Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Kākülinden olımaz bu dil-i ġamnāk ḫalāṣ
Murġ kim dāma düşe olmaya bī-bāk ḫalāṣ
‘Işḳa ṭa‘n eyleridüm başuma geldi āḫir
Yansa ‘ālem ola mı bir ḳurı ḥāşāk ḫalāṣ
Baḥr-ı eşkümde şināver geçer idi līkin
Olmadı merdümek-i dīde-i nemnāk ḫalāṣ
Ol ki tīr-i müjesiyle dil ü cān ṣayd eyler
Ġamzesinden ola mı sīne-i ṣad-çāk ḫalāṣ
Ol ḳaşı yāy eger ‘Adlīye meyil eylemeye
Olmaya āhum oḳından ṭoḳuz eflāk ḫalāṣ

In English

1. This sorrowing heart cannot escape from his forelock; a bird that has fallen into the snare, however fearless it may be, finds no escape. (The forelock is likened to a snare, the heart to a bird caught in it.)

2. I used to reproach love, and in the end it came upon me too; if the whole world burns, can a dry straw escape? (The lover likens himself to a dry straw burning in the fire of love.)

3. The pupil of my eye used to swim across the sea of my tears, but the pupil of the moist eye found no escape either. The couplet can be read in two ways: the pupil was counted a swimmer in this sea, yet in the end could not escape drowning; or the pupil tried to swim across this sea, yet found no escape from the tears.

4. From the glance of that beloved who hunts heart and soul with the arrow of his eyelash, can a breast torn in a hundred places escape?

5. If that beloved with the bow-shaped brow does not incline towards Adlî, the nine heavens will not escape the arrow of my sigh. (The lover's sigh is like an arrow that rises to the sky and pierces the spheres; the OR manuscript reads "odından", "from the fire", instead of "okından", "from the arrow".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal (gazel) has five couplets and is written in the remel pattern "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is "halâs" (escape, deliverance), and the rhyme is the sound "-âk": gamnâk, bî-bâk, hâşâk, nemnâk, sad-çâk, eflâk. All the couplets are tied to the same question: can one who has fallen into love escape? The redif repeats the answer to this question in every couplet, and each time the answer is negative. In the edition the ghazal is found in all five manuscripts (OR, T, M1, M2, İBB) and is the only poem of the section of the divan for refrains ending in the letter "sâd". The only difference between the manuscripts is the variant "okından / odından" in the last couplet. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet is built on the image of hunter and prey. The forelock is the snare, the heart a bird caught in it; the word "bî-bâk" says that however bold the bird may be, it cannot get out of the net. In the second couplet the poet turns to his own past: once he was the one who reproached love, and now the same fire has come upon him. That a dry straw cannot escape a fire in which the whole world burns expresses the lover's helplessness through an everyday observation. This is the support of a judgement with a concrete example; in divan poetry it is called irsâl-i mesel.

The third couplet is built between the tear and the pupil of the eye. The word "merdümek" means, in its dictionary sense, both "little person" and "pupil of the eye"; with this second sense the poet shows the pupil as a little person swimming in the sea of tears. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words sea, swimmer and moisture. The fourth and fifth couplets, on the other hand, are taken from the world of archery: the eyelash is the arrow, the glance the hunter, the brow the bow. In the last couplet these images pass over to the lover's side. If the beloved's brow is a bow, the lover's sigh is an arrow too, and if that bow does not "incline" towards Adlî, this arrow pierces the nine heavens. The word "meyl" means, in its dictionary sense, both "giving one's heart" and "bending"; the bending of the bow and the beloved's turning towards the lover meet in the same word. The "nine spheres" are the nine layers of the sky in the old conception of the heavens. The exaggeration (mübalağa) in the couplet shows the power of the lover's sigh: it is said that if the beloved turns away, even the heavens will take their share of this sigh.

The opposition of king and servant does not occur in the ghazal; the poet presents himself as prey, as a bird caught in a snare and as a dry straw. There is no expression pointing to his identity as a ruler.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2018, p. 81, poem no. 43 (manuscript variants in the footnote on p. 81).

Online sources