Ghazal 202, Verse 8

{202,8}

haa;N nashaa:t-e aamad-e fa.sl-e bahaarii vaah vaah
phir hu))aa hai taazah saudaa-e ;Gazal-;xvaanii mujhe

1) indeed-- the exultation of the coming of the spring season-- bravo!
2) again the madness/frenzy of ghazal-recitation has become fresh to me

Notes:

haa;N : 'Yes, aye; indeed, verily; by the by, forsooth'. (Platts p.1216)

 

nashaa:t : 'Liveliness, sprightliness, cheerfulness, gladness, glee, joy, pleasure, exultation, triumph'. (Platts p.1139)

 

saudaa : 'The black bile (one of the four humours of the body), atrabilis; melancholy; hypochondria; frenzy, madness, insanity; love; desire, concupiscence; ambition'. (Platts p.695)

Nazm:

Indeed, oh exultation of spring, bravo-- you're beyond words [teraa kyaa kahnaa]! Please just warm me up a bit more, so that I would recite ghazals. (227)

== Nazm page 227

Bekhud Dihlavi:

He says, indeed, oh exultation of the spring season, you're an indescribable marvel [terii kyaa baat hai]! Having seen your gradual arrival, again the madness of ghazal-recitation has come to me afresh. That is, through your help I've become inspired for ghazal-recitation. (285)

Bekhud Mohani:

Oh exultation of the spring season, you're beyond words [teraa kyaa kahnaa]! Please just warm me up a bit more. Again the ardor for ghazal-recitation has been born in me. (401)

Arshi:

Compare {24,6}. (301)

FWP:

SETS == EXCLAMATION; POETRY
MADNESS: {14,3}
SPRINGTIME: {13,2}

The first line is heavily exclamatory, and the commentators generally take it straightforwardly: oh how fine, the spring season has come! The delights of the coming of spring do, after all, form a classic ghazal theme. And yet-- what is that quite unnecessary 'indeed' [haa;N] doing there, if not suggesting some further thoughts, some reservations, some additional depth of discussion or argument? As so often, we have to wait-- under mushairah performance conditions-- for the second line to give us further insight.

And in the second line, the word saudaa works strongly to create an effect that is, if not entirely negative (since madness is the lover's natural domain), certainly no better than ambivalent. A sarcastic reading ('Oh, thanks a lot, springtime-- I really needed that!') readily emerges, and feels richer and more amusing than the straightforward one. But the latter remains quite possible, of course, since the saudaa could be an 'ambition' or 'desire' (see the definition above).

Another possible implication would be that the only thing springtime means to the speaker is a fresh attack of madness, like a seasonal malarial fever. Other people may rhapsodize over the birds and the bees and the flowers and the breezes, but the poet knows only the saudaa , literally the 'black bile', of his art. And what he's forced to, in his fresh creative (?) 'madness', is not even necessarily poetic composition, but only 'recitation'. Is the season calling him back from his apathy, and whipping him arbitrarily into a melancholic frenzy? Think of the beginning of 'The Waste Land': 'April is the cruellest month'.

Compare Mir's more enigmatic reaction to the (possible) coming of spring: M{1579,2}.