har daa;G-e taazah yak dil-e daa;G-inti:zaar hai
((ar.z-e fa.zaa-e siinah-e dard-imtihaa;N nah puuchh
1) every fresh wound is a single wound-awaiting heart
2) the offering/breadth of the spaciousness of the pain-testing breast-- don't ask
daa;G : 'A mark burnt in, a brand, cautery; mark, spot, speck; stain; stigma; blemish; iron-mould; freckle; pock; scar, cicatrix; wound, sore; grief, sorrow; misfortune, calamity; loss, injury, damage'. (Platts p.501)
((ar.z : 'Presenting or representing; representation, petition, request, address; — Breadth, width'. (Platts p.760)
fa.zaa : 'Width, spaciousness, openness, extensiveness (of ground, &c.); an open area, a court, a yard; a spacious tract, a wide expanse of land, a plain'. (Platts p.782)
SETS == GROTESQUERIE; INEXPRESSIBILITY
TESTING: {4,4}
Raza p. 165; Raza p. 166. S. R. Faruqi's choices. This verse is from a different, unpublished, ham-:tar;h ghazal from 1816, and is included for comparison. In the unpublished ghazal, this was the sixth verse.
About noun compounds: This verse displays two sets of compounded nouns, literally 'wound-wait' [daa;G-inti:zaar] and 'pain-test' [dard-imtihaa;N]. These constructions, so versatile and ubiquitous in English ('junk food', 'horse show', 'show horse', 'vacuum cleaner', 'fire hose', 'time machine', 'endurance test'), are uncommon in Urdu. (Cases like :taalib-((ilm are just dropped i.zaafat phrases; a real noun compound would be ((ilm-:taalib ). Ghalib uses such compounded nouns more freely in his early verses, in which he's more willing to warp the syntax of his lines. As in English, the relationship of the two nouns is flexible and must be deduced from the context. More examples: {12,5x}; {40,6x}; {129,5x}; {130,5x}; {145,7x}; {208,10}. (Petrified compound words that have Persian-verb-based second elements are of course another matter, and appear everywhere: consider jigar-sozii and sar-parastii and the like, and the extremely bonded case of dil-chaspii .)
The wordplay with ((ar.z and fa.zaa suggests a vision of the lover's breast as becoming constantly wider and more open (which in principle is of course a virtue). Each wound contributes to the process by literally 'opening up' and exposing a new, formerly inner part, so that the surface area increases. And then each wound itself somehow becomes a whole new heart, ready and waiting for another wound, starting the process all over again in what must quickly become something like a fractal geometry of constantly multiplying wounds and hearts.
Is this grotesque, or what! It reminds me of {62,6} with its vision of many additional blood-spouting eyes.
Anyway, this whole process is so enjoyable that the breast is 'pain-testing'-- because it's constantly looking around for newer and sharper sources of pain, and never gets enough. It could also be that the breast is 'pain-tested', but then the parallelism with the first line (where only 'wound-awaiting' works, and not 'wound-awaited') would be lost. In any case, this such a testing, or tested, heart is well worthy of making, or else of becoming, an 'offering' or a 'presentation' so extraordinary that it's simply inexpressible in words.
Gyan Chand:
My breast likes pain and wounds; it tests their intensity. When a new wound of longing occurs, then it becomes a kind of heart that would be waiting for pain. As if each new wound searches for another new wound. How can the expansiveness/scope of such a wound-loving breast be conveyed! (317)