“The moon waxes big so that it might become your forehead”: Ghalib’s metaphor-inverting verses

[Note: I am returning to blogging on this site after  nearly four years. I hope to continue with a series of posts on Urdu poetry.]

The human mind works through metaphors and analogies. And no one understands this better than a poet. In the sub-continental Urdu-Persian poetic tradition, the metaphor was carried to great heights of sophistication during the classical period. The “Indian style” of Persian poetry (sabk-e-hindi) and its allied Urdu tradition became famous (some would say notorious) for their “metaphorical excesses.”[1] Mirza Asadullah Khan “Ghalib” (1797-1869) one of the foremost exponents of this style, is known for his intricate and abstract metaphorical constructions, so much so that he is sometimes called a “mushkil pasand shaayar” or “difficulty loving poet.” But Ghalib also wrote many accessible verses and has always been a very popular poet in India and Pakistan. Choosing some verses from his Urdu and Persian ghazals, in this essay I discuss a particular device that Ghalib used to impart freshness to established metaphors.

Ghalib on the Faith of Faithlessness

Ghalib has much to say on the meaning of faith (deen) and infidelity/faithlessness (kufr). A recurring theme is his insistence on constancy and purity of belief, as opposed to outward manifestations of piety or faith. The conclusion is that, if one is pure of heart or steadfast in faith, then the actual object of belied matters less. I had blogged earlier on a Farsi verse to that effect. Subsequently I was reminded of a very powerful, direct Urdu verse which echoes a similar statement. In this newer entry I am putting both next to each other.

The Farsi verse exhibits Ghalib's seemingly insatiable penchant for paradoxes or for juxtaposing opposing thoughts/concepts and showing them to be somehow connected/the same at some deeper level. Like the other Farsi verses I have previously commented on, this one too does not show too many intricate or ornate metaphors or improbably flights of fancy (as Ghalib is known to do from time to time). Such proclivity (fancy metaphors) is usually recognized to be a feature of the "Indian School" of Persian poetry (sabk-e-hind or sabk-e-hindi) of which Bedil and Ghalib are two excellent examples. Click here for a nice blog entry on some of Bedil's verses. A very informative article on the poetics of the Indian style of Persian poetry by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi is available here (pdf format).

Anyway, I digress. The point is, this verse is marked not by fancy metaphors so much as densely packed philosophical observations where the philosophical point is made by presenting something that at first glance present a paradox, or that does not seem to belong together. But the opposing things are shown to be connected somehow. Now on to the Farsi verse itself:

کفر و دین چیست جز آلایش پندار وجود

پاک شو پاک کہ ہم کفر تو دین تو شود

kufr-o-deen chest juz aalaaish-e-pindaar-e-vujood
paak sho paak ke ham kufr-e-to din-e-to shavad

What are faithlessness and faith
but corruptions of the conceit of being/existence
Purify yourself so that even
Your infidelity becomes your religion/faith

Both religion and infidelity or faithlessness are imperatives born of the Ego (the conceit of being). They both corrupt the Truth in their own way because neither conquers the Ego. But if the Ego is quelled through purification or if purification consists of quelling the ego, then faithlessness itself can be as good as faith. As is often the case, the first line is beautiful and expresses an important thought, but doesn't surprise us too much. Surprise is usually reserved for the second line, because in a mushaairah, the first line would be repeated several times building up the suspense for what was to come. The second line does not disappoint. First we are told to purify ourselves (presumably of duplicity, deceit and dishonesty), and then the punch is delivered at the last moment. If yuo purify yourself, then even your faithlessness (ham kufr-e-to) will become your faith (deen-e-to).

In an famous Urdu verse, Ghalib plays with this theme of a steadfastly followed infidelity being as good as faith. Here is the verse:

وفاداری بہ شرط استواری اصل ایماں ےہ

مرے بت خانے میں تو کعبے میں گاڑھو برہمن کو

vafaadaarii ba shart-e-ustuvaarii asl-e-iimaaN hai
mare but;xaane meN to ka((be meN gaa;Rho barahmin ko

Faithfulness, as long as it is firm, is the essence/root of religion/faith
If he dies in the temple (idol-house) bury the Brahmin in the Ka'ba

Fran Pritchett's entry for this verse is found here. The Urdu verse makes a point quite similar to the Farsi verse, though I think much more firmly, startlingly. Pritchett comments on the effect of the imperative tense of the second line. There is fantastic use of strong verbs, marnaa (to die) and gaaRhna (to bury) and of course the sheer contradictory pleasure of seeing the Brahmin, the scion of Hindu faith, buried (no less!!) in the Ka'ba (no less!!). Ghalib uses the power of this immediately felt contradiction (the Brahmin who dies in the temple, is to be buried in the Ka'ba), to point to the philosophical contradiction. That even faithlessness (of the Brahman) can be equal to faith, if only it is pure, it is firm, it is steadfast. The firmess in this instance of the Brahmin's faith is illustrated by his death in the temple. It is as if the Brahmin has followed the advice given by Ghalib in the second line of the Farsi verse: Purify yourself and your kufr (Hindu belief, idol worship) will be as good as deen/religion/Islam.

Finally, the image of dying in the house of worship, as a sign of faith, reminds me of Hazrat Ali's death in the Ka'ba, which is also invoked as a powerful symbol of his faith.

The metaphor of morning as death in Ghalib

Morning (or more precisely, dawn) is often a metaphor in poetry for birth or the start of a new life or a new social order. As typified by Saahir Ludhianvi's famous refrain वह सुबह कभी तो आएगी (woh subah kabhi to aayegi; that morning will come someday) in which morning is a metaphor for the new world free of injustice, exploitation and oppression. So keep that image squared away in your mind.

Now in parallel, almost contrariwise, at least in South Asia, a burning lamp or a flame is a metaphor for the soul or life-force. Thus the familiar trope in Bollywood movies to show death or the passing away of the soul from the body is to show the extinguishing of a flame.

So here is the rub. A lamp usually burns in the night. With the coming of dawn the lamp's inevitable fate is to be extinguished. Thus here morning takes away rather than gives life. Couple this now with the usual importance given, in the Ghazal universe to the night as the realm of all poetry, of colorful assemblies, of wine drinking and romance, or life itself. In the world of the classical Ghazal, the poet comes alive during the night, whether because he exults in shab-e-visaal (the night of union with the beloved, usually singular!) or pines in shabaan-e-hijraN (nights of separation from the beloved, usually plural!).

Thus perhaps it is not surprising that we find in Ghalib a beautiful inversion of the dawn = birth metaphor to a dawn = death metaphor. Metaphor (mazmuN) in general is a vital part of the Ghazal, and mazmuN afiirnii (metaphor creation) is considered even one notch superior to ma;anii afiirnii (meaning creation). But I don't know enough to say whether this particular metaphor originates with Ghalib or not.

Here I take a look at two verses, one Urdu and one Farsi, that both offer examples of this mazmuN of morning being death. First the famous Urdu verse (Ghazal 78, verse 7):

غم ہستی کا اسد کس سے ہو جز مرگ علاج
شمع ہر رنگ میں جلتی ہے سحر ہوتے تک

gham-e-hasti kaa 'asad' kis se ho juz marg ilaaj
sham;a har rang meiN jalti hai seher hote tak

The sorrow of existence 'Asad', what is its cure but death
The lamp burns in every color, until the morning comes

Click here to read Frances Pritchett's commentary on the verse as well as of other commentators she has collected.

First note that the verse follows a well-established pattern wherein the first line offers a general proposition and the second line offers a poetic "proof" for the "theorem." The first line is a more-or-less straightforward proposition: life is suffering, and there is no cure for it except death. To live is to suffer. So far so good. Poetically said, but not quite sublime. ـIt is the second line that takes the verse to Ghalibian levels. Here the lamp is a metaphor for the human body, while its flame is the spark of life. But Ghalib emphasizes not only the light given by the flame (the light of life) but also the heat (burning, jalnaa). Not only is the flame life of the lamp, as the soul is the life of the body, the flame also burns (jalnaa), its essence is burning as the soul also suffers, its essence is suffering (what is a flame if we take away the burning, what is life if we take away suffering?). Here Ghalib deploys the double meaning of the verb "jalnaa", to burn or to suffer. Further, not only does the lamp burn, but as all the commentators note, it is powerless to extinguish itself. Only the coming of morning will extinguish the lamp and relieve it of its burning/suffering. But that relief is the relief of death, for then the flame is extinguished and life is no more. So death extinguishes all the types of burning/suffering that life brings as morning extinguishes every colored flame of the lamp.

Of course as Pritchett notes in passing, from the point of view of Sufism or Vedanta death is only another beginning, the start of another journey. For one who is aware of divinity, of the oneness of being (wahdat al-vujood), of the True nature of Reality, death is a continuation of life by other means, as it were. This is where Ghalib takes us in his Farsi verse:

نشاط ھستی حق دارد از مرگ ایمنم غالب
چراغم چوں گل آشامد نسیم صبح گاھان را

nishaat-e-hasti-e-haq daarad az marg aimaanam Ghalib
chiragham chuN gul aashaamad naseem-(e)-subaH gaahaan raa

A literal translation based on Steingass might be:
I exult in the existence of God/Ultimate Reality, from death I am safe/secure Ghalib
My lamp, like a flower/rose drinks off the morning breeze

Before we compare it with the Urdu verse, a couple of small semantic points:
I haven't been able to find out if gaahaan (گاھان ) has an independent meaning, mostly Steingass uses it in combination with some other word to mean at such and such time (andar-gāhān, Intermediate times) or na-gahaan meaning unexpectedly or untimely. So perhaps naseem-e-subaH gaahaan should be read as one phrase (morning time breeze).

Secondly I am not sure why Ghalib uses the verb aashaamidan (unless aashaamad is not the third person singular of this verb) here. A lamp drinking or sipping the breeze seems funny (unless the breeze is like oil that the lamp drinks to burn).

In any case back to the main theme. We know that the morning breeze is the death of the lamp, but it enlivens the flower. Ghalib's lamp (the lamp of life of a Sufi or of one immersed in the existence of God/Brahman) unlike the regular lamp (the lamp of life of an ordinary person who considers death to be the end of life) described in the Urdu verse, is not extinguished by the morning breeze, rather it is enlivened by it. And why is that? Of course, the first line offers the clue. Because he is immersed in the existence of God or the Ultimate Reality.

This verse follows a logical structure quite similar to the Urdu verse. Once again, the first line offers a proposition. Now instead of being told that suffering in life ends only with death, Ghalib tells us he is secure from death because he knows the secret of existence. Once again, the first line itself though poetic is not particularly thought provoking. As Pritchett might note, like a good Ghazal verse, we have to wait not only till the second line of the verse but till the last part of the second line (the part about the morning breeze) to get the full impact of the metaphor. And once again, as with the Urdu verse, the second line takes the verse to a new level. It offers "proof" or example of the proposition stated in the first line.

Of course in both verses, as always we need to distinguish Ghalib, the historical personality, from "Asad" or "Ghalib" of the poem. The question of whether, in real life Ghalib would have been as sanguine about death, or as immersed in the Oneness of Being, is in some ways a moot point. We cannot expect the classical Ghazal to be personal in the same way as say the Romantic poets off the 19th century. "The poet in the poem" in the case of the Ghazal is a vexed issue. See S.R. Faruqi's essay on this theme.

Finally, in one sense the Farsi verse is also a response to the Urdu verse. It is true that life's suffering ends only in death, but one need not be afraid of death, if only one knows the secret of the Brahman, the Ultimate Reality.

As Kabir would say:

भला हुआ मोरी मटकी फूटी रे
मैं तो पनिया भरन से छूटी रे !

bhalaa hua mori matkii phootii re
main to paniyaa bharan se chhootii re

Its just as well that my pot lies shattered
I have been released from the duty of filling water!

The Lesser Known Ghalib (4): The Veil of Existence

This time's entry on the lesser known Ghalib collects two verses, one Urdu and one Farsi, which, in my opinion seem to display connected philosophical features. They both play with the theme that the world of appearance (that which we see around us) is a veil over (Divine) reality, it both gestures towards the Divine presence and elides it.

The first verse in Urdu, is one of my all-time favorites (Ghazal 98, verse 10, rhyme scheme "aab mein"). It goes

ہے غیب غیب جس کو سمجھتے ہیں ہم شحود

ہےں خواپ میں حنوز جو جاگے ہیں خواب میں

hai Ghaib-e-Ghaib jisko samajhte haiN ham shuhood
haiN Khvaab meiN hanoz jo jaage haiN Khvaab meiN

That which we think of as seeing/the seen is the hidden of the hidden
They are dreaming still those who have awakened in a dream

Click here to read Hali, S.R.Faruqi and Frances Pritchett on this verse. As Faruqi notes "the metaphor in the second line immediately captures the imagination with its 'peerless beauty.'" Faruqi continues:

"People who, in a dream, see themselves as awakened, are still in a dream (and asleep). When they consider that they have woken up, they are only in error. What kind of error is this? This error is not devoid of two aspects. The sleeping individual has not had the experience of awakening. When he thinks that he's had this experience, he's only in error. In this way, to consider appearance and shuhuud to be the experience of divine wisdom is an error.But this error is not entirely without reality. The way the experience of waking in a dream is a shadow of the real experience, in the same way knowledge of appearances is a shadow of knowledge of the Truth. The second aspect is that the person who is at that time absorbed in a dream, will sometime or other wake up. Just as nonexistence is a proof of existence, in the same way sleep/dream is a proof of wakefulness."

But as Faruqi also notes, while the second line entices us with the beauty of its image, the first line also packs complex thoughts very densely. Ghaib itself is an incredibly multivalent word meaning "Absence; invisibility; concealment; anything that is absent, or invisible, or hidden (from sight or mental perception); a mystery, secret; an event of futurity; the invisible world, the future state" according to Platts Dictionary. So the phrase Ghaib-e-Ghaib right at the beginning sets us up with an interesting mental construct, the absence of absence, the hidden of the hidden, or the concealment of concealment. If we take Ghaib to mean hidden/concealed then we get the following: Existence, the world that exists, which we consider to be a manifestation of the Divine presence (shuhood) is actually only the concealment of the concealed, a curtain, a veil over the Ghaib. As Faruqi says, "even seeing things in the form of Divinity alone does not bestow knowledge about the true Essence; rather, it only gestures toward that knowledge." Just as waking up in a dream is not really waking up but only a "gesture" towards real waking. So far so good. But I wonder if it would be valid to take Ghaib to mean "absence", then shuhood/appearance/manifestation is the absence of absence, its the non-existence of non-existence, i.e. existence itself. I am not sure this reading works very well in conjunction with the second line, but maybe someone can think of a connection.

Now let us compare the foregoing Urdu verse to the Farsi one below (rhyme scheme "aabi besh nist"):

خویش را صورت پرشتان ہرزہ رسوا کردہاند

جلوہ می نامند و در معنی نقابی بیش نیست

Khvesh ra soorat parastaaN harzah rusva kardand
jalwah mi namand dar ma'ani naqaabi besh nist

Perhaps an Urdu translation would be:
Khud ko soorat parastoN ne bevajah rusva kiya
jise jalwa kehte haiN, naqaab se besh nahiN

In vain have the form-worshipers disgraced themselves
What they call the splendor of appearance is no more than a veil on reality

It seems to me, if I haven't misunderstood the Farsi, that this verse can be read in at least two ways. In one reading Ghalib is saying, "The worshipers of form have disgraced themselves for no reason. They are actually not that far wrong. After all the splendor of appearance is only a veil on reality, it points to reality (just as the shuhood gestures towards the Ghaib or waking in a dream, though not waking in actual fact, is still a reflection of that fact). I would like to read it in this way, but I admit it may be a stretch.
In the second reading, which is less far-fetched maybe, Ghalib says, "Why have the form worshippers disgraced themselves for no reason? Their God is only a veil, a false God, not something you should disgrace yourself believing in, unless you are misguided (i.e. unless you mistake waking up in a dream with actually waking up).

I think it seems valid to claim that time and again Ghalib shows himself to be preoccupied with this Sufi and Vedantic trope or existence being a veil over the essence, what is called maya in Vedanta. His more well known verse,

jabki tujh bin nahiN koi maujood
phir yeh haNgamah ai Khuda kyaa hai?

seems to hover around in the same general space.

The Lesser Known Ghalib(3): The Mirror of Imagination

The next installment in the series of lesser-known Ghalib verses follows. Click here for my other Ghalib posts. I thought I would pick a Farsi (Persian) verse this time. Ghalib wrote many more verses in Persian than he did in Urdu, though understandably, in India his Urdu divan is far more popular. The story goes that Ghalib himself considered his Farsi ghazals to be far superior to his Urdu ones. I don't know how true the story is, though his opinion seems reasonable for a time in which mastery of Farsi was considered superior to mastery of Urdu. But of course in classic Ghalib style, this opinion of his mentioned above, is subverted somewhat by his own Urdu verse:
jo kahe yeh ke rekhta kyunke ho rashk-e-farsi
gufta-e-Ghalib ek bar use padh ke suna, ke yun!

For the one who asks, how can rekhta (Urdu) be the envy of Persian
Recite to him just one, Ghalib's poetry and say, this is how!

Anyway, after that long preface, here is the verse that caught my eye.

غالب چو شخس و عکس در آینہ خیال

با خویشتن یکی و دوچار خودیم ما

Ghalib chu shaks o aks dar aainah-e-khayaal
ba khveshtan yaki o dochaar khudim ma

Ghalib, like the person and the image in the mirror of imagination
With ourselves we are one and we confront ourselves or
I with myself am one and I confront myself

Although the farsi "ma" is translated as "we", if Farsi like Urdu allows the first person plural to be used by individuals (as in "hum" and "hamara") then probably me and I would be better translations and would make it more effective.

This seems yet another instance of Ghalib's fascination with paradoxes and counter-intuitive assertions. If the first line is taken without any punctuation, he seems to be saying, I am one and yet I also confront myself (in my thoughts), just as a person confronts his image of himself in his own thoughts. Perhaps not too too interesting.

But if we add a comma between "aks" and "dar", then maybe it becomes a little more involved. Or at least then a persons' self-image in the mirror of his thoughts is being compared to his reflection (in a real mirror). A thing and its reflection are two different things, yet they are also the same thing, and if they were not "the same", they would not exist as different entities. Similarly, we ourselves and our mental image are two different things, they confront each other, and yet, they both exist because they are one. Another way to say this is, "if you are the person thinking about yourself then why should there be a confrontation/encounter? The answer is that its like a person and his reflection. Aren't they the same? Yes they are. Aren't they also confronting each other? Yes they are."

Any other takes on this?