Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Dōstum çünkim bilürsin ben senüñem sen benüm
Ḳanuma girmek neden müjgān-ı ḫūn-efgen benüm
Ben cefā kūyı muḳīmīyem gerekmez rāḥatı
Külḫenī dīvāneyem utum degül gülşen benüm
Tīġ-i ḫūn-āşāmuña dil dōstum düşmen dimiş
Hey ma‘āẕa'llah neme yār u begüm düşmen benüm
Ṣabruñ acısına cān döymez meded ḳanı ecel
Mā-yı ẕevḳum var ḳanı şol ṭatlu uyḫudan benüm
‘Adliyile bir ḳabāya ḳoyalı ‘uryān seni
Yaḳadan geçmiş ḥaḳ oġlum oldı pīrāhen benüm

In English

1. My friend, since you know that I am yours and you are mine, why then does your blood-shedding eyelash enter my blood (set out to kill me)?

2. I am a dweller in the street of cruelty, I have no need of comfort; I am a madman who sleeps in the bath-furnace, the rose garden is not my place. The couplet can be read in two ways: "ut", in its dictionary sense, is the feeling of shame; in this reading the line means "I am a madman of the furnace and not ashamed of it; the rose garden is not mine".

3. My friend, the heart has called your blood-drinking sword "enemy"; ah, God forbid, how could my beloved and my lord be my enemy?

4. The soul cannot endure the bitterness of patience; help, where is death? I have a share of delight that I hope for from that sweet sleep (death); where is it? The couplet can be read in two ways: "mâ-yı zevk", in its dictionary sense, means "the water of delight"; the line may also present the sweet sleep of death as a water for which the lover thirsts.

5. Ever since you were put naked into one robe together with Adlî, you have become my "true son" (hak oğul, adopted child) passed through the collar of my shirt. The couplet can be read in two ways: grammatically the second line can also be read as "my shirt has become (the means of) my true son passed through the collar"; in both readings the sense is that the beloved is counted as close to the lover as his own child.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal (gazel) has five couplets and is written in the remel metre "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". Its redif (refrain word) is "benüm" (my, mine), and the rhyme is the sound "-en": sen, hûn-efgen, gülşen, düşmen, pîrâhen. The word "uyhudan" in the fourth couplet does not fully match this sound in pronunciation; since "-dan" and "-den" are written with the same letters in the Arabic script, the rhyme looks regular on the page. It is number 98 in Bayram's edition and of the five manuscripts is found only in T (44a-44b); it is absent from OR, İBB, M1 and M2. Because it rests on a single manuscript, no variants are recorded in the edition. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens in the language of conversation. The lover addresses the beloved as "my friend" and sums up the bond between them as "I am yours, you are mine"; with this mutual belonging in place, he finds it senseless that the beloved's eyelashes should enter his blood. "Kanına girmek", in its dictionary sense, means to kill someone or have them killed; likening eyelashes to arrows, to a blood-shedding weapon, is one of the familiar comparisons of divan poetry. The twofold repetition of "sen" (you) and "ben" (I) with their places exchanged in the opening couplet gives the line a sound of reciprocity.

The second couplet sets two places against each other. "Külhan", in its dictionary sense, is the furnace beneath a bathhouse that heats it; a "külhanî" who sleeps in the furnace is a vagrant, homeless person. The lover presents himself as a madman who lives in the street of cruelty and sleeps in the furnace, and does not consider the rose garden (gülşen) fitting for himself. "Külhen" and "gülşen" are close in sound and also form an antithesis in meaning: one is a place of ash and fire, the other of roses and spring. There is antithesis between "cefâ" (cruelty) and "râhat" (comfort) as well.

In the third couplet the words "friend" and "enemy" become entangled. The heart has called the beloved's blood-drinking sword an enemy; the lover at once breaks in with "maâzallah" (God forbid) and says that his beloved, his lord, cannot be his enemy. Calling the beloved "yâr u beg", that is, beloved and lord, carries a situation often found in Adlî's poems: the lover puts himself in the place of a lord's servant, whereas the one who wrote the couplet was a sovereign.

In the fourth couplet bitter and sweet confront each other. "Sabr", in its dictionary sense, is used both for patience and as the name of the aloe plant; the phrase "the bitterness of patience" brings these two senses together. The soul cannot bear this bitterness ("döymez", in its dictionary sense, cannot endure) and calls on death for help. Death is called here a "sweet sleep"; the antithesis between the bitterness of patience and the sweetness of sleep is the basis of the couplet. The syntax of the second line is obscure, and it has been given above with two readings.

The closing couplet (makta) rests on an old Turkish idiom. "Yakadan geçirmek" (to pass through the collar) is explained in dictionaries as "to accept as an adopted child". According to Orhan Şaik Gökyay, a woman who wished to adopt a child would pass it through the collar of her shirt and take it to her bosom; the child, thus held between her bare skin and her shirt, became her "true child" (hak evlat). İskender Pala likewise describes this custom as a way of adopting a "true child". The phrase "my true son passed through the collar" in Adlî's line corresponds exactly to this idiom. The placing of the beloved, naked, into one robe (kabâ) with Adlî recalls the child in the custom held between shirt and skin; there is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among "kabâ" (robe), "pîrâhen" (shirt) and "yaka" (collar). The idiom also occurs in the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire); according to the examples collected by Akın, Âşık Çelebi uses it figuratively in his tezkire. Other examples are known of this idiom being used in divan poetry in connection with the beloved; in a couplet examined by Ülkü Çetinkaya, the poet refers with this idiom to the beloved's hair slipping inside the collar. Adlî's couplet, for its part, applies the idiom directly to the closeness of lover and beloved, and closes the ghazal by tying it to the opening couplet's words "I am yours, you are mine".

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 136, poem no. 98 (manuscript information in the footnote on the same page). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

Official sources

  • Türk Dil Kurumu, Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, entries "kanına girmek", "külhan", "ut" and "sarısabır", https://sozluk.gov.tr/

Online sources