Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Eyledi müşgīn ṣaçın ḳaṣduma ol ṣayyād bend
Ḥalḳa ḥalḳa ḳıldı gūyā ṣayd içün pīçān kemend
Öykünürmiş leblerüñe sükker iñen ṭatludur
Nāz ile güftāre gelseñ telḫ olur bāzār-ı ḳand
Benüm ile dōst olsañ cān virür ġamdan ‘adū
Nūş-ḫand itseñ baña eyler raḳībüñ zehr-ḫand
Zāhidā zühdüñ görüp rind olana ṭa‘n itme kim
Levḥa ṭarḥın böyle çekmiş ūstād-ı naḳş-bend
Saña ḳul olmaḳ benüm ḥaddüm degüldür dōstum
Sen şeh-i milk-i kerem ‘Adlī bir oñmaduḳ levend

In English

1. That hunter made his musk-scented hair a snare to catch me; it is as if he had set a lasso for the hunt, ring upon ring, coil upon coil.

2. Sugar, they say, imitates your lips, and that is why it is so sweet; if you were to begin speaking with coquetry, the market for cane sugar would turn bitter (sugar would lose its value).

3. If you were a friend to me, the enemy would give up his soul from grief; if you smiled sweetly at me, your rival would laugh a bitter, poisoned laugh.

4. O ascetic, do not look at your own piety and reproach the rind (the free-spirited lover); for the master painter has drawn the design of the tablet this way. (Each person's destiny was drawn thus in eternity by God, the great painter.)

5. To be your slave is beyond my station, my friend; you are the king of the realm of generosity, and Adlî a good-for-nothing levend. (Levend here means a carefree, footloose young man; "onmaduk" means one who has come to no good.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets. It has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is built on the sounds "-end" and "-and": bend, kemend, kand, zehr-hand, nakş-bend, levend. Because in the old script the endings of these words are written with the same letters, "kand" and "hand" also count as rhyming with "bend". The metre is the remel pattern "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". In the edition the ghazal stands in the section of rhymes ending in the letter "dal"; it is found in the OR, T, M1 and M2 manuscripts and not in İBB. The variants are minor: T has "gamda" in place of "gamdan" in the third couplet and "turup" in place of "görüp" in the fourth, while OR has "zehr-kand" in place of "zehr-hand" in the third couplet. To whom and when the ghazal was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet opens with a hunting scene. The beloved is the "sayyâd", the hunter; the hair becomes a snare (bend) and a lasso, and the lover is the prey. Using sayyâd, sayd (prey), bend and kemend together is tenasüp (congruence of images). The hair being "ring upon ring" likens the curling locks to the loops of a lasso. The epithet "müşgîn" (musk-scented) conveys both the dark colour of the hair and its fragrance.

In the second and third couplets the antithesis between sweet and bitter comes to the fore. A poetic cause is found for the sweetness of sugar: sugar is sweet because it imitates the beloved's lip. Giving such a cause in place of the real one is the figure called hüsn-i ta‘lîl (fanciful aetiology). And when the beloved begins to speak, the sugar market "turns bitter"; cane sugar loses its value beside the sweetness of the beloved's words. In the third couplet "nûş-hand" (a sweet smile) is set against "zehr-hand" (a poisoned, bitter laugh); the beloved's smile at the lover makes the rival laugh with a bitterness like poison.

The fourth couplet treats the conflict between the ascetic and the rind, frequent in divan poetry. The ascetic (zahit) is the outwardly pious man bound by rules; the rind is the one who cares nothing for the world or for appearances and has given his heart to love. The poet tells the ascetic not to reproach the rind, because each person's destiny was drawn in eternity by the "üstâd-ı nakş-bend", the master painter. The words tablet, design and painter again complete one another.

The most striking point of the ghazal is the last couplet. Adlî calls himself "oñmaduk levend", a footloose young man who has come to no good, and counts even being the beloved's slave as beyond his station; the beloved, by contrast, is "şeh-i milk-i kerem", the king of the realm of generosity. Self-abasement by the lover is a familiar stance in divan poetry, but the fact that these words were written by a sultan gives the couplet a weight of its own. This reversed relation between king and servant appears often in Adlî's ghazals.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 56, poem no. 18 (manuscript variants in the footnote on p. 56). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr