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}
For background see 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 This verse is from a different, unpublished, ham-:tar;h ghazal from 1816, and is included for comparison. In the unpublished ghazal, this was the sixth verse.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 Persian-style 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; he includes Indic words too. As in English, the relationship of the two nouns is flexible and must be deduced from the context. More examples: {11,4x}; {12,5x}; {40,6x}; {68,3}; {129,5x}; {130,5x}; {145,7x}; {208,10}; {217,8x}; {222,2x}; {227,1}. (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)