Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün (remel). There is no note on measure in the edition; we found the pattern by counting syllables.

Gül yüzüñ rengiyle gül cânına bî-dâd eyledüñ
Kaddüñe serv[i] kul itdüñ yine âzâd eyledüñ
Dâne-i hâl ile hüsnüñ hırmenin zeyn ideli
Cân ile dil hâsılını cümle ber-bâd eyledüñ
Tîğ çekdüñ şâd oldum âharı katl eyledüñ
Gayrı şâd itdüñ velî bu şâdı nâ-şâd eyledüñ
Dir imişsin ‘âşıka cevr eylemek hûyum-durur
‘Işkuñı ‘âşıklar içre baña isnâd eyledüñ
‘Avnîyâ dîvânelikden gam yime şimden girü
Çünki ‘âşık olalı meyl-i perî-zâd eyledüñ

In English

1. With the colour of your rose face you tormented the rose's soul; you made the cypress the slave of your stature, then set it free again.

2. Since you adorned the threshing floor of your beauty with the grain of your mole, you have scattered to the wind the whole harvest of soul and heart.

3. You drew the sword, and I rejoiced; you killed another. You gladdened someone else, but this glad one you made unglad.

4. You say, it seems, "to torment the lover is my nature"; among (so many) lovers you have ascribed your love to me.

5. O Avnî, from now on do not grieve over madness; for since you became a lover you have given your heart to one of fairy birth.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Like the thirty-eighth ghazal, this is a poem calling the beloved to account with the redif "eyledüñ" (you made). The rhyme is the "-âd" sound of the words "bî-dâd, âzâd, ber-bâd, nâ-şâd, isnâd, perî-zâd". As in that ghazal, the metre is remel. The last letter of the word "serv[i]" in the first couplet has been completed in the edition in square brackets.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet contains two instances of hüsnütalil. The redness of the beloved's cheek has made the rose jealous and tormented its soul; the many-petalled, fragmented look of the rose, Doğan says, reflects the state of a wounded heart. In the second line a new reason is found for the cypress being called "serv-i âzâd", the free cypress: the beloved first made it the slave of her stature and then set it free. Doğan also recalls that the cypress got this name for other reasons, from growing alone on mountaintops or from being free of fruit.

The second couplet sets up a village scene. Beauty is a threshing floor, and the black moles are the large grains of wheat that adorn it. The lover's soul and heart are the produce of this threshing floor, but beside the moles they are worthless as chaff and are scattered by the wind. The third couplet tells a small drama. When the beloved drew her sword the lover rejoiced, for the divan lover wants to be wounded and to die by the sword of the glance. But the beloved killed someone else, thus gladdening strangers and leaving the lover without joy. Doğan reads this thought together with similar couplets in the divan's tenth, nineteenth and sixty-fifth ghazals.

In the fourth couplet reproach and gratitude are intertwined. The beloved has said "to torment the lover is my nature"; the lover concludes from this that, since among so many lovers only he is tormented, the beloved has ascribed her love to him, that is, counted him her lover. The final couplet rests on the belief in fairies. Fairies (peri), the females of the jinn invisible to the naked eye, were believed to take on beautiful human form and make people fall in love with them; one smitten by a fairy was considered to have gone mad (cinnet). Avnî tells himself that, since he has fallen in love with a beauty of fairy birth, he need no longer worry over the charge of madness.

Bibliography

  • Fâtih Sultan Mehmed (Avnî), Fâtih Dîvânı ve Şerhi / Dīwān of Sultan Mehmed II with Commentary, ed. Muhammet Nur Doğan, English trans. Michael D. Sheridan, 3rd ed., Istanbul: Türkiye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanlığı, 2023, poem 40, pp. 318-321 (manuscript: Millet, Ali Emîrî Manzum 305, fol. 13a). https://ekitap.yek.gov.tr/urun/fatih-divani-ve-serhi--ucuncu-baski-_794.aspx

Online sources