FWP:
SETS
ARCHERY: {6,2}
JIGAR: {2,1}
ABOUT THE LIVER AND HEART: We've only seen a few jigar , 'liver', examples before this, and most of those were in passing, or went by pretty quickly while we concentrated on the heart. So let this verse be the one where we pause and consider that bane of translators, the 'liver'. It's impossible to make it sound other than absurd and/or edible in English, and yet it's a mainstay of the ghazal poetic repertoire. Translators usually try to substitute 'heart' for liver, which is defensible in a general way. But in verses like this present one (and others like {7,4}, {20,4}, {35,7}), a necessary contrast is drawn between heart and liver, so that this strategy can't work.
In ghazal physiology, the liver is the organ that makes fresh blood; thus it's an emblem of fortitude, steadfastness, endurance over time. The heart, by contrast is always consuming blood: bleeding constantly from its wounds, pumping blood to the eyes so the lover can weep tears of blood, and then tearing itself into fragments as a sign of the lover's passionate self-sacrifice. For the heart to be done for is an earlier stage of passion, since more blood can be sent along from the liver. But when the liver is finished, the game is up.
Verses in which both the heart and liver appear include: {7,4}; {17,7};
{20,4}; {30,2}; {35,1};
{35,4}; {35,6};
{51,6x}; {61,9x}; {62,6}; {78,3}; {85,5}; {99,1}; {158,1}; {176,6};
{204,6} // {282x,5}; {307x,6}
In the present verse, after the dramatic but unresolved first line, the second line is so plain and low-key, with such a words-of-one-syllable quality, that it can hardly help but be moving, in the style of that other brilliantly and poignantly simple verse, {4,6}. I don't know why it's jis me;N rather than jis se .
There's some clever wordplay (of a kind that markedly evokes the present verse) about the liver and the heart in {4,14x}. The contrast between them is lightly alluded to in {20,4}, when the lover realizes that if the arrow had not lodged in the heart but gone through the liver, he'd be done for. And consider {35,4} and especially {35,6}, in which the lover gets annoyed with his heart precisely for its lack of stamina, and thinks fondly of his liver. In {85,5}, he recognizes that both of them are done for, and his blood-weeping days are over.
Here the lover is so wrecked, his liver is so implicated in constantly supplying blood to his ravaged heart, that the two are almost part of a single seamless import/export complex for blood. (Or, metaphorically, the lover is so close to exhaustion and death that his liver is indistinguishable from his heart and both are equally vulnerable.) Both heart and liver have been split open with a single arrow.
But is the lover sorry, self-pitying, lamenting? Not necessarily. Perhaps he's making a flat report, and perhaps with only partly concealed pride. He has followed his chosen path nearly to the end, and he has exactly the right wounds to prove it. He's like a duellist with a scar down his whole face, who is proud to carry around physical proof that at the crucial moment he didn't flinch.
Note for grammar fans: Here apnaa can't mean, as it theoretically should, 'pertaining to the subject of the sentence'. So we have to take it as short for kisii kaa apnaa , 'someone's own'; for more on this see {15,12}. The strong conventions of the ghazal incline us to take the 'someone' to be the lover. So why not just use meraa ? Perhaps because this way the speaker could conceivably be some observer who is talking about the lover.
On the translation of ga))e as 'have gone', see {38,1}.
Nazm:
That is, those days are gone when the heart was in its place, and the liver was in its place. (30)
== Nazm page 30