Ghazal 434x, Verse 6

Zamin:

By 'a hundred mirrors' is meant the sparks of the fire-stricken paper. 'A hundred' is only an expression of multitude, it is not meant as a number. He says that the glory/appearance of my lifetime is the cause of amazement of the fire-stricken paper. Because formerly I was a single wound-filled heart-- then I burned up and was extinguished and became ashes. The meaning is that the instability of my lifetime is like that of the sparks of a burnt paper.

== Zamin, p. 439

Gyan Chand:

The ashes that would be used to clean a mirror are called ;xaakistar-e aa))iinah , but here this is not the intention. A similar verse of Ghalib's is {64,2}.

The meaning of the verse is: The glory/appearance of the lifetime is like fire-stricken paper. If a paper would be set on fire, then in a single moment it will become ash. The glory/appearance of the lifetime is exactly this brief. At the end of this glory/appearance I was found beneath a kind of ashes that has a hundred mirrors-- in which a hundred mirrors are visible. A burnt paper keeps its shape intact, and through various pieces expresses various longings and yearnings. By ;xaakistar-e .sad aa))iinah is not meant the ashes obtained by burning a paper, because a mirror cannot burn and turn to ash. By ;xaakistar-e .sad aa))iinah is meant ashes that would display a hundred mirrors or possess a hundred mirrors. Since he has called the burnt paper a mirror, he has also called it amazement-stricken. After dying, there can be amazement at the briefness of the glory/appearance of the lifetime.

== Gyan Chand, pp. 455-456

FWP:

SETS == SUBJECT?
JALVAH: {7,4}
LIFE/DEATH: {7,2}
MIRROR: {8,3}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.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

This another highly abstract verse in which it's difficult to fit the parts together with confidence. Presumably the 'fire-stricken paper' shows 'amazement' because it becomes a kind of ashy replica of itself, full of holes and tiny sparks, incapable of movement, until it eventually falls apart entirely. (On the special, Sufistic nature of ;hairat , see {51,9x}.) This 'amazement' shown by a burnt paper is equated with the 'manifestation, splendor' (see the definition above) of the lifetime. So far, so good.

But then what about the second line, with its 'hundred-mirror ashes'? Probably the best approach is to invoke the classic Persian/Urdu ghazal trope of the heart as a mirror; this is discussed in {128,1}. Hearts are eminently burnable; they are even self-burning, as for example in {5,1}. Possibly the speaker has been found beneath the ashes of a hundred burnt-out hearts. But then, who or what has found him? It's really impossible to say. There's no plausible subject in the verse itself, and the ne construction means that the subject could be singular or plural, second- or third-person. My own favorite guess is the some-group-of-people 'they' that we use in English too: 'They found him beneath a heap of ashes'.

This verse is of course a member of the 'dead lover speaks' group; for others, see {57,1}.

Ghalib plays, often obscurely, with the imagery of burnt paper in other verses as well: {18,6x}, {64,2}, {69,2}.