Chehel Asrar 22 - Ghazal Twenty Two

  

Ghazal 22

7 couplets  |  Riaz 1991, printed p. 463–464

اَز کِنارِ خویش مِی‌یابَم دَمادَم بُویِ یار

az kenār-e khīsh mī-yābam damādam bū-ye yār

1a  At every moment I catch the beloved’s scent from my own embrace; [1]

زان هَمِی گِیرَم بِهَر دَم خویشْتَن را دَر کِنار

zān hamī gīram be-har dam khīshtan rā dar kenār

1b  that is why I clasp myself in my arms at every breath.

Commentary on couplet 1

The speaker catches the beloved’s scent within his own embrace and responds by clasping himself repeatedly. Fragrance makes another’s presence perceptible where the arms seem to encounter only the self. Damādam and the repeated breath give the action an intimate rhythm, as though each fresh perception renews it. The image accommodates remembered bodily affection as well as a spiritual reading of inward nearness. It also closely parallels the opening of Rūmī’s Dīvān-e Shams, ghazal 1077, whose second half asks why the speaker should not embrace himself each night.[4] Here that question becomes a causal declaration. The shared image does not erase the distinct wording or settle the authorship and transmission of the complete poems.

چُون کِنارَم را مِیانی نِیسْت پَیْدا هَر زَمان

chūn kenār-am rā miyānī nīst paydā har zamān

2a  Since no waist ever appears within my embrace,

دَر مِیانِ خُونِ دِل جانَم غَمَش گِیرَد کِنار

dar miyān-e khūn-e del jān-am gham-ash gīrad kenār

2b  amid my heart’s blood, his sorrow embraces my soul.

Commentary on couplet 2

No waist becomes perceptible within the embrace, and sorrow takes the missing beloved’s place amid the lover’s anguish. Miyān moves from the desired waist to the midst of the heart’s blood, turning bodily intimacy into an inward scene of suffering. In the supplied translation, grief for the beloved embraces the soul; the compressed syntax can also permit the soul embracing that grief. Either way, the relation is reciprocal in feeling, even where the wording leaves its precise agency open. Khūn-e del evokes deep anguish. The couplet therefore complicates the opening’s apparent possession: scent can assure the lover of nearness while the desired body remains elusive, and the embrace becomes inseparable from longing.

چُون مِیانَش را کِناری نِیسْت زان دَر حَیْرَتَم

chūn miyān-ash rā kenārī nīst zān dar hayrat-am

3a  Since his waist has no edge, I am bewildered

کان چُنان نازُک‌مِیانی هَسْت دایِم دَر کِنار

k-ān chonān nāzok-miyānī hast dāyem dar kenār

3b  that one so slender-waisted is always in my embrace.

Commentary on couplet 3

The beloved’s waist has no discernible edge, yet that slender figure is always in the speaker’s arms. The two halves produce bewilderment by bringing incompatible scales together. Slenderness makes the waist almost impossible to grasp, while having no edge suggests something that cannot be bounded. Miyān also retains the sense of a middle: how can there be a center without an enclosing limit, or an embrace that never secures its object? These are possibilities generated by the words, rather than a settled geometry. Hayrat, bewilderment, names the speaker’s response to that collision. A spiritual reading may hear intimacy exceeding the lover’s power to contain it, while the erotic delicacy of the image remains fully active.

نَی مِیانَش را کِناری نَی کِنارَم را مِیان

nay miyān-ash rā kenārī nay kenār-am rā miyān

4a  His waist has no edge; my embrace has no waist;

دَر مِیانِ آتَشِ عِشْقَش نَمِی‌یابَم کِنار

dar miyān-e ātash-e ʿeshq-ash na-mī-yābam kenār

4b  amid the fire of his love, I can find no shore.

Commentary on couplet 4

The first half folds the preceding impossibilities together: no edge belongs to the beloved’s waist, and no waist appears within the lover’s embrace. The second places the speaker amid love’s fire and denies him a shore. Kenār now turns a word of holding into the imagined boundary of an engulfing element. Fire acquires the spatial force of a sea, making the lover’s lack of escape tangible without supplying a stable landscape. The repeated negations intensify experience rather than simply emptying the scene: neither body, embrace, nor burning can be securely bounded. What the lover cannot grasp also leaves him nowhere outside its effect. The wordplay makes intimacy and helplessness sound through the same recurring term.

