Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün

Geh cevr ü geh cefā vü gehī ẓulm ü geh sitem
Çoḳdur keremlerüñ ben anuñ ḳanḳısın diyem
Mülk-i vücūd gözüme ṭar oldı ey refīḳ
Göster baña ki ḳanda durur vādī-yi ‘adem
Dirlik muḥāldür baña ‘ālem içinde kim
Gerdūn-ı dūn içürdi baña em yirine sem
Mecnūn egerçi pādişeh-i mülk-i ‘ışḳ idi
Şimdi benüm yirinde şehinşāh-ı ġam
Dīvān yaḳar Basīrī yazılursa bu ġazel
Yā Rab bu şi‘ri ḳande idem ṣoñıcı raḳam

In English

1. Now oppression, now cruelty, now tyranny, now reproach; your favours are many, which of them shall I name?

2. O friend, the realm of existence has grown narrow to my eyes; show me where the valley of non-existence lies.

3. A tranquil life in this world is impossible for me, for the base sky has made me drink poison instead of remedy.

4. Though Majnun was the king of the realm of love, now in his place I am the emperor of grief. (In the edition the line is two syllables short of the metre; the words "benüm yirinde" literally mean "in my place", so the couplet can also be read as "now in my place sits the emperor of grief". Which is meant cannot be settled without knowing the missing word.)

5. If this ghazal is written down it will set the divan on fire; O Lord, where shall I set this poem as the final entry? ("Divan" means both a book of poems and a council of state.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets in the muzâri family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün"; the edition does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion. The ghazal has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is the sound "-em": sitem, diyem, ‘adem, sem, ġam, raḳam. The second line of the fourth couplet is two syllables short of the metre in the edition. Kartal, following Mehmed Çavuşoğlu, says that Basîrî's poems are almost flawless in metre; the gap therefore seems to belong to the manuscript or to the reading rather than to the poet. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number XI in Ahmet Kartal's edition. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens with a subtle inversion. The lover lists the beloved's oppression, cruelty, tyranny and reproach and calls them "keremlerüñ", your favours, your bounties. The fourfold repetition of the word "geh" gives the sound of a list that never ends. Kartal cites this opening couplet as showing that Basîrî counted the beloved's torments and cruelties as so many favours written for him. In the lover's eyes the boundary between pain and bounty has vanished; praise and complaint are joined in one sentence.

In the second couplet existence and non-existence face each other. "Mülk-i vücūd", the realm of existence, has grown narrow to the lover's eyes; he asks where "vādī-yi ‘adem", the valley of non-existence, may be. The congruence of images (tenasüp) between realm and valley presents the passage from being to non-being as a journey. In the third couplet the sky is called "dūn", base, and turns into a bad physician who gives poison instead of remedy. "Em" and "sem", remedy and poison, are close in sound and opposite in meaning; