Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün

Pāy-māl itme çünki yaḳduñ oda
Gizlidür göñlüm içre nār ṣaḳın

In English

1. Since you have cast me into the fire and burned me, do not now trample me underfoot; there is a hidden fire within my heart, beware (it will burn your foot). (Pây-mâl literally means trampled underfoot, crushed. Od and nâr, one Turkish and the other Arabic, are two words with the same meaning: fire.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a müfred (single couplet) consisting of one couplet. Müfred literally means "single", and as a term it is the name given to a one-couplet poem. In this couplet the two lines do not rhyme with each other ("oda" / "sakın"), so it does not have the form of the opening couplet of a ghazal (gazel). The couplet is written in the hafif metre "fe‘ilâtün mefâ‘ilün fe‘ilün"; this metre is shorter than the four-foot metres of the other matlas and müfreds in the edition. In Bayram's edition it is number 152, the first poem of the "Müfredler" section, and according to the edition's footnote it is found in only one of the five manuscripts, M2 (36a). M2, copied by Ali Emîrî, contains by Bayram's count one müfred and two ferds. According to the same descriptions, two müfreds are counted in manuscript T, while M1 has, besides the ghazals and the murabba, two couplets and one single line; the one-couplet pieces are distributed among the manuscripts in different ways. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is a warning the lover addresses to the beloved. The beloved has burned the lover in the fire of love; not content with this, the beloved also wishes to trample him underfoot, that is, to treat him with contempt. The conjunction "çünki" (since) in the first line shows that the burning has already been done, while the trampling would be a second torment added on top of it. The lover, however, recalls that the fire still lives within what has burned: there is a hidden fire in his heart, and the foot that tramples it may be burned. The word ash does not occur in the couplet; but the burned one lying underfoot and carrying a hidden fire within can be thought of as an ember covered with ash. This is a reading.

There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words "yakmak" (to burn), "od" and "nâr". The use of "od" and "nâr", which mean the same thing, one in the first line and the other in the second, repeats the idea of fire in two languages. The phrase "Gizlidür göñlüm içre nâr" voices an idea often met in divan poetry, that love is a fire hidden within. The second line, ending in the word "sakın" (beware), gives the couplet a note of gentle threat: the lover warns the beloved against his own fire. The relation set up between the beloved's foot and the lover's heart is connected with the lover's seeing himself in divan poetry as the dust beneath the beloved's feet; here, however, that dust is burning. The couplet's language is plain, its construction simple, and it completes a single image in two lines.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 187, poem no. 152 (manuscript information in the footnote on the same page; description of manuscript M2 p. 32). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr