Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Beni lā-ya‘ḳıl iden şerbet-i la‘l-i lebidür
Beni ser-geşte ḳılan āh-ı çeh-i ġabġabıdur

In English

1. What has made me lose my mind, beside myself, is the sherbet of that ruby lip; what has made me giddy, wandering bewildered, is the sigh I heave for the well of that chin. (Lâ-ya‘kıl literally means one who is not in his right mind, ser-geşte one whose head is spinning, bewildered. Gabgab is the chin or the soft part beneath it; çeh means well; "the well of the chin" describes the dimple. "Âh-ı çeh-i gabgab" can be read in two ways: the sigh heaved for that well, or the sigh rising from the well itself.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a single-couplet matla (opening couplet). The matla is the first couplet of a ghazal (gazel) or kaside (qasida), with both lines rhyming; in Bayram's edition such single couplets with nothing following them are collected in a separate section. This couplet is written in the remel metre "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". The rhyme rests on the "b" sound at the end of the words "leb-i" and "gabgab-ı" together with the possessive suffix, followed by the copula "-dür / -dur" as redif (refrain word). The two lines open with the same construction ("Beni lâ-ya‘kıl iden" / "Beni ser-geşte kılan"), and this parallelism gives the couplet a regular rhythm. In Bayram's edition it is number 148, the first poem of the "Matla‘lar" section, and according to the edition's footnote it is found only in manuscript M2 (35b). This manuscript, copied by Ali Emîrî, labels the poems by form and, by Bayram's count, contains three matlas. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet sets side by side two states that two of the beloved's beauties produce in the lover. The lip is a sherbet and, as if intoxicating the one who drinks it, takes away his reason. Sherbet literally means a sweetened drink; and sweetness is one of the qualities most often given to the lip in divan poetry. La‘l literally means a red precious stone; in divan poetry it conveys the colour of the lip. A link of drinking is made between sherbet and lip, while la‘l carries the colour. In the second line the dimple of the chin is likened to a well; calling the dimple a well is a frequent comparison in divan poetry. A connection can be drawn between the dizziness of one who looks down to the bottom of a well and the lover's being "ser-geşte"; the couplet does not say this openly, but the choice of words allows the association.

The succession of the words "âh" and "çeh" is also striking in sound; both short words end in an "h" sound and create an echo in the middle of the line. "Lâ-ya‘kıl" and "ser-geşte", for their part, are two states close in meaning, and they support the parallel construction of the two lines in sense as well. The couplet as a whole follows the familiar pattern of listing the beloved's beauties one by one and showing the mark each leaves on the lover. Since it is not known whether the couplet belonged to a ghazal, it is also not known what thought it opened onto.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 186, poem no. 148 (manuscript information in the footnote on the same page; description of manuscript M2 p. 32). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • "Matla‘", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/matla.

Online sources