Pritchett & Cornwall's version of Ghalib's ghazal 58

This is Ghalib's Ghazal 58
balā se haiñ jo bah pesh-e naz̤ar dar-o-dīvār
nigāh-e shauq ko haiñ bāl-o-par dar-o-dīvār
Vufūr-e ashk ne kāshāne kā kiyā yih rang
kih ho gaʾe mire dīvār-o-dar dar-o-dīvār
nahīñ hai sāyah kih sun kar naved-e maqdam-e yār
gaʾe haiñ chand qadam peshtar dar-o-dīvār
huʾī hai kis qadar arzānī-e mai-e jalvah
kih mast hai tire kūche meñ har dar-o-dīvār
jo hai tujhe sar-e saudā-e intiz̤ār to ā
kih haiñ dukān-e matāʿ-e naz̤ar dar-o-dīvār
hujūm-e giryah kā sāmān kab kiyā maiñ ne
kih gir paṛe nah mire pāñv par dar-o-dīvār
vuh ā rahā mire ham-sāye meñ to sāye se
huʾe fidā dar-o-dīvār par dar-o-dīvār
naz̤ar meñ khaṭke hai bin tere ghar kī ābādī
hameshah rote haiñ ham dekh kar dar-o-dīvār
nah pūchh be-ḳhvudī-e ʿaish-e maqdam-e sailāb
kih nāchte haiñ paṛe sar bah sar dar-o-dīvār
nah kah kisī se kih ġhālib nahīñ zamāne meñ
ḥarīf-e rāz-e muḥabbat magar dar-o-dīvār

My translation is- 

What avail such forbidding doors & walls as but to the Sight present?

They pinion Ardency's flight above the bale of Adam's assent. 

So lavish a makeover has dervish tears' flood given this drab hut

My mud caked door can't open, holes in my walls won't shut

If no roof gives me shade 'tis so their welcome to avow & devoirs to pay

My doors & walls ever press a few paces forward to await her half way

The wine of the glory of your appearance flows so stintlessly in your lane

Doors & walls, in swinish stupor, as walls & doors yet remain

Think you to traffick in the tchotchkes of Vigil's Madness's unsung shop-floors?

Come see what waiting eyes, weighty sighs, have hung on walls & doors !

Whenever I amassed an arsenal sufficient for tears' final onslaught

Walls & doors fell at my feet to forego furcula's merrythought

 

If she move into my lane where eaves interlock to provide a common shade
That shadow were as Bab-El's furnace for my doors and walls remade.

Seeing my oikos so populous now, but andarun empty of thou, my eye balls so prick

I weep that my doors & walls enclose but a gormless dick

Ask not of the self annihilating ecstacy of the theophany of deluge as dance
It whirls the wreckage of walls & doors in Duality' dervish trance

Ghalib, confide in none, for Love's secret appalls

Speak, if you must, only to doors & walls

Frances Pritchett & Owen Cornwall offer the following translation

To hell with these doors and walls before my eyes!

An ardent gaze finds wings and feathers in doors and walls.

Brimming tears made the house such a blur

That my walls and doors became doors and walls.

There’s no shade. Since they heard that she’s arriving,

They’ve gone ahead to greet her, the doors and walls.

What an abundance of the wine of your glory.

In your street they’re all drunk, the doors and walls.

If you deal in waiting, then come to me—

They’re a warehouse full of gazing, my doors and walls.

Whenever I thought of shedding floods of tears,

They fell at my feet, my desperate doors and walls.

When she came and lived next door, then in the shadow,

My doors and walls adored her doors and walls.

It stings my eyes—a bustling house, without you.

I always weep, when I see doors and walls.

Don’t ask about the self-lessness of the joy when the flood comes.

For they dance, fallen end to end, the doors and walls.

Don’t tell anyone, Ghalib. For there’s no one nowadays

Fit for love secrets, except the doors and walls.

If I am not mistaken, these two versions are different in significant ways. Why is this so? 

