Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fâilâtün feilâtün feilâtün feilün (remel). The edition writes no metre over this last ghazal of the main manuscript; the scansion is ours.

Göñlümüñ la‘lüñe cân virmek olupdur hevesi
Hâk-i pâyun-durur ancak gözümüñ mültemesi
Murg-i rûhuñ ki hevâñ içre uçar olmışdur
Dîde pervâz-gehi sîne müşebbek kafesi
Sîne çâk ü gözi nem-nâk ider nâle vü zâr
Kılsa te’sîr ‘aceb olmaya nâyuñ nefesi
Mâcerâmı diyemez yaşum işigüñe varup
Kirpigümdür var ise uşbu yolun hâr u hesî
Her kişi cânı gibi sevdügi-çün sen sanemi
Saña cânum dise ‘Avnî ne hatâ cân-ı kesî

In English

1. My heart's desire has become to give its life for your ruby lip; my eye's wish is only the dust of your feet.

2. For the soul-bird that has begun to fly in the air of longing for you, the perch is my eye, and the latticed cage is my breast.

3. Moaning and weeping make the breast torn and the eye tearful; no wonder if the breath of the ney moves one.

4. My tears cannot reach your threshold and tell what has befallen me (my story); if there is litter on that road, it is my eyelashes.

5. O soul of every person (beloved), since everyone loves you, the idol, like his own soul, what error is it if Avnî calls you "my soul"?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Through soul, spirit, breath and tears, these five couplets turn the lover's body into a birdcage, a ney and a blocked waterway. This is the last ghazal of the manuscript in the Millet Library; after it come only short pieces and a single line. There is no redif; the rhyme is in the "-esi" sound of the words "hevesi, mültemesi, kafesi, nefesi, hesi, kesi", and the mahbun remel pattern is used.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the opening couplet the heart's only desire is to give its life for the beloved's lip, and the eye's only wish is to take the dust of her feet as kohl. Doğan notes that in Sufism the lip is the symbol of unity, and that the eye, as the seat where the truth of things is seen, wishes to increase its insight with that dust. The second couplet turns the lover's body into an aviary. The soul-bird flutters in the sky of love for the beloved; the eye is the perch on which the bird alights before taking flight, and the breast, with its protruding ribs and its many wounds, is a cage woven like a net. Doğan says that the couplet tells how the lover asks for union by giving up his life, how his soul is preparing to leave the body.

The third couplet sets up a likeness between the lover and the ney. The lover, yellowed and wasted by the pain of love, his breast pierced with holes, resembles the ney with its thin, yellow, perforated body; the water that runs from the bottom of the ney as it is played answers to the lover's tears. That is why the ney's breath moves people. In the fourth couplet the word "mâcerâ" looks in two directions: what befalls a person, and water that flows past. The tears want to reach the beloved's threshold and tell the lover's story, but their way is blocked; the eyelashes, which keep the tears gathered in the eye from flowing, are the litter lying across the watercourse.

The word "cân" (soul) carries the play of the last couplet. The beloved is "cân-ı kesî", the soul of every person; everyone loves that idol like his own soul. So if Avnî calls her "my soul", there is no error in it. The name given in love and the meaning the beloved holds for everyone meet in the same word. The ghazals of the main manuscript thus close, like a distant echo of the na't that opens the divan, with the beloved being called the soul.

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 73, pp. 536-538 (manuscript: Millet, Ali Emîrî Manzum 305, fol. 22b). https://ekitap.yek.gov.tr/urun/fatih-divani-ve-serhi--ucuncu-baski-_794.aspx

Online sources