Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün
Ne ḫāṣıyyet ḳomış yā Rab Ḫudā bu ḥüsn ile sende
Ḳomadı mihr-i ruḫsāruñ ḳarār u ṣabrumı bende
Kerem ḳıl bir naẓar daḫı beni bī-cān idüp gitme
Ki sensüz bir nefes olmaz ḳarārı rūḥumuñ tende
Raḳīb-i ḫār ile niçün açılup gül gibi her dem
Güzellik gülşeni içre idersin ḥālüme ḫande
Cigerde dāġ-ı hicrüñle ölürsem āh u zārumdan
Fiġān ide civārumda olanlar ḥaşre dek sinde
Ḫayāl-i ḥadd ü zülfüñle eger ḫāk olsam iy meh-rū
Bitiser lāle vü sünbül benüm ḳabrümüñ üstinde
Senüñ vaṣf-ı ruḫuñ bülbül seḥer gülşende söylerken
İşitdi gül ḥayāsından ḳızardı oldı şermende
Düzüp saf leşker-i ġamzeñ urup yaġmaladı Rūm'ı
Çeküp müşgīn ‘alem zülfüñ tamāmet ḥükm ider Hind'e
Ġazelde naẓm-ı güftāruñ yazup evrāḳ-ı gül üzre
‘Acemler Rūm'dan ‘Adlī iletsünler Semerḳand'e
In English
1. O Lord, what property has God placed in you along with this beauty; the sun (and the love) of your cheek has left me neither peace nor patience.
2. Be gracious, look once more; do not leave me lifeless and go. For without you my soul cannot stay in the body for a single breath.
3. Why, opening (cheering up) like a rose every moment beside the thorn-like rival, do you laugh at my state in the rose garden of beauty.
4. If I die of my sighs and moans with the brand of your separation on my liver, those lying beside me will wail in the grave until the Resurrection.
5. O moon-faced one, if I turn to dust with the image of your cheek and your lock in my mind, tulip and hyacinth will grow on my grave. (The tulip is likened to the cheek, the hyacinth to the hair.)
6. While the nightingale was telling of the beauty of your cheek in the rose garden at dawn, the rose heard it; it blushed with shame and was abashed.
7. The army of your glance drew up its ranks, attacked and plundered Rûm; your lock, raising its musk-scented banner, rules over India entirely. (In divan poetry Rûm calls to mind whiteness and India blackness; the black hair rules over India.)
8. Adlî, let the Persians write the words of your verse as a ghazal on rose petals and carry them from Rûm to Samarkand.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Structure of the Poem
The ghazal (gazel) has eight couplets and is written in the hezec metre "mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün". There is no fixed redif (refrain word); the rhyme rests on the sound "-nde": sende, bende, tende, hande, sinde, üstinde, şermende. In the last two couplets this sound is supplied by the dative suffix added to place names: "Hind'e" and "Semerkand'e". In the edition it stands in the section of the divan for the letter he (Ḥarfü'l-hā’). It is no. 121 in Bayram's edition and is found in all five manuscripts (OR 30a, T 36b-37a, M1 38a-38b, M2 30b-31a, İBB 21a). The variants are few: in T the second line of the opening couplet reads "tende" instead of "bende", and the second couplet "bî-çâre" instead of "bî-cân"; "açılup" in the third couplet is "açılmış" in T, M1 and M2. To whom and when it was written is not known.
Meaning and Figures of Speech
The first half of the ghazal moves along the familiar line of love's suffering. In the opening couplet the word "mihr", in its dictionary sense, means both sun and love; the sun of the beloved's cheek is at the same time his love, and it leaves the lover neither peace nor patience. In the second couplet the bond set up between soul and body, breath and spirit rests on an old motif (mazmun) in which a glance gives life. In the third couplet the rival is the thorn and the beloved the rose; in divan poetry the opening of the rose is spoken of as laughing. Like a rose that blooms beside the thorn, the beloved rejoices with the rival and laughs at the lover's state. There is antithesis (tezat) between rose and thorn, and between laughter and the lover's pitiful state.
The fourth and fifth couplets take up the lover's death and grave. "Sin", in its dictionary sense, means grave; when the lover dies, his moaning goes on so long that even the dead beside him wail until the Resurrection. In the fifth couplet tulip and hyacinth grow on the grave of the lover who has turned to dust with the image of the beloved's cheek and hair. Since the tulip is the counterpart of the cheek and the hyacinth of the hair, the couplet carries a hüsn-i ta‘lîl (poetic aetiology, an imagined cause): the flowers on the grave are the very image the lover carried with him into the earth. In the sixth couplet, too, a similar cause is invented. The nightingale praises the beloved's cheek in the garden at dawn; the rose hears it and blushes with shame. The redness of the rose is attributed to the embarrassment it feels before the beloved's cheek.
The seventh couplet is built on images of war and conquest. The beloved's glance is an army drawn up in ranks and plunders Rûm; his lock raises a musk-scented banner and rules over India. In divan poetry Rûm calls to mind the white face, and India blackness and black hair; the antithesis between Rûm and India is the contrast between white face and black hair carried over into geography. There is congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words army, rank, plunder, banner and rule. The couplet also has an irony. The one who wrote the poem is the sultan of Rûm, and he says that his own land has been plundered by the beloved's glance.
The closing couplet is a couplet of boasting. Adlî addresses himself and wishes that his ghazal be written on rose petals and carried by the Persians from Rûm to Samarkand. In divan poetry Acem (Persia) is the land of Persian poetry and of its master poets; that a Turkish ghazal written in Rûm should be carried east by Persian hands is a claim about the worth of the poem. Being written on a rose petal is an image showing the delicacy and beauty of the words. After Rûm and India in the seventh couplet, the closing couplet names Rûm and Samarkand; the ghazal thus closes over a wide geography.
Bibliography
- Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 159, poem no. 121 (manuscript information in the footnote on the same page). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