I think the answer is that Pritchett & Conway aren't poets. They don't understand that a couplet should have a logical form. Moreover, for a venerated Muslim poet, that logic must be Islamic. Beauty in aetiology- husn-e-talil- is required. Furthermore, the style should alert the reader that a conceit of a particular type is being deployed.

Look at their version of the first couplet. 

                          To hell with these doors and walls before my eyes!

The reader understands that the poet doesn't like doors and walls. He wants to go outside. Why does he not do so? Probably, he is an invalid, or a prisoner. That is why he is saying 'Damn and blast these doors and walls!' It is an understandable emotion. But the question is why is this guy unable to go outside? Is he sick, or is he in jail? The second line supplies the answer-

An ardent gaze finds wings and feathers in doors and walls.

How sad! The fellow is a lunatic. He sees wings and feathers in doors and walls. He also says he is ardent. It is likely that he is in a padded cell. The police arrested him for some very ardent, but indecent, activity involving our feathered friends. 

What is Ghalib's couplet really about? A European might think of the Latin phrase Alis grave nil- nothing is heavy to those who have wings. An Indian might see the word 'bala'- corresponding to the English 'bale' but, in Arabic, which also means 'yes'- and be reminded of the story that when Adam said 'bala' to the question 'am I not your Lord?' he was also assenting to this baleful existence in our vale of tears. 

I have used the word 'pinion' instead of 'wing' and wholly omitted feathers because to the English reader that latter word is not poetic. Furthermore, 'pinion' is ambiguous and Ghalib is being ambiguous. He is not saying that metaphysics can raise us to some lofty height. No. Even the Simurgh is pinioned by that which enables it to soar aloft. The Yogic Paramahansa is no better off than the Sufi Sheikh because the 'Majnun' Viyogini- the separated lover who has gone mad- has come closer to the tears at the heart of things. 

For Ghalib, the winged angels are not superior to Adam. They must serve him because only he can say 'bala'. This is why, though Ghalib may be presented as an antinomian (malamati), he is never un-Islamic. We should not be surprised if the most pious Sheikhs quote Ghalib. Moreover, we profit by their explication of his meaning. There is a psychological depth to Islamic Spirituality which all can profit from. 

Turning to the second couplet, people who live in flood prone parts of India can easily understand that after a flood, the door won't open while the walls have gaping holes in them. This type of humorous comment is common in India. In the old days, the high official present would take notice of this witticism and order the P.W.D department to go and do the necessary repairs. 

Pritchett rejects the traditional explanation given by the commentators of the next couplet which merely says that the flood of tears occasioned by excessive love knocked down the walls so they have become doorways while doorways have silted up and thus become walls.

Brimming tears made the house such a blur

That you couldn't see anything let alone any doors or walls. 

That my walls and doors became doors and walls.

Nonsense! When your vision is blurred, you don't see a door where a wall is standing. You don't see anything. You may bump into the wall. You won't be trying to turn its handle as if it were a door.

Pritchett may have some philological reason for her view but it goes against human experience. Tears may cause us to lose the ability to see what is in front of us. But tears can't cause us to mistake a table for a tiger or a wall for a door. 

Ghalib's next line is mystical and theologically very complex. I've given it cursory treatment because Ghalib has not supplied the needful aetiology. How did doors and walls get to know she was coming? Presumably, because this poor fellow has been saying 'she is coming. I'm sure of it. Definitely, today is the day.' This is quite comic. However Ghalib wants a theological meaning to predominate. This is quite complex and has to do with the Akhbari tradition. As the Great Shaykh said- 'Everything that is not the Essence of the Real, is intervening imagination and vanishing shadow.' Thus, to say 'there is no shadow' (nahin hai sayah) means one has fully entered the 'barzakh' of the imagination. Doors and Walls and all which gives shade have gone towards the Essence of the Real, for the Paraclete issues from it. Though there is nothing but the ceaseless flux of forms, there is also the assurance that everything goes to destruction save the Face of God. 

