Ghazal 385x, Verse 7

Zamin:

That is, at the time of thought/thinking of poetry, my thoughts are 'typhooners', such that words cannot be properly kept in place-- what can I do? I must be excused.

== Zamin, p. 455

Gyan Chand:

zauraq = a small boat. :tuufaanii-e ma((nii = a prey to the typhoon of meaning. Hold me to be excused from the thought/thinking of poetry, because the boat of my self-possession is tossed around by the typhoon of meaning. The meaning is that through composing poetry the stomach is not filled. The result of this is anxiety about livelihood, through which self-possession falls into danger.

== Gyan Chand, p. 485

FWP:

SETS == POETRY
SCRIPT EFFECTS: {33,7}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.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

Surely this verse is about the vicissitudes of poetic creativity. Gyan Chand's confident claim that it's really about the poet's financial problems is surprising; while there's no way to rule it out entirely, nothing in the verse makes it especially persuasive. For the vivid 'typhooner of meaning' evokes not economic concerns but some kind of wildly tempestuous behavior, like that of a small boat storm-tossed within, or by, or through, 'meaning'. Platts presents a :tuufaanii as an active storm-creator (see the definition above); Gyan Chand defines it as a passive 'prey' to the storm. Either way, the storm-tossed (or -tossing?) boat on a sea of meaning makes a potent metaphor.

Particularly notable is the very unusual Persian word zauraq . It's clear that Ghalib chose it deliberately, because in exactly the same metrical space he could have fitted the much better known word kishtii , which he used in several other verses (including {166,3}). So why introduce the highly exotic zauraq ? One obvious reason is, to obtain the sharp little spike in interest provided by a 'fresh word'.

But there could be another reason as well. When reading (rather than hearing) the verse, after the literary first line it's very tempting to read the second line as beginning with yaa;N z-varaq , 'here, from the page'; all the more so since many readers would not be familiar with zauraq . Of course, the meter forbids this; but I read that part of the line several times over before reluctantly conceding that it really couldn't be z-varaq . So surely varaq hovers over the verse, in some subliminal way? If someone like me could readily notice this wordplay, it's impossible to believe that Ghalib would have been unaware of it.

More usually Ghalib speaks of 'meaning-creation' as a controlled, expert poetic activity, a 'search' for words and themes. So the image of the poet as someone in danger of losing his composure or 'self-possession' like a storm-tossed (or -tossing, let's remember) boat in a tumultuous sea of meaning, is one that lingers in the mind.