Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Gözi derdiyle dil-i zārumı bīmār eyler
Ṣaçı fikriyle cihānı gözüme tār eyler
İrmese būy-ı vefā zülf ü ruḫuñdan cāna
Ne gül eyler anı ne nāfe-i Tātār eyler
Ṭāli‘üm kör baña zülfüñ yüzüñi göstermez
Kim ider anı ki bir baḫt-ı siyehkār eyler
‘Işḳ dellāli göñül şehrine seyr itdükçe
Ġam metā‘ına hemān cānı ḫarīdār eyler
‘Adli göz yaşın aḳıdup yine ṭolāb gibi
Gülsitān-ı ser-i kūyuñ ṭolanup zār eyler

In English

1. The pain of the beloved's eye makes my moaning heart sick; the thought of the beloved's hair makes the world dark in my eyes. (In the older poetry the beloved's eye has a languid, "sick" look; this sickness passes to the lover.)

2. If the scent of faithfulness did not reach the soul from your curls and your cheek, neither the rose nor the musk-pod of the Tatars could give it. (The cheek corresponds to the rose, the curls to musk.)

3. My fortune is blind; your curls do not show me your face. Who else would do what a black-dealing fate does? (The black curls that cover the face behave like the lover's black fate. With the reading "bu" in M1 and M2 the curls become "this black fate" itself.)

4. As the broker of love goes about the city of the heart, he at once makes the soul a buyer of the wares of sorrow.

5. Adlî, shedding tears again like a water-wheel, circles the rose garden at the head of your street and laments. (The water-wheel pours water and creaks as it turns; the lover too goes round and round the beloved's street, weeping and moaning.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets. It is written in the remel pattern "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is "eyler" (makes, does), and the rhyme is the sound "-âr": bîmâr, târ, Tâtâr, siyehkâr, harîdâr, zâr. The ghazal is found in the OR, T, M1 and M2 manuscripts and not in İBB. The edition's footnotes record two differences: in the third couplet M1 and M2 read "bu" (this) in place of "bir" (a); in the note given for the second couplet, "ruhından] ruhuñdan M1", the word in the footnote does not match "ruhuñdan" in the text, so the edition does not make clear in which direction the variant runs. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The images of the ghazal gather around the beloved's eye, hair, cheek and curls; but its real subject is the harm this beauty does to the lover. The opening couplet (matla) is built from two parallel lines: the eye makes the heart sick, the hair darkens the world. In the older poetry the beloved's eye is called "bîmâr" (sick) because of its languid look; here the sickness of the eye seems to have passed into the lover's heart. The link between the dark hair and the darkening world belongs to the same system.

The second couplet contains leff ü neşr (a figure in which items named together are taken up again in order): the "zülf ü ruh" (curls and cheek) of the first line are answered in the second by the "gül" (rose) and the "nâfe-i Tâtâr" (Tatar musk-pod). The cheek is the rose, the curls the scent of musk; but in the poet's view neither can give a scent of faithfulness that does not come from the beloved himself. The phrase "scent of faithfulness" carries a quiet allusion to the constancy the beloved lacks.

The third couplet draws a likeness between the black curls and black fate. Because the curls cover the face and hide it from the lover, what they do is the work of a black fortune. The expressions "kör talih" (blind fortune) and "siyehkâr baht" (black-dealing fate) complete the play of the seeing eye and the unseen face. The reading "bu baht-ı siyehkâr" in the M1 and M2 manuscripts makes this comparison more explicit: the curls themselves are a black fate.

The fourth couplet is a market scene. Love goes about the city of the heart like a broker (dellâl) and makes the soul a buyer of "gam metâ‘ı", the wares of sorrow. There is tenasüp (congruence of images) between broker, wares and buyer; the pain of love is imagined as goods to be bought and sold.

In the couplet with the pen name (mahlas) there is a cinas (pun based on similar sound) between "tolâb" (water-wheel) and "tolanup" (going round). The water-wheel pours water as it turns and makes a sound like moaning; Adlî too pours tears and moans as he goes round the beloved's street. The image of the water-wheel also appears in the first line of Ghazal 107 in the divan. The naming of the head of the street as a "gülistan" (rose garden) calls back, at the end of the ghazal, the rose and the scent of the second couplet.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 62, poem no. 24 (manuscript variants in the footnotes on p. 62; the same edition for Ghazal 107). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr