Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün

İderem fikr-i miyānuñla tenüm mū gibi ben
Dizerem eşki dişüñ yādına lü’lü’ gibi ben
Sen sehī serv-ḳadüñ izine yüz sürmekiçün
Aġlayup yollaruña yüz sürerem ṣu gibi ben
Nice ḳan aġlamayam düşde ḫayālüñ göricek
Bir daḫı gözlerüñe gelmezem uyḫu gibi ben
Būy-ı zülfüñ Ḫuten'e bād iledüp miske didi
Bulmadum Çīn'i gezüp bir daḫı bu bū gibi ben
Görse sünbüllerüñi ravżada Rıḍvān diye kim
Bulmadum sünbül-i ter ol iki gīsū gibi ben
Şehr-i ḥüsn içre güzellerde daḫı görmemişem
Siḥr ile diller alur ol iki cādū gibi ben
Raḥm idüp ‘Adli'ye dil-ber didi itüm gibi gel
Sen izüm gözleyürek gitdüm uş āhū gibi ben

In English

1. With the thought of your waist I make my body thin as a hair; remembering your teeth I string my tears like pearls.

2. O cypress-statured beloved, to rub my face on your footprint I too, weeping like water, rub my face along your paths.

3. How could I not weep blood on seeing your image in a dream; from now on I too, like sleep, will not come to your eyes again. The couplet can be read in two ways: the lover will never again appear before the eyes of the sleepless beloved, or, having seen the beloved's image in a dream, the lover himself will be left longing for sleep.

4. The wind carried the scent of your hair to Khotan and said to the musk: "I too have travelled all over China and never found such a scent again."

5. Should Rıdvan, the keeper of Paradise, see your hyacinths (your locks) in the garden of Paradise, he would say: "I have found no fresh hyacinth like those two tresses."

6. In the city of beauty, even among the beauties, I have not seen anything that steals hearts with magic like those two sorcerers (the eyes).

7. Taking pity on Adlî, the beloved said: "Follow me like my dog; you keep watching for my track, for look, I have gone off like a gazelle."

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal (gazel) has seven couplets and is written in the remel metre "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is the phrase "gibi ben" (like ... I); the rhyme rests on the long sound "-û": mû, lü’lü’, su, uyhu, bû, gîsû, câdû, âhû. The ghazal is a short love poem whose opening couplet rhymes within itself and whose other couplets rhyme with it in their second lines. It stands as no. 111 in Bayram's edition. The ghazal is missing in manuscript T and is found in the other four (OR, M1, M2, İBB); couplet 5, however, is missing in OR and İBB. The other variants are minor: in couplet 1, M1 and M2 read "yâdile" for "yâdına"; in couplet 4, OR and İBB read "müşg" for "miske" and "bir" for "bu". To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The refrain "gibi ben" ties every couplet of the ghazal to a comparison. In the opening couplet the lover's body tries to resemble the beloved's slender waist and grows thin as a hair; his tears too are strung like pearls because he remembers the beloved's teeth. A waist as thin as a hair and teeth like pearls are among the best-known comparisons of beauty in classical poetry; here the lover reproduces them in his own body and tears. The second couplet rests on the idiom "yüz sürmek" (to rub one's face). To rub his face on the beloved's footprint, the lover rubs his face along the paths like water; the idiom calls to mind both humbly pressing one's face to the ground and water flowing along the surface. The cypress growing by the water also sets up congruence of images (tenasüp) between the words "serv" (cypress) and "su" (water).

In the third couplet sleep and dream are used together. The lover sees the beloved's image only in a dream and therefore weeps blood; whose sleeplessness the second line describes, however, can be understood in two ways. The fourth and fifth couplets are built on the hair. The wind carries the scent of the hair to Khotan, and even the musk says it has found no such scent. Khotan and China are cited in classical poetry as the homeland of the musk deer; the beloved's hair smells sweeter than the finest musk in the world. In the fifth couplet Rıdvan, in its dictionary sense the angel who keeps the gate of Paradise, finds the beloved's locks finer than the hyacinths in the garden of Paradise. The likening of hair to the hyacinth comes from the hyacinth's curling form and dark colour. These two couplets, speaking through the mouths of the wind and the angel, are an example of a kind of intak (giving speech to beings that do not speak).

In the sixth couplet the eyes are "câdû", in its dictionary sense, sorcerers. The eye stealing the heart by magic is a common image in classical poetry. The phrase "şehr-i hüsn" (city of beauty) joins with a hyperbole that sets the beloved above all other beauties.

The closing couplet ends with a hunting scene. Taking pity on Adlî, the beloved says "come like my dog"; the dog follows the track, while the gazelle runs away. There is congruence of images among "it" (dog), "iz" (track) and "âhû" (gazelle). In classical poetry the lover's likening of himself to the dog at the beloved's door is a sign of humility. When one considers that the poem's author was a padishah, the beloved's telling a sultan "come like my dog" is a sharp example of the exchange of places between shah and servant frequent in Adlî's poems.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 149, poem no. 111 (manuscript variants in the footnote on the same page). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr