Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün

Ġam-ı zülfüñle cān āşüfte dil teng
Gözüm yaşı durur la‘lüñle hem-reng
Ġamuñdan āh idüp ḳan aġladuḳça
Dögüp göksüm ururam başuma seng
Düşelden sen perīden bir dem ayru
Delürdüm kendüm ile eylerem ceng
Didüm vaṣluñ müyesser ola mı dir
Delü misin ya serḫūş ya yedüñ beng
Nigārā sensüzin ‘ayş eylesem ben
Yüzümi def iderem ḳāmetüm çeng
Cefā ṭaşıyla ṣındı ṣabr ayaġı
Mecālüm gitdi oldı ṭāḳatüm teng
Yüzüñ görüp fiġān itdükçe ‘Adlī
İder gülşende bülbül aña āheng

In English

1. Through grief for your curls my soul is distraught and my heart oppressed; the tears of my eyes are the same colour as your ruby lip. (The lover weeps blood, so his tears are red and resemble the red lip.)

2. Whenever I sigh and weep blood from grief for you, I beat my breast and strike my head with a stone.

3. Ever since I was parted for a moment from you, the fairy, I have gone mad; I keep fighting with myself.

4. I said, "Will union with you ever be granted?" He says, "Are you mad, or drunk, or have you eaten hashish?"

5. O beauty, if I were to hold a feast without you, I would make my face the tambourine, and my stature would become the harp. (The couplet can be understood this way: the instruments of a feast without you are my own body; I strike my face like a tambourine, and my stature bends with grief like the çeng, an arched harp.)

6. The foot of patience has been broken by the stone of cruelty; my strength is gone, my endurance has grown narrow. (In Old Turkish "ayak" also means a cup; a cup shattered by a stone can be imagined as well.)

7. Whenever Adlî sees your face and cries out, the nightingale in the rose garden keeps time with him.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal (gazel) has seven couplets and is written in the hezec pattern "mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün fe‘ûlün". It has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is the sound "-eng": teng, hem-reng, seng, ceng, beng, çeng. The word "teng" at the end of the opening couplet returns as a rhyme in the sixth couplet; in the first it describes the narrowness of the heart, in the second the narrowness of endurance. According to Bayram's apparatus the ghazal is found in all five manuscripts (OR, T, M1, M2, İBB), though the second couplet is missing from T. The other variants are minor: M1 and M2 read "iderem" for "eylerem", M1 reads "ṣundı" for "ṣındı", and T reads "ḳāmetüm" for "ṭāḳatüm". In the edition it stands in the section of poems ending in the letter kef (Ḥarfü'l-kâf). To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal describes, step by step, how separation drives the lover to madness. In the opening couplet the "dishevelled" state of the curls passes to the distress of the soul; since the word "âşüfte" evokes both the disorder of hair and the confusion of the mind, a link is made between the curls and the soul. That the tears are "hem-reng", of the same colour, as the lip rests on the motif of tears of blood: the lover has wept so much that his tears have turned to blood and become red like the beloved's ruby lip. Beating the breast and striking the head with a stone in the second couplet are the familiar gestures of someone in mourning.

The third and fourth couplets develop the theme of madness. The beloved's being called a "peri", a fairy, ties in with this theme; in folk belief a person possessed by a fairy was thought to lose his reason, and in the couplet the fairy and the words "I have gone mad" stand side by side. The fourth couplet is a small dialogue: the lover asks whether union is possible, and the beloved takes him for a madman, a drunkard or someone who has eaten "beng". In its dictionary sense beng is a narcotic paste made from hemp. Between the madman, the drunkard and the one who has taken beng there is congruence of images (tenasüp); all three describe a person who is not in his right mind, and so the beloved's answer confirms the confession of the third couplet.

In the fifth couplet the image of the feast is built from musical instruments. The def (tambourine) and the çeng are instruments of the drinking party; in its dictionary sense the çeng is a stringed instrument with an arched body. When the feast is held without the beloved, its instruments become the lover's own body: he strikes his face like a tambourine, and his stature, bent by grief, recalls the harp. There is a clear antithesis between "‘ayş" (merrymaking) and these gestures of mourning. In the sixth couplet the phrase "the foot of patience" points two ways and carries a double entendre (tevriye). In Old Turkish "ayak" also means a cup; what the stone of cruelty breaks can be read both as the foot of patience and as the cup of patience. The connection between stone and cup supports this second meaning, but the couplet is also clear in the first sense.

The closing couplet carries the ghazal's musical images into the rose garden. Whenever Adlî sees the beloved's face and cries out, the nightingale "makes âheng" with him, that is, it tunes itself to his voice and accompanies him. The face is the rose, the lover the nightingale; the nightingale joins the poet who carries the same sorrow. There is congruence of images among the words def, çeng and âheng, and the instruments of the fifth couplet are completed in the closing couplet by the voice of the nightingale.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2018, p. 95, poem no. 57 (manuscript information in the footnote on p. 95).

Online sources