kamāl-e garmī-e s‘aī-e talāsh-e dīd nah pūch baraṅg-e ḵẖār mirey ā’īney sey jawhar khaiñch Ask not the end of ardent efforts to seek the Beloved Pull out thorn-like burnish-lines from my mirror (For my very dear Frances Pritchett) Fran (Dr. Frances Pritchett) commenting on this distich in her lovely site “A Desertful of Roses” says: “And the big question-how to put it all together? It isnt at all clear how we are to find objective correlatives for the images. What is my mirror? Is it my longing for sight (Nazm, Hasrat), my eyes or heart (Bekhud Mohani), or the foot of ardor (Josh)? All these entities sit awkwardly with the idea of having polish-lines in them. And then, of course, to demand that the polish-lines be pulled out like thorns is itself a large and peculiar leap; why exactly (other than shape) are the polish-lines like thorns, and how are they to be pulled out, and by whom, and from what? Joshs idea that the mirror is really a foot is an attempt to account for the thorns, but of course it has major silliness problems of its own.” Fran says that “It isnt at all clear how we are to find objective correlatives for the images.” A poetic text is about something (its mażmūn) and says some thing/s (its m‘anī). Conventional, traditional mażmūn’s are indited with associated stock imagery, their talāzimāt, what Fran terms “objective correlatives” (T.S. Eliot defines an objective correlative as “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked”). Over time and consistent usage, a mażmūn’s image becomes its semiotic-metonymic “shorthand,” and specific images bring about and evoke the recognition and recall of specific mażmūns. Images thus function as the “objective correlatives” for a mażmūn. There can be theoretically the following permutations: 1) Old mażmūn, old image; 2) Old mażmūn, new image; 3) New mażmūn, old image; 4) New mażmūn, new image. Rhetorically, poets can also “mix and match” and feint in the īhām mode by by conflating the traditional “objective correlative” image “A” of a particular mażmūn “X” with another mażmūn “Y,” which has its own particular traditional “objective correlative” image “B.” The connection between mażmūn and m‘anī is more fluid that that between a mażmūn and its correlative image. One mażmūn may have a single m‘anī or multiple m‘anīs (though in Urdu, m‘anī is always grammatically plural) and one m‘anī might be expressed through multiple mażmūns. Determining a text’s mażmūn is framing it in a particular context. Many commentators frame this distich in the context of the Mirzā ṣāḥib’s lament on the lack of recognition of his poetic merit, but I’ve chosen not to opt for this frame. In the nusḵẖah-e Bhopāl (reportedly in the Mirzā ṣāḥib’s own hand), the first hemistich was originally “kamāl-e garmī-e s‘aī-e talāsh-e jalwah nah pūch.” Riża ṣāḥib (who doesn’t mention this lectio) dates this ghazal to 1821, during the Mirzā ṣāḥib’s “Bedilian” phase, in which he composed, in his own words, mażāmīn-e ḵẖayālī (“cerebral topoi”). Here’s a distich from Mirzā ‘Abd-al Qādir “Bedil” Dihlawī with which the Mirzā ṣāḥib’s text patently shares the lexemes “ḵẖār,” “ā’īnah” and “jawhar” and latently, “shikwah” and “gilā”: dar shikwah-e ḵẖār ast gul-e ābilah-e man īn ā’īnah-e ṣādah za jawhar gilā dārad My blister-flowers complain about the thorns This unburnished mirror complains about polish-marks Prima facie, the Mirzā ṣāḥib’s text conflates two major mażmūns of the Persian-Urdu poetic universe: that of frenzied love (junūn, the ur-symbol of which is the love-crazed Majnūn) and the Manifestation of the Divine Beloved (jalwah, the ur-symbol of which is Moses at T̤ūr). The first hemistich indites imagery conventionally associated with the mażmūn of junūn, viz. frenzied wandering in thorny, brambly wildernesses. The second hemistich indites imagery traditionally associated with the mażmūn of jalwah, viz. the intense desire to see, reflection, burnish/scratch-marks, mirror etc. The Mirzā ṣāḥib’s conflated the imagery and topoi of junūn and jalwah again: yak alif besh nahīñ ṣaiqal-e ā’īnah hanoz chāk kartā hūñ maiñ jab sey kih garebāñ samjhā Mirror-burnish still no more than a single Alif I’ve been rending my collar ever since I understood it pā badāman ho rahā hūñ baskih maiñ ṣeḥrā naward ḵẖār-e pā haiñ jawhar-e ā’īnah-e zānū mujhey I, desert-wanderer am sitting down The knee-mirror’s burnish lines are to me thorns in my feet/ The thorns in my feet Are The knee-mirror’s burnish lines This distich appears in the Persian dīwān as well: raftam az kār wa hamān dar fikr-e ṣeḥrā gard’īm jawhar-e ā’īnah zānūst ḵẖār-e pā-e man These are two contradictory topoi about the Beloved. The Beloved in the mażmūn of frenzy is the Absent Beloved, the absentis carus whereas the Beloved of the mażmūn of jalwah is the Hyper-Present Beloved. This seeming contaminatio of discordant topoi and imagery between the first and second hemistichs infuses this distich with a penumbra of “semantic split,” a poetic flaw termed in Persian-Urdu rhetorical theory as “‘aib-e do laḵẖt,” where the two hemistichs of a distich lack “rabt̤,” poetic coherence/connection and are hence termed ġhair-marbūt̤. Therefore, Fran’s very pertinent “big” question: how to put it all together? The commentators diverge on the “objective correlative” of the lexeme “ā’īnah.” The main similies (excluding the ones which compare mirror with the mirror of poetry, ā’īnah-e suḵẖan) are comparing “mirror” with “longing for sight” (Naẓm T̤abāt̤abāī, Ḥasrat Mohānī, Yūsuf Salīm Chishtī, Suhā Mujaddidī, Muḥammad Bashīr Aḥmad But̤t̤, Āġhā Muḥammad Bāqir, Āsī Lakhnawī) or “soles of the feet” (Labbhū Rām “Josh” Malsiyānī) or with “eyes” or “heart” (Beḵẖwud Mohānī, Qāżī Sa‘īd al-Dīn). I’ll take “longing for sight” (ḥasrat-e dīd) first. The first hemistich speaks of the extreme kinetic frenzy of a desperate, passionate search, which sits rather ill with being compared in a similie with “ā’īnah,” especially since the idiom “ā’īnah ban jānā” means to be static and frozen due to amazement or bewilderment! Some of the commentators (But̤t̤, Bāqir) posit the tertium comparationis (the wajh-e shabbah) between the longing for sight and the mirror being that of frantically running about in frenzied search which renders the persona loquens “ḥayrān,” the traditional similie of a mirror. “ḥayrān” from the Arabic “ḥayr” is “being astonished, confounded, bewildered disturbed”; “being dazzled.” ḥayrat (also from the Arabic “ḥayr”) is “being astounded, confounded”; “amazement, consternation, perturbation, stupor.” All these states have to do with staticity, rather than the kineticity expressed in the imagery of the first distich. (Only!) Malsiyānī states that the “foot of ardour” has been called a mirror since it’s been rubbed constantly and burnished into a mirror (pā-e shawq ko ā’īnah is liye kahā hai kih woh ghis ghis kar ā’īnah ban gayā hai). This accounts for the thorns, but as Fran says “it has major silliness problems of its own.” Silliness apart, I’m afraid that there’s no poetic precedent (ṣanad) from any precursor poet in support of this similie! Beḵẖwud Mohānī states that the mirror is the “mirror of the eye or the heart” (ā’īnah-e chasm yā ā’īnah-e dil). I’ll beg to posit that the mirror here can be posited as both eye and heart, in fact, the “eye of the heart,” the oculus cordis, the ‘ain-al qalb, the chasm-e dil. Gazing upon the Divine Presence, experiencing kashf (Revelation) and tajallī (Epiphany) is possible only through the spiritual eye, the eye of the heart. Both tajallī and jalwah are from the same triliteral Arabic root JA-LA-WA. jalwah is a Qur’ānic word, occurring four times in the Qur’ān in three forms-59:3 aljalā; 91:3 jallāhā; 92:2 tajallā and 7:143 tajallā. From the same triliteral Arabic root is also jalā, “to become clear, evident, manifest”; “to reveal itself, be revealed; to appear, show, come to light, come out, manifest itself”; “to be manifested, be expressed, find expression.” Al-Ġhazālī in the book of the Iḥyā ‘Ulūm-al-Dīn entitled “the book of the revelations of the marvels of the heart” (kitāb sharḥ ‘ajā’ib-al qalb) drawing on Qur’ān 83.14 (kallā bal rāna ‘alá qulūbihim mā kānū yaksibūna: “By no means! On their hearts is the rust of their actions”) indites the image of the rusty heart-mirror requiring burnish to be able to reflect the Light of the Divine. Burnishing the heart-mirror so as to prevent it from “rusting” in order to reflect the Refulgence of the Divine Presence is a major Ṣūfī poetic image. A “straight-forward” distich on this topos: meḥw kun naqsh-e dūī az waraq-e sīnah-e mā ai nigāhat alif-e ṣaiqal-e ā’īnah-e mā Efface the images of duality from my heart’s page Your gaze is my mirror’s Alif-burnish If the “mirror” in the second hemistich is to be semantically disclosed as “heart-mirror,” then what about “pulling out” the thorn-like burnish lines? As Fran says, this is “a large and peculiar leap; why exactly (other than shape) are the polish-lines like thorns, and how are they to be pulled out, and by whom, and from what?” The venerable commentators unanimously semantically disclose “sey” as an ablative postposition, meaning “of,” “from; out of.” Hence, “baraṅg-e ḵẖār mirey ā’īney sey jawhar khaiñch” has been rendered “pull out thorn-like burnish-lines from my mirror.” Ancient mirrors were of metal and would require burnish to be able to reflect images. The polishing instrument would be repeatedly scratched on the metal’s surface, which would leave burnish-lines called “alif-e ṣaiqal” since the shape of the burnish marks would resemble the Arabic character Alif. These burnish marks can also be compared to thorns due to their shapes being similar. The question still remains, however, what does it mean to “pull out” these burnish-lines? This part of the text is the most problematic part, prompting Josh Malsiyānī to compare the mirror to a foot from which the “thorn” may be removed! The imagery’s extremely complex: a concrete act, burnish-lines produced on a metal mirror while polishing it is metaphorically equated with thorns, but these thorns are to be removed, pulled out, whereas the burnish-marks are to be “put in” the mirror. It’s possible to “solve” this “puzzle” by philology. The meaning of “sey” as an ablative postposition meaning “of,” “from; out of” is the most salient meaning, the meaning that’s processed the fastest in terms of psycholinguistics. This would be the m‘anī-e qarīb, the “immediate” meaning of “sey.” “sey,” however, is bisemic, also being the oblative case singular of sā, “like” (as in mujh-sā, “like me” tujh-sā, “like you” etc.) which would be the non-salient proximate meaning, the m‘anī-e ġharīb. “jawhar khaiñch” would thus mean burnishing the heart-mirror, the actual physical act of burnishing being similar to “drawing” in the sense of “drawing” a sword, a pulling, elongated motion. Thus, “baraṅg-e ḵẖār mirey ā’īney sey jawhar khaiñch” can be rendered into prose as “baraṅg-e ḵẖār mirey ā’īney [jai]sey jawhar [apney ā’īney par bhī] khaiñch,” i.e., “mirey ā’īney sey” is “mirey ā’īney jaisey.” There are thus now two Actants in this distich, one interlocutor and this distich’s persona loquens. The interlocutor queries “What’s the end (i.e., the result) of ardent efforts to seek the Beloved?” to which the persona loquens replies “The Beloved’s locus is not outside the Lover, but within, being the Lover’s Heart. Burnish your heart-mirror even as I have.” Both hemistich can thus be made to contextually cohere and this distich then evokes the Ṣūfī topos of waḥdat al-shahūd, the Unity of Witnessing: Ask not the end of ardent efforts to seek the Beloved Draw thorn-like burnish lines Like those on my mirror
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 17:55:53 +0000