Ghazal 433x, Verse 3

Asi:

I am a 'Nightingale in a picture'-- I am restless wanting to manifest my burning and agitation. The movement of the pen that occurs in my grasping and making it is for me an ebullition of anxiety. That is, through that my anxiety is manifested.

== Asi, pp. 241-242

Zamin:

He has called himself a 'Nightingale in a picture' because both are helpless and oppressed. If the Nightingale in a picture would want to manifest his agitation, then despite having wings and feathers, how would he have the power of flight? We can only declare the movement of the pen to be his ebullition of wing-fluttering. Similarly if the poet would want to manifest his agitation, then how would he have in his arms and legs the strength to be able to writhe? He only manifests the restlessness of his heart through the movement of his pen.

== Zamin, p. 369

Gyan Chand:

The 'Nightingale in a picture' remains restless to express the agitation of his heart, but he cannot do it. Exactly that is my situation. The movement of the fiber/vein [reshah] of the pen gives, for me, the ebullition and longing of flight-- but I cannot do it. That is, I cannot fully express in verses the mood of my heart. The prose of the first line is: ( mai;N ) betaab-e i:zhaar-e tapish , bulbul-e ta.sviir huu;N .

== Gyan Chand, p. 376

FWP:

SETS == POETRY
WRITING: {7,3}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.

This verse belongs, albeit somewhat self-consciously, to the set of verses in which the poet/lover speaks as a bird; for others, see {126,5}. The verse elegantly conflates writing (about which Ghalib has many verses; see {7,3}) with drawing (about which he has very few; on these see {6,1}).

Asi and Zamin treat the word naal as redundant and take naal-e qalam to refer simply to a reed-pen; in Ghalib's day reeds were commonly used to make pens used for calligraphy and line drawings-- and for many other purposes (see {10,3}). But Gyan Chand alludes to the meaning of the 'threads or pith inside of a writing-reed' (see the definition above), which opens up far more subtle possibilities (and also rescues the verse from a possible charge of padding). For the movement of threads or pith within a reed-pen is necessarily on a far smaller scale, and surely far more ineffectual and chaotic, than the movement of the pen itself. Thus it bears a haunting resemblance to a bird's (possibly vain) 'wing-fluttering' (see the definition above) as opposed to its actual flight. (Apparently naal can also apply to a quill pen, which would make for wonderful wordplay with 'wing', but the reed-pen is a much better attested possibility.)

The speaker is (like?) a Nightingale in a picture-- when the Nightingale is agitated, his 'wing-fluttering' takes the form of the (active? passive?) shifting around of tiny fibers of pith within the very pen that is engaged in drawing the picture in which he appears. This situation might be one of despair. On this reading, the speaker, a poet, is (like?) a Nightingale helplessly trapped in a picture-- when the poet seeks to compose, the 'wing-fluttering' of his agitation emerges not as writing, but only as the shifting of tiny fibers within his reed-pen.

But the image might also be one of hope. On this reading, the Nightingale might well find in the (inner and outer) movements of the reed-pen the 'ebullition of wing-fluttering' that it seeks. And similarly, what enables the poet/lover to metaphorically 'sing' and 'fly' is the movement of his reed-pen over the page as he composes. This movement is accompanied by the shifting of tiny fibers within the reed-pen; these restlessly moving fibers announce the flow of his creative energy the way a bird's fluttering wings announce its imminent flight.

The verse makes excellent use of wordplay involving 'heat': be-taab , tapish , josh (see the definitions above). But is this heat merely that of frustration and longing, or might it be (re-)directed into intense literary creativity? As so often, we're left to decide for ourselves.