Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Vaṣl-ı cānān her nefes maḳṣūd-ı cānumdur benüm
Dilde mihri ḥüsnüñüñ rāz-ı nihānumdur benüm
Olmasa dilde ġamuñ ten zinde olmaz bir nefes
Dōstum bildüm ġamuñ cān u cihānumdur benüm
Nice yaşlar dökmesün çeşm-i revān arduñca kim
Terk idüp giden beni rūḥ-ı revānumdur benüm
Dest-i cevrüñle büküp sen ḳaddüm itdükçe kemān
Tīr-i āhumla felek her dem nişānumdur benüm
Rūz u şeb mihr ü mehüñ şem‘ini āhumdur yaḳan
Görinen çarḫ-ı felek dūd-ı duḫānumdur benüm
Ḳıṣṣa-i ġuṣṣam yazup şerḥ itmedüm yā Rab neden
Söylenen dillerde şimdi dāstānumdur benüm
Cevr ile her günde biñ kez öldürürseñ ‘Adli'yi
Ḥaḳ bilür bir kez dimez boynuña ḳanumdur benüm

In English

1. Union with the beloved is at every breath the aim of my soul; the love of your beauty in my heart is my hidden secret.

2. Were your grief not in my heart, the body would not live a single breath; my friend, I have come to know that your grief is my soul and my world.

3. How should my flowing eye not shed many tears after you, since the one who left me and went is my flowing spirit (my very soul)?

4. As you bend my stature into a bow with the hand of your cruelty, the sky (felek) is at every moment the target of the arrow of my sigh.

5. Day and night it is my sigh that lights the candle of the sun and the moon; the visible vault of heaven is the smoke of my sighs.

6. O Lord, I never wrote out and explained the tale of my sorrow; how is it, then, that the legend told on every tongue now is mine? The couplet can be read in two ways: if the question "neden" (why) is attached to the first line, the sense becomes "O Lord, why did I not write out and explain the tale of my sorrow", and the second line states the consequence: "the legend told on every tongue is now mine."

7. Even if with cruelty you kill Adlî a thousand times each day, God knows he will not once say "my blood is on your neck" (will not hold you answerable for his death).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal (gazel) has seven couplets and is written in the remel metre "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is "-dur benüm", and the rhyme is the sound "-ânum": cânum, nihânum, cihânum, revânum, nişânum, duhânum, dâstânum, kanum. That both lines of the opening couplet and every couplet end with the word "benüm", "mine", gives the ghazal from start to finish the first-person voice of the lover describing his own state. In Bayram's edition it is number 83 and it is found in all five manuscripts (OR, T, M1, M2, İBB). The variants are these: T reads "gider" instead of "giden" and "âhumda" instead of "âhumdur"; T and M1 read "hisse" (share) instead of "kıssa"; in OR the word "kez" is missing from the first line of the final couplet, and İBB reads "gün" instead of "kez" in the second line. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the opening couplet the word "mihr", in its dictionary sense, means both love and the sun; here it means love, but it can also be read as the sun of beauty. In the fifth couplet the same word returns in the sense of sun in the phrase "mihr ü meh" (sun and moon). The second couplet describes the lover's attachment to grief: without grief the body would not live, because grief is the soul itself. In divan poetry the lover's embracing his grief rather than complaining of it is a frequently treated attitude.

The third couplet rests on a pun (cinas). "Revân", in its dictionary sense, means both flowing, moving, and soul, spirit. In the first line "çeşm-i revân" is the flowing eye; in the second, "rûh-ı revân" means the soul. The flowing of the eye and the departure of the soul meet in a single word: the beloved who has gone is the lover's soul, and so the eye flows after him.

The fourth and fifth couplets reach to the sky through hyperbole (mübalağa). In the fourth, the beloved's cruelty bends the lover's stature like a bow; once the bent stature becomes a bow, the lover's sigh becomes an arrow and the sky the target. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among bow, arrow and target (kemân, tîr, nişân), and the lover's sigh is said to reach the sky. The fifth couplet carries the hyperbole further: it is the lover's sigh that lights the sun and the moon like candles, and the vault of heaven we see is the smoke of that sigh. Ascribing the colour of the vault of heaven to the smoke of the lover's sigh is the figure of poetic aetiology (hüsn-i talil). "Dûd" and "duhân" both mean smoke and are used one after the other.

The sixth couplet concerns the lover's fame. The poet says that he did not himself write out and tell the tale of his sorrow, yet his legend passes from tongue to tongue. The pain of love that cannot be hidden and falls on people's tongues is one of the familiar themes of divan poetry. With the reading "hisse" in T and M1 the line comes closer to the sense "I did not write down the share of sorrow that fell to me".

The final couplet is built on the Turkish idiom "kanı boynuna", which in its dictionary sense means to lay the responsibility for a death on someone. The lover says that even if the beloved kills him a thousand times a day, he will not lay his blood on the beloved's neck. There is a contrast between killing a thousand times and not saying it even once.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 121, poem no. 83 (manuscript information in the footnote on p. 121). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr