Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Gül yüzüñ devrinde ‘uşşāḳı raḳīb incitmesün
Olduġı yoḳdur cihānda ‘işret-i nev-rūz telḫ
Acı acı aġladuġum ḫalḳa te’s̱īr eyledi
Bu muḳarrerdür olurmış nāle-i dil-sūz telḫ
Ġālib olduḳça göñül milkine ġam cān incinür
Milk ehiline gelürmiş düşmen-i pīrūz telḫ
Zülfüñüñ fikriyle ẓulmāt-ı ġam olur her gice
Gün yüzüñ hicrinde olur leẕẕet-i her rūz telḫ
‘Adli'yem bezm-i ġamuñda nāle-i cān kām ile
Uş ġamuñ çenginde oldı baña sāz u sūz telḫ

In English

1. In the reign of your rose-like face, let the rival not wound the lovers; never in this world has the merriment of Nevruz been seen to be bitter. (The time when the beloved's rose-like face holds sway is pictured as a spring festival, a Nevruz; on such a day no one's pleasure should be spoiled.)

2. My bitter weeping touched the people as well; this much is certain: a lament that burns the heart is bitter.

3. As sorrow prevails over the realm of the heart, the soul is hurt; a victorious enemy, it seems, is bitter to the people of the land.

4. Through thinking of your curls every night turns into the darkness of sorrow; parted from your sun-like face, the sweetness of every day turns bitter.

5. I am Adlî, who in your gathering of sorrow has made the soul's lament his desire; behold, in the çeng of your sorrow both music and burning have become bitter to me. (Çeng is the name both of a stringed instrument, a kind of harp, and of a "claw"; the line can also be understood as "in the claw of your sorrow". With the reading "gâh ile" in M1 and M2 the first line means "now and then with the soul's lament".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets. The redif (refrain word) is "telh" (bitter), and the rhyme is the sound "-ûz": nev-rûz, dil-sûz, pîrûz, rûz, sûz. The metre is the remel pattern "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". In the edition the ghazal stands in the section of refrains ending in the letter "hı", and it is found in the OR, T, M1 and M2 manuscripts and not in İBB. To whom and when it was written is not known.

The first couplet carries a textual problem. In a ghazal both lines of the opening couplet must rhyme, yet in the form found in the OR, M1 and M2 manuscripts the first line ends in "incitmesün" and does not rhyme with the second line. The T manuscript has "incitme söz telh" in place of "incitmesün". According to Yavuz Bayram's footnote the line rhymes only in this form, but in this reading the metre breaks down. In the edition the reading of OR, M1 and M2 has been taken into the text and that of T is given in the footnote. The form in T yields the sense that the rival should not wound the lovers by speaking bitter words. The other variants are minor: in T the first line has "yüzi" in place of "yüzüñ" and the fourth couplet "lezzet" in place of "lezzet-i", while in M1 and M2 the fifth couplet has "gâh ile" in place of "kâm ile".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

All the couplets of the ghazal are built around the refrain "bitter", and each shows another face of bitterness: the torment the rival inflicts on the lovers, the bitterness of lament, the bitterness of defeat, separation poisoning the days, and finally the music of the gathering of sorrow. In the second couplet the Turkish idiom "acı acı ağlamak" (to weep bitterly) stands beside the word "telh" in the refrain; the same meaning is thus repeated with two words, one Turkish and one Persian. This phrasing presents the lament's effect on the people as a kind of natural law.

In the third couplet the heart is likened to a realm (milk) and sorrow to a victorious enemy that seizes it. For the people of a conquered land (milk ehli) the triumphant enemy is bitter; the heart feels the same bitterness at the invasion of sorrow. Using the vocabulary of war and country together is tenasüp (congruence of images). The fourth couplet rests on antithesis: the darkness of the curls answers to night, the brightness of the face to day. "Zulmet-i gam" (the darkness of sorrow) is set against "gün yüz" (the sun-like face), and the words "her gice" (every night) and "her rûz" (every day) divide the couplet into two equal halves.

In the last couplet the words gathering, music and çeng are brought together. The çeng is a stringed instrument played at the gatherings of old; because the same word also means "claw", "the çeng of sorrow" can be understood both as the instrument sorrow plays and as the claw that seizes the lover. "Sâz u sûz", music and burning, is a pairing built on likeness of sound. The first line of the couplet is elliptical, and because it can be read in two ways depending on the manuscripts, its meaning cannot be fixed with certainty.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 55, poem no. 17 (the rhyme and metre problem of the opening line and the manuscript variants in the footnotes on p. 55). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr