Ghazal 60, Verse 1

Nazm:

The way lightning is the limit case [of light intolerable to the eyes], in the same way the author has expressed the limit case of jealousy: I myself burn at my own strength of vision. The same meaning he has expressed very clearly in a later verse: {153,1}. (55-56)

== Nazm page 55; Nazm page 56

Bekhud Dihlavi:

He's expressed the perfection of jealousy with such excellence that it's impossible to praise it sufficiently. He says, seeing the radiance of the beloved's face, I ought to have burned up-- why didn't I burn up? Now the result has emerged that seeing my own strength of sight, I burn [with jealousy]. That is, jealousy has lit a fire within my heart. (103)

Josh:

The use of 'burn' in the two lines is entirely different; this pleasure of language is especially worthy of note. (139)

FWP:

SETS == WORD
GAZE: {10,12}

Ghalib originally composed a ghazal of twelve verses (Raza p. 277); he chose to include all twelve (Hamid p. 49) in his published divan. More on this topic: S. R. Faruqi's choices.

Here's a verse where wordplay is hard to distinguish from meaning-play. For the whole pleasure of it hinges on the various meanings of jalnaa and taab . The literal meaning of jalnaa is of course 'to burn', but its range of extended, semi-metaphorical associations include suffering, pain, and jealousy. Similarly, taab (a Persian cognate to the Sanskrit taap , as in tapasya ) has the root meaning of 'heat', from which its associations of wrath, radiance, and endurance are all semi-metaphorically derived.

In line one, the sight of the taab , radiance, of the beloved's face ought to consume me in flame (1a); or, my own taab , endurance, of the sight of the beloved's face ought to consume me in flames of jealousy/wrath at my toughness and presumption (1b). In line two, in either case I burn with jealousy and rage against my own 'strengh of sight', which has caused me to behave not with the glorious self-abandon of the moth flying into the candle-flame, but with an entirely discreditable, un-lover-like enduringness (see {1,2} for the related concepted of sa;xt-jaanii , 'tough-lifedness'). In short, it is my failure to jalnaa that causes me to jalnaa ; the problem is my taab of the beloved's taab . (For another verse based on taab wordplay, see {204,8}.)

Nazm rightly points to {153,1} as an excellent example of the same theme-- at the thought of his being able to see the beloved, the lover exclaims that he is 'jealous of himself'.