Ghazal 13, Verse 7

Nazm:

Alas, Asad, that grief dug up that buried treasure of mystery and looted it; the result is that grief disgraced him. (14)

== Nazm page 14

Vajid:

Urdu text: Vajid 1902 {13}

Bekhud Dihlavi:

The digging of the grief of separation, oh Asad, conquered the heart and looted it and destroyed it. Whatever treasuries of the secrets of passion or secrets of mystical knowledge were hidden in the breast, they have all been exposed. (28)

Bekhud Mohani:

Alas, the troubles of the grief of separation have looted that heart that was a treasury of the secrets of mystical knowledge. (29)

FWP:

SETS == IZAFAT

Even more fully than in the previous verse, {13,6}, the possibilities of kāvish are wittily exploited. An ordinary looter, seeking wealth, digs up pearls; an investigator, seeking knowledge, uncovers mysteries. The depths of the lover's heart used to contain 'pearls of mystery'. And now they've all been ravaged and looted.

But what exactly was the nature of this looting? It was the digging/investigation 'of' the grief 'of' separation [kāvish-e ġham-e hijrāñ]. Even if we take the second iẓāfat straightforwardly, the first one can still go at least two ways. Was it digging an act done 'by' the grief of separation, or an investigation 'of' the grief of separation? In the first (active) reading, it was the grief itself that did the digging, boring down steadily into the breast and destroying everything it touched.

In the second (passive, metaphorical) reading, it was the 'investigation' of grief, the analytical 'digging', that did the damage. Doctors tried to diagnose the grief, friends tried to explore it, the lover himself tried to plumb its depths. All this obsessive inquiry, all this analytical dissection, ended up wrecking the pearls of mystery in the lover's breast.

For a similarly multivalent case, see {1,2}, where the digging, the kāv-kāv, can also be taken either actively or passively. For a less complex use of kāvish, see {15,8}. Then in {178,5} we find the wonderfully vivid kurednā .