Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Câm la‘liňdir seniň âyîne rûy-ı enveriň
Adı var Câm-ı Cem ü Âyîne-i İskenderiň

In English

1. Your cup is your ruby lip, and your mirror is your radiant face. Of the Cup of Jamshid and the Mirror of Alexander only the name remains (the true cup and mirror that reveal the world are yours).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal and is written in the remel pattern "Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün"; the identification of the metre is ours. The rhyme is the sound "-er" in the words "enver" and "İskender", and the refrain (redif) is the second-person possessive suffix ("-iň", your). Because Hakverdioğlu's article gives only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, only this couplet could be published here.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet diminishes two famous objects of legend before the beauty of the beloved. The "Câm-ı Cem" is the cup said in Persian legend to belong to Jamshid, in which whoever looked saw the whole world. The "Âyîne-i İskender" is the mirror Alexander had built at Alexandria, which showed enemy ships approaching from afar. In divan poetry both are symbols of objects that reveal the world and are often mentioned together. Bâkî pairs these two objects with the beloved's face: the red lip resembles a cup full of wine, the shining face a mirror. The two pairings in the first line (cup and ruby, mirror and face) are answered in the second line, in the same order, by their counterparts in legend; this arrangement of correspondences constitutes the artistry of the couplet. The phrase "adı var" (only the name remains) is a hyperbole saying that the legendary cup and mirror are mere names, their reality being found in the beloved. The word "la'l" denotes both the red precious stone and the lip, creating a second link between cup and lip.

Historical Context

The couplet is on page 79 of the Merzifon Cönkü, introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. Hakverdioğlu shows that the poem is on page 260 of Sabahattin Küçük's edition of the Bâkî Dîvânı; the full text of the poem is there. Since the article gives only the opening couplet, it is not known whether the ghazal is recorded in the cönk in full or in part. That Bâkî's ghazals entered a Merzifon collection, in the same notebook as the minstrels' koşmas, some three centuries after sixteenth-century Istanbul shows that divan poetry reached its readers in the provinces. For the poet's life and his other ghazals in the cönk, see the page on Bâkî.

Bibliography

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Merzifon Cönkü", idil, 8(57), 2019, p. 555 (Cönk, p. 79). https://www.idildergisi.com/makale/pdf/1552911669.pdf
  • Sabahattin Küçük (ed.), Bâkî Dîvânı, Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları, 1994, p. 260 (as cited by Hakverdioğlu 2019).

Online sources