Ghazal 44, Verse 4x

Zamin:

The meaning is that the intoxication of wildness that the heart desires-- that mood has not yet been created. Only this much has happened: that the yawns that Majnun used to give, in a state of wildness-- their aspect has begun to be created from my collar. That is, that which had been created in Majnun without a cause, is being created in me with a cause, for my collar, having burst open, is showing the aspect of his yawns.

This verse was passed over [for the divan]. That was good, because even after understanding this much one is obliged to say, 'We haven't understood anything'.

== Zamin, p. 83

Gyan Chand:

In reality, in the first line the word 'longing' is only padding, and is a cause of the destruction of meaning. A ;xamyaazah is a stretch/yawn [anga;Raa))ii] that is a sign of the decline or lack of intoxication.... He says that to me the intoxication of wildness/madness is not proportional to my effort and desire. In my madness when I have torn my collar, it is in reality the stretch/yawn of Majnun, that symbolically speaking was the sign of the lack of the intoxication of madness. I too, through the tearing of the collar, make manifest [my desire] that there might be able to be a further increase in madness.

If in place of the 'stretch/yawn of Majnun' there were the 'stretch/yawn of madness' [;xamyaazah-e junuun], then the meaning would become very clear! Whether the collar be open or torn, its similitude with the stretch/yawn will appear, because in a stretch/yawn the lifting up of both hands, and the spreading out of the collar through tearing, are comparable.

By the longing of intoxication is means that we too fall somewhat short. We feel the inadequacy of the intoxication of wildness/madness, we want more; but this longing is not to such an extent as the heart wants it to be. That is, the desire for increase in the intoxication of wildness/madness is not sufficient. This desire ought to be limitless, just as, even after so much wildness/madness, Majnun's desire was.

== Gyan Chand, pp. 113

FWP:

SETS == A,B; SYMMETRY
CHAK-E GAREBAN: {17,9}
MADNESS: {14,3}
PROPORTIONALITY: {6,4}

For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices. For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.

On the colloquial complexities of ;xamyaazah , see {12,2}. But what makes this stretch/yawn identical with, or equatable to, the speaker's collar (which is actually, of course, a vertical slit like a kurta-opening)? Gyan Chand maintains that the action of stretching in a yawn, with both arms extended usually upward and outward, resembles the action of tearing the collar (or the two halves of the torn collar?). This doesn't seem impossible, but neither is it entirely self-evident.

Alternatively, we could consider the sequential side of things. The stretch/yawn is usually described as occurring when one has already been intoxicated, and is coming down a bit and looking around restlessly for more wine. By contrast, the tearing of the collar is usually one of the first signs of the lover's madness and desperation (see {34,2} for an example)-- if for no other reason than because once the collar has been torn, it isn't around any more. (Although of course the lover can imagine bizarre ways of sewing it up again, as in {111,11}.) Thus the point where Majnun's wildness or intoxication ends, or at least pauses for a breathing space (so that he stretches and yawns), is where the speaker's own wildness/madness merely begins: he starts where Majnun leaves off.

But the multiple abstractions and the 'A,B' structure of the verse make it impossible to pin things down. How are the two lines connected? Certainly there's a complaint (or at least a rueful observation) being made in the first line, about the disproportion between inner reality and outward expression-- but how are the speaker and Majnun, in the second line, to be linked with that complaint? The verse could be read as deprecating Majnun's passion by contrast with the speaker's own, or as honoring Majnun as a predecessor and fellow-lover in the long chain of martyrs to passion.

Note for meter fans: The sa((ii-e has to be scanned long-long, so one might think of sa(( followed by a syllable made up of the chho;Tii ye and the i.zaafat . This second syllable would then want in practice to turn into the sound of ye , the way ;xusrau followed by an i.zaafat becomes ;xus-ra-ve . But at the same time, for intelligibility, surely we'd want to pronounce the first syllable as if it were sa((ii , the way ko))ii can be made into one syllable in a pinch. So perhaps we should imagine a tashdiid over the chho;Tii ye , generated by the i.zaafat , the way fan goes to fann-e and so on.