بَر کِنار اَسْت آنْکِه سَوْدایِ مِیانَش دَر سَر اَسْت

bar kenār ast ān-ke sowdā-ye miyān-ash dar sar ast

5a  Whoever has a longing for his waist in mind stands apart;

اَز مِیان آن بَرْخُورَد کَز خُود شَوَد اُو بَرکِنار

az miyān ān bar-khorad k-az khod shavad ū bar-kenār

5b  only one who withdraws from himself can enjoy that waist.

Commentary on couplet 5

The person preoccupied with the beloved’s waist stands apart; the person who stands aside from himself can enjoy it. The reversal turns on what withdrawal separates the seeker from. In the first half, longing remains lodged in the head; in the second, attachment to one’s own standpoint yields. The Darwīshiyya printed under Hamadani’s name offers a relevant parallel by connecting spiritual opening with relinquishing one’s own wishes.[5] An Akbarian comparison likewise treats apparent ascent toward God as departure from one’s desire and recognition of a presence already given.[6] These illuminate the paradox of approach through self-withdrawal. They do not require the waist to lose its embodied meaning, and the closing couplet will still give thought an active part in transformation.

نِیسْت کَس را اَز مِیانَش جُز کِنار اَنْدَر دُو کَوْن

nīst kas rā az miyān-ash joz kenār andar do kown

6a  In both worlds, his waist offers no one anything but an embrace; [2]

اَز مِیانِ اِینْچُنِین دَوْلَت کَسی جُویَد کِنار؟

az miyān-e īn-chonīn dowlat kasī jūyad kenār?

6b  would anyone seek to withdraw from such good fortune?

Commentary on couplet 6

Across both worlds, the beloved’s waist gives only kenār, followed by a question about abandoning such fortune. The supplied translation takes the first kenār as embrace, making the question an astonished refusal to leave intimacy. Yet the supplied note keeps distance or withdrawal audible there too: what one receives may remain inseparable from what escapes possession. The second half turns the same word unmistakably toward departure, while miyān becomes the midst of good fortune. The couplet’s delight therefore retains an edge of uncertainty. Its language offers no translation that can display every sense at once. Preserving the alternative allows the reader to hear how apparent exclusion and the wish to remain can coexist within love.

اَز کِناری گَر عَلِی بُویِ مِیانَش یافْتی

az kenārī gar ʿAlī bū-ye miyān-ash yāftī

7a  If ʿAlī caught the scent of his waist from some corner,

دَر خَیالِ آن مِیان اَز خویش گَشْتی با کِنار

dar khayāl-e ān miyān az khīsh gashtī bā kenār

7b  in the thought of that waist he would draw apart from himself. [3]

Commentary on couplet 7

The signature enters a conditional scene: if ʿAlī caught the beloved’s scent from some corner, thought of the waist would draw him apart from himself. The repeated forms yāftī and gashtī belong to that conditional construction; they do not report an accomplished encounter. Kenār returns as the place from which fragrance arrives, then participates in the unusual bā kenār, retained provisionally in the supplied note and visible in the print.[7] Khayāl can remain thought or imagining here. The ending accordingly qualifies the earlier suspicion of mental preoccupation: an image of the beloved can also loosen the thinker’s hold on himself. The opening’s self-embrace finds its counterpart in a possible departure from self-possession.

Reading notes

[1] 1a: Throughout this poem, miyān means both waist and middle; kenār shifts between embrace, edge, shore, and withdrawal. The overlapping senses are intentional.

[2] 6a: Kenār can also mean distance or withdrawal here; the next line turns the same word into departure from good fortune.

[3] 7b: The unusual bā kenār is retained and provisionally understood as apart, in keeping with the poem’s wordplay.

Understanding this ghazal

This ghazal makes intimacy difficult to separate from withdrawal. Two ordinary words carry its argument and its feeling: miyān names both a waist and a middle, while kenār moves among embrace, edge, shore, and standing apart. Each recurrence changes the relation between lover and beloved. The speaker begins by holding himself because he detects the beloved’s fragrance there, but the following couplets make the desired waist impossible to locate or contain. The paradox remains bodily: arms, slenderness, scent, the aching heart, and the fire of love give the verbal play its emotional weight.

The changing spatial language prevents either possession or absence from becoming a complete account. The beloved is always in the embrace, yet no waist appears within it; an edge cannot be found, yet the seeker can remain at the edge. The crucial change comes when withdrawal turns toward the self that wants to possess. Even then, the poem does not simply abolish thought or longing. Its final conditional gives an imagined waist the power to draw ʿAlī beyond himself. These couplets resonate through repeated reversals rather than requiring a sequence of clearly separated spiritual stages.

The poem also has a documented history of comparison and interpretation. Its opening closely resembles Rūmī’s ghazal 1077, and Riaz reports both that connection and an allegorical reading from Khulāṣat al-manāqib.[4][7] The latter assigns spiritual meanings to particular terms, but it is consulted here through Riaz’s report, not as an independently verified statement of Hamadani’s intention. The Darwīshiyya passage about relinquishing personal wishes supplies a narrower practical parallel, with its own attribution reservation.[5] The Akbarian comparison similarly helps explain self-withdrawal without turning the whole poem into a fixed dictionary of symbols.[6] Human affection and spiritual nearness remain available together within its language.

The final turn from confident self-embrace to a conditional glimpse preserves the poem’s instability. ʿAlī does not announce that he has secured the beloved; even a scent from a corner might change the one who receives it. Meanwhile, the question about abandoning such fortune keeps the wish to remain alive. The poem’s particular insight arises from that double movement: the lover can be held by a relation he cannot hold as an object. Its embrace becomes most searching where the repeated word also makes room for an edge, an escape, or a departure from oneself.

Sources and textual notes

The supplied Persian, vocalization, transliteration, translation, numbering, bibliographical line, and reading notes are preserved. The couplet commentaries and overview are editorial additions. The wording and order were checked against Riaz’s printed pp. 463–464, including the unusual bā kenār. The additional evidence below distinguishes a verified poetic parallel, a prose comparison with disputed attribution, and an allegorical interpretation known here through Riaz’s report. None replaces the supplied readings or their reservations.

4. Rūmī, Dīvān-e Shams, ghazal 1077, opening couplet, consulted in Ganjoor’s Persian transcription. It shares the image of finding the beloved’s scent from oneself and embracing oneself. Its second half asks why the speaker should not embrace himself each night; the supplied poem makes an affirmative statement at every breath. The wording and the remaining poems differ. This establishes a close correspondence, not an independently reconstructed transmission history; Furūzānfar’s printed edition was not directly collated here.
5. Darwīshiyya, printed under Hamadani’s name in Muhammad Riaz, Aḥvāl o āsār o ashʿār-e Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī, second edition, Islamabad, 1991, printed p. 498; consulted scan. The prose links spiritual opening with relinquishing one’s own wishes, providing the limited parallel in couplet 5. Riaz discusses attribution to Nūrbakhsh and argues for Hamadani on printed p. 486. The comparison retains that reservation and does not treat the prose as an explanation of this exact ghazal.
6. William C. Chittick, “Presence with God”, Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society 20 (1996), final translated Futūḥāt passage, associated with annotation 27. Ibn ʿArabi interprets apparent ascent through departure from one’s desire and recognition of a divine presence already given. This supports the comparison in couplet 5, without fixing the meaning of the beloved’s waist or the closing khayāl.
7. Riaz, Aḥvāl o āsār o ashʿār-e Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī, printed pp. 463–464, consulted scan. The note on p. 463 identifies a Mawlavī connection for the opening and reports an allegorical explanation in Khulāṣat al-manāqib, including particular occurrences of kenār as heart or contemplation and miyān as absolute being. Those glosses are reported reception, not independently verified authorial definitions; the original commentary was not consulted. Printed p. 464 confirms bā kenār in the closing line, without resolving its provisional interpretation.