compression and expansion.
After seeing the power of the exponential blast, we're left to ask, 'Why?'. This verse is an example of 'elegance in assigning a cause'. Rather than a simple explanation, we find a question about the concept of agency. As Naim and FWP point out, Ghalib presents an ambiguity with 'in my construction'. Is the speaker's 'construction' in the first line his own doing, or something congenital? Certainly, hot blood could come from hard work in the fields. But it could also be something congenital, something ominous about the make-up of the farmer that leads to the destruction of his harvest. This second reading may seem elitist and pejorative (as though the farmer's troubles were a result of poor lineage). However, Ghalib presents the character sympathetically rather than sneeringly. Indeed, the farmer would have to have been a magnificent poet to have spoken even the first line. Therefore, the question of agency in a thoughtful and ethical life, and the infinite examination it demands, is spectacularly mirrored by this open-ended question disguised as a mere statement of fact.
Owen Cornwall:
The three verses {10,2}, {10,3}, and {10,4} follow a strong thematic pattern. In each of these verses, the second line introduces a seed-like noun that experiences a remarkable, even exponential growth. These lines also follow the rhetorical pattern of 'elegance in assigning a cause', in which the second line serves as a poetical explanation of the logically incomplete situation posed by the first line. We might even be able to extend this set to {10,1}, {10,5}, and {10,6}, if we consider the theme to be about something small and/or singular that is made large and/or numerous-- the bouquet that becomes a garden/paradise in the eye of the beholder, the singular ray of sun that becomes multiple in the drops of dew, the lightning of the harvest encoded in the hot blood of the farmer].
This theme strikes me as somewhat analogous to Ghalib's preferred form of poetic production. In certain meaning-creation verses, the meanings blossom exponentially in the light of the contemplative mind.
In {10,1}, we can also read the first phrase as: 'The praiser is an ascetic to such an extent...' Perhaps the praiser is so niggardly with his praise that even heaven is a trifling bouquet. Certainly, Ghalib's 'snide comments about paradise' which FWP has indexed below, encourage us to relinquish our desire to imagine paradise in terrestrial terms. Here, Ghalib seems to be suggesting that any imagining or depiction of paradise would be a pitifully limiting metaphor; anybody reacting to such a metaphor of paradise would be stuck in the transitivity loop of praising too much or too little either this depiction of paradise, or perhaps more subversively, paradise itself. This poetically instrumentalized confusion reveals itself, as FWP has noted, in Ghalib's usage of ek to suggest either a mere single bouquet, or a particularly noteworthy bouquet.
Ghalib has expressed a similar idea in his Persian divan:
رنگها چون شد فراهم مصرفی دیگر نداشت
خلد را نقش و نگار طاق نسیان کرده ایم
When the colors are gathered, one does not have another place to turn.
We have made paradise the ornaments of the niche of forgetfulness.
Again, playing on the ambiguity of naqsh u nigar as either lavish ornament or mere bric-a-brac, Ghalib shows us how any depiction of paradise makes us both over-estimate and under-estimate this world and the next.
It is also possible that Ghalib invites us to think about the bouquets of flowers that are often depicted inside niches at various tombs and Sufi shrines. Those with a Sufi outlook might praise these bouquets as invocations of paradise with their various leaf clusters representing the various sections of paradise as described in the Qu'ran. In {6,1}, Ghalib similarly relied on the reader to recall that Qais is always painted without clothes.
In {10,2}, every drop of blood evoked by the glance of the beloved becomes a bead [daanah] of a set of prayer-beads. However, the word 'bead' in Persian can also mean 'seed'. On this reading, each drop of blood grows exponentially into a coral set of prayer beads. That is, they become parts of an exponentially enlarged sea of prayer beads. In contemplative silence, unable or unwilling to complain, the lover undertakes the task of worrying this near-infinite number of prayer beads created by the cruel sword-like gashes of the beloved's sidelong glance. Medieval Sufis imagined coral as a mineral which undergoes plant-like growth 'like grass' (thanks to Pasha Khan for finding this reference in Qazvini's Aja'ib al-Makhluqat [((ajaa))ib al-ma;xluuqaat]). In the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity [رسائل اخوان الصفأ], these coral growths were likened to more substantive 'branches'.
In {10,3}, the straw that the oppressed lover takes into his teeth becomes a reed that spawns an entire reed-thicket. The nai or 'reed' is also the name of the pipe that Sufis used to play mystical music and metaphorically complain about separation with the beloved, as in the famous first lines from Rumi's Masnavi mentioned below. In this way, the lover almost taunts the murderer/beloved by saying that the straw that normally symbolizes submission will grow exponentially into a reed-thicket to complain on his behalf. If the reeds of this reed-thicket should remain unused, however, they would become a symbol of the lover's powerlessness before the beloved.
The pleasure of this device comes from the tension between the reed-thicket as a noisy army of lover-plaintiffs versus its more mundane manifestation as a place of quiet repose. In this way, the reader is left to choose whether the image is metaphorical or literal. As a metaphor, the lover's complaint power would grow to supersede the power of the killer/lover to suppress these complaints. In its literal sense, on the other hand, the reed-thicket becomes a symbol of the futility of the lover's complaints-- a quiet place whose significance has perhaps been forgotten.
The image of the reed flute and the reed-thicket are from the famous first lines of Rumi's Masnavi:
بشنو ازنی چون حکایت می کند
از جداییها شکایت می کند
کز نیستان تا مرا ببریده اند
از نفیرم مرد و زن نالیده اند
[Listen to the flute-- when it complains
about separations, it recounts:
'Ever since I was cut from the reed-thicket
man and woman have lamented by my sound.']
As for {10,4}, the verse clearly demonstrates the theme of a singular seed that undergoes exponential growth: the speaker claims that every wound of his heart is the seed for a tree-like fireworks display. One pleasure of this verse comes from the ironies between the relationship of the nouns. The imagination of the speaker breaks down certain logical categories: the remnant of a destructive process (a wound/scar with its fleshy and half-dead texture) acts like something vegetative and productive (a seed for a tree)-- which then evolves into something tree-like, sparkling and fantastic (a fireworks tree).
In his commentary on {10,5}, SRF explains: 'every drop of dew reflects the sun, and in that way itself becomes the sun. The glory of the beloved was reflected in this way in every mirror, so that in unity the aspect of variety began to show itself.' In this reading, the second line of the verse demonstrates how the singular ray of sunlight becomes exponentially multiplied in the drops of dew. Nazm describes the pleasurable twist: that the beloved vaporizes the mirror the way a sun evaporates dew drops. However, the main theme of singularity to multiplicity provides the backbone of the verse.
By the time we reach {10,6}, the schematic of the theme should be clear. The singular [ik] image of destruction in the farmer manifests itself as the multiple and exponentially vast lightning of the harvest. In this verse, however, the 'transitivity' of the second line gives us an added twist to the thematic pattern. Whereas previously the images' power came from an exponential expansion from small to large, the second line of this verse brings us from something visually immense (the lightning of the harvest) to something small (drops of the farmer's hot blood). Of course, once we pack this metaphorical powder keg, our realization of transitivity blows it up again by allowing the (small) essence of the hot blood of the farmer to result in the (large) lightning of the harvest. In this way, the effect is no longer mono-directional but rather an image of both compression and expansion.
After seeing the power of the exponential blast, we're left to ask, 'Why?'. This verse is an example of 'elegance in assigning a cause'. Rather than a simple explanation, we find a question about the concept of agency. As Naim and FWP point out, Ghalib presents an ambiguity with 'in my construction'. Is the speaker's 'construction' in the first line his own doing, or something congenital? Certainly, hot blood could come from hard work in the fields. But it could also be something congenital, something ominous about the make-up of the farmer that leads to the destruction of his harvest. This second reading may seem elitist and pejorative (as though the farmer's troubles were a result of poor lineage). However, Ghalib presents the character sympathetically rather than sneeringly. Indeed, the farmer would have to have been a magnificent poet to have spoken even the first line. Therefore, the question of agency in a thoughtful and ethical life, and the infinite examination it demands, is spectacularly mirrored by this open-ended question disguised as a mere statement of fact.
(March 2010- updated March 2011)