Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Sür‘at itme iy ecel cismümde ġam cāndur henüz
Ġamzeler zaḫmı göñül derdine dermāndur henüz
Bir dem eglen iy felek göñlüm sarāyın yıḳma kim
Ol perī-peyker ḫayāli anda mihmāndur henüz
Tīġ-i ġamzeñden ḳaçar çeşmüñle ceng itmez kişi
Gerçi dāġ-ı fürḳatüñ sīnemde ḳalḳandur henüz
Tīrüñüñ peykānıdur cismümde her mū iy ṣanem
Var ḳıyās it kim ne deñlü tende peykāndur henüz
Ḳanını peykānlaruñ yaşum dile irdükçe yur
Gel naẓar ḳıl yaşumuñ rengine kim ḳandur henüz
Bu sebebden dūd-ı āhumla gelür būy-ı kebāb
Āteş-i ġamla ciger cismümde biryāndur henüz
Dūr olaldan ol sanemden merdüm-i çeşmüñ senüñ
Ḳara geymiş mātem içre ‘Adli giryāndur henüz

In English

1. Death, do not hurry; in my body grief still stands in place of the soul (what keeps me alive is still grief). The wound opened by the beloved's glances is still the cure for the heart's pain.

2. Heavens, linger a moment, do not pull down the palace of my heart; for the image of that fairy-faced beloved is still a guest there.

3. One flees from the sword of your glance and does not go to war with your eye; even though the scar your separation left on my breast is still a shield (for me). (The round brand-mark is likened to a shield; T reads "your body" instead of "your eye".)

4. My idol-like beauty, every hair on my body is the head of one of your arrows; go and reckon how many arrowheads are still in my flesh.

5. As my tears reach the "dil" they wash away the blood of the arrowheads; come, look at the colour of my tears, they are still blood. (The couplet can be read in two ways: if "dil" is taken as the heart, the tears descend to the heart where the arrowheads are lodged; if it is taken as the tongue, they run down the face and reach the mouth.)

6. This is why the smell of roasting meat comes with the smoke of my sighs: my liver is still roasting in my body on the fire of grief.

7. Since it fell far from that idol-like beauty, the pupil of your eye has put on black; in mourning, Adlî is still weeping. (The poet seems to address himself here as "you"; the blackness of the pupil is likened to mourning dress.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The attribution of this ghazal's second couplet is disputed. Âşık Çelebi's Meşâirü'ş-şuarâ and Gelibolulu Âlî's Künhü'l-ahbâr give the couplet "Bir dem eglen iy felek göñlüm sarāyın yıḳma kim" among the poems of Mahmud Paşa, grand vizier of Mehmed II (the Conqueror), that is, of the poet with the pen name (mahlas) Adnî. Yavuz Bayram, on the other hand, states that the couplet appears in all the manuscripts of Adlî's divan available to him as the hüsn-i matla of this ghazal (the second couplet that follows the opening and rhymes within itself like it), while it is absent from Mahmud Paşa's divan, which rests on four manuscripts. According to Bayram, the source of the confusion is that Mahmud Paşa's pen name Adnî appears by mistake as "Adlî" in some biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire), above all in Âşık Çelebi.

The ghazal (gazel) has seven couplets and is written in the remel pattern "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is "henüz" (still), and the rhyme is the sound "-ân": cân, dermân, mihmân, kalkan, peykân, kan, biryân, giryân. The first two couplets each rhyme within themselves. In the edition it is found in all five manuscripts (OR, T, M1, M2, İBB) and stands in the section of the divan for refrains ending in the letter "zâ". The variants change the sense in several places: in couplet 4 OR and İBB read "kalkanı(dur)" for "peykânı(dur)"; in couplet 5 T reads "peykânun başum" for "peykânlarun yaşum", and M1 and M2 read "peykânunun" for "peykânlarun"; in the last couplet T and M1 read "cismün" for "çeşmün". The ghazal is also given in full as a sample poem in the Adlî entry of TEİS. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

All the couplets of the ghazal gather, through the redif "henüz", around a plea for delay. In the opening couplet the poet addresses ecel, death: the grief that has taken the place of the soul in his body is still there, the wound opened by the glances is still the heart's cure; there is no need to hurry. In the second couplet the same request is made of felek, the turning sky that governs fortune. The heart is a palace, and the beloved's image is staying in it as a guest; the house must not be pulled down before the guest departs. The disputed couplet is the best known in the ghazal; personification (addressing a lifeless thing as if alive) and the metaphor (istiare) that makes the heart a palace and the image a guest make it memorable.

From the third couplet onward the weapons of war enter the scene. The beloved's glance (gamze) is a sword, and no one dares to fight with that eye; the lover holds only the dağ, the brand-mark that separation has left on his breast, and with its roundness the mark is likened to a shield. In the fourth couplet every hair on the body is an arrowhead (the sharp iron tip of an arrow) shot from the beloved's bow and left lodged there. The fifth couplet continues the image: the tears are the colour of blood because they wash away the blood of the arrowheads. The words sword, shield, arrow, arrowhead and blood form a congruence of images (tenasüp).

In the sixth couplet the lover's liver is roasting on the fire of grief; this is why the smell of roasting meat comes with the smoke of his sighs. Sigh, smoke, fire, liver and roast meat are likewise words that summon one another. The makta holds a comparison built on "merdüm-i çeşm" (the pupil of the eye). "Merdüm" means, in its dictionary sense, both "person" and "pupil of the eye"; the blackness of the pupil is seen as the black garment of someone in mourning. The pupil mourns because it has fallen far from the beloved, and the poet goes on weeping in his grief.

Historical Context

Âşık Çelebi cites the disputed couplet in two separate places. In the Adnî entry he gives it as a sample of Mahmud Paşa's poems, in the form "anda mihmândur" as in this edition. In the Cem Sultan entry he quotes Cem's couplet "Aġlayup didüm ki zülfüñ keşf idüp göster ruḫuñ / Didi ki müşg açmaḳ olmaz şehr-i bārāndur henüz" and then lists couplets in the same metre with the redif "-ândur henüz": by Musâhib Sa‘dî, Mahmud Paşa, Ahmed Paşa and Me‘âlî. The couplet given under Mahmud Paşa's name is the second couplet of this ghazal, except that the second line reads "dilde" in place of "anda". Âşık Çelebi presents all these couplets as nazires (response poems) written to Cem's couplet. Gelibolulu Âlî, too, gives the couplet to Mahmud Paşa in his Adnî entry, with the reading "dilde"; in the same entry he also turns to Âşık Çelebi's word on the Paşa's generosity.

Bayram assesses this attribution within the debate over the pen name. E. J. W. Gibb had thought that Bayezid's pen name was "Adnî" and Mahmud Paşa's "Adlî", and had suggested that the poems in the Adlî divan printed in 1891 might belong to Mahmud Paşa. The confusion can also be traced in the manuscripts of the tezkires: in Filiz Kılıç's edition of Âşık Çelebi, the word "Adlî" in the entry on Sultan Bayezid is written "Adnî" in the P, S and F manuscripts. Bayram points out that the tezkires and the manuscript headings give Bayezid II's pen name as "Adlî", while in Mahmud Paşa's divan the pen name appears everywhere clearly as "Adnî", and he counts the absence of the disputed couplet from that divan as evidence in Adlî's favour. It is worth noting that when he quotes the couplet in his own introduction he uses the reading "dilde mihmândur", whereas the poem text of the edition has "anda". The sources thus divide in two directions: the tezkire tradition gives the couplet to Mahmud Paşa, while all the manuscripts of Adlî's divan used in the edition give it to Bayezid II.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2018, p. 69, poem no. 31 (manuscript variants in the footnote on p. 69); on the attribution debate, introduction, pp. 11-13.
  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâirü'ş-şuarâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2018 (e-book), entry on Cem Sultan (p. 215) and entry on Adnî (Mahmud Paşa) (p. 459).
  • Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî, Künhü'l-ahbâr'ın Tezkire Kısmı, ed. Mustafa İsen, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2017 (e-book), entry on Adnî.

Books

  • Yavuz Bayram, "Adlî, Sultân Bâyezîd-i Velî bin Fâtih Sultân Mehmed", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (TEİS).

Online sources