Ghazal 112, Verse 4

Nazm:

That is, in passion there is certainly torment, and I don't have the strength and power to support the delight of torment. (120)

== Nazm page 120

Bekhud Dihlavi:

He says, without passion, life can't even pass-- and for enduring the difficulties of passion, there's not even enough strength in the heart. The meaning is that in order to pass one's life, one is compelled to established relationships with the world as well, and the heart becomes tired of the 'grief of daily life' as well. (170)

Bekhud Mohani:

I have fallen into a great disaster, for without passion it's difficult to pass one's life, and my state is such that I don't even have the strength needed to support the troubles of passion. (226)

FWP:

SETS
PROPORTIONALITY: {6,4}

Here's a real 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' verse. If you don't have passion, the sheer day-to-day-ness of a lifetime can't be endured. If you do have passion, its torments will kill you. Either way, your goose is cooked.

Another, and even bleaker, statement of such a dilemma appears in {20,7}: although grief is fatal, nobody with a heart can escape it: the difference is only between being killed by either the 'grief of passion', or else by the ' grief of 'dailiness / livelihood / the world' [rozgaar].

This verse seems a little more cheerful than that one, because of the word 'delight/relish' [la;z;zat]. Yet when we look, la;z;zat seems to be a morbidly inclined word: more often than note, Ghalib uses it with reference to the 'pleasure' of something painful: {6,4}; {15,8}; {17,7}; {53,10}*; {60,6}*; {64,7x}; {87,6}; {92,3}*; {92,5}, {165,1}. The three verses with the asterisks even feature the exact phrase, la;z;zat-e aazaar , that occurs in the present verse. (Of course, he does also use it favorably, as in {157,2} and {157,4}.)

The effect is to make passion sound like a life-occupying device of great efficiency: it offers you everything you could need to keep boredom and the quotidian at bay. You have delight, you have torment-- and long before they have time to pall, you'll be dead, because you're too weak to endure that much pleasure/pain, and so your worries about how to pass your life will become moot. Your only regret, as you leave us a few last thoughts, is that you couldn't hold out a little longer and enjoy a bit more of the la;z;zat-e aazaar before it finally did you in.

In fact la;z;zat-e aazaar is not only a piquant yoking of opposites, but also a wonderfully palindrome-like phrase, offering us first a;z;za and then aazaa, two sound-sequences that are not only internally symmetrical but also echo each other remarkably. No wonder Ghalib used the phrase again and again.