There are other theological complexities in this ghazal which have to do with the influence of a new type of Islamic jurist- like Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsai who had much influence on Shias and tafzilis in India at a later time. Essentially, a 'gate' (like the 'Bab' who founded the Babi movement which in turn gave rise to the Bahai faith) was needed to access the Grace (gawth) of the Imam who remained in occultation. Walls represented traditional orthopraxy. Doors represent a liminal 'barzakh' charged with mystical energy or an essentially imaginative type.

Consider the couplet 'vuh ā rahā mire ham-sāye meñ to sāye se/ huʾe fidā dar-o-dīvār par dar-o-dīvār'.  The literal meaning is 'he is coming to become my neighbor- (humsaya) thus he will be under the shade of what gives me shade, so due to that shadow/ My walls and doors have become a sacrifice upon walls and doors.'

 On the one hand this reminds us of the story of Ayaz, who took shelter in Sultan Mahmud's shadow, when the 'bird of fortune' flew over the battlefield. The reason was that whoever is touched by shadow of 'Huma' is destined for Empery. Thus the humble slave took shelter in the 'shadow of God on Earth'. But we know, from Ahmad Ghazzali's explanation of the 'Master/Slave' dialectic of not Hegel, but Love, that the roles were actually reversed. Mahmud had taken the first step to becoming Ayaz. The latter's self abnegation removed a fetter from the soul of the destroyer of Somnath. 

But look at what Pritchett & Cornwall have written-

When she came and lived next door, then in the shadow,

My doors and walls adored her doors and walls.

Is this Sufi or is this schmaltz? Ghalib was not a cry baby. He was a handsome Turk from a family which had distinguished itself on the battlefield. The maidenhead of a girl who came and lived next door would have had more than shadows to contend with- that's for sure. 

The fact is, this is a virile sonnet with Sufi connotations- at least when recited in Urdu by people from Delhi- and I too am now a Delhi-wallah precisely because it hasn't been my home for 35 years, with the result that my Urdu accent has so improved that a Kashmiri shopkeeper in Janpath mistook me for a Pakistani 'muhajir' whereas by complexion and obesity I am clearly some sort of cow worshipping Madrasi.

The point about 'doors & walls' is that one's prick gets so hard it punches holes through them to get to the proverbial 'girl next door'. When the custom of Western type keyholes in doors spread it gave rise to much ribald commentary on the slenderness of one's member. By contrast the old fashioned qufl-e-abjad combination lock valorized the combinatorics of baroquely metaphysical poetry precisely because it might, in some magical manner, cause legs to open. But, the pay off was that once opened they could be guiltlessly abandoned by reason of the following conceit- 

tujh se qismat meñ mirī ṣūrat-e qufl-e abjad

thā likhā bāt ke bante hī judā ho jānā

This was by thou alone decreed, that my fated combination lock of features

Spell doom for our continued cohabitation as loving creatures.

In other words, precisely that which made two people click, absolves the one with the gender dimorphic, biologically ordained, lower threshold of  'parental investment', to guiltlessly fuck off. That which made the maiden succumb was her own caprice, imposed as a fate upon the bloke, which justifies his abandoning her. This is good news for ugly as fuck guys like me- coz we get the scraps-  but it isn't exactly Islamic. Ghalib's genius is to make this sort of boastful, laddish, sentiment into a theological proposition.

Notice he doesn't take sides in the then raging 'imkan-e-kizb' debate. But, to my mind, the meaning is clear. God doesn't lie. We do so as to 'free ride' on what Faith has been sustained by.

Ghalib was very much aware of the great theological and sectarian battles which were raging around him. His final couplet expresses his political philosophy of quietism. 

As for his translators- more particularly Tambram ones with names like Parthasarty, Sesadri or even Iyer- Ghalib must fondly wish we'd keep quiet and just fuck off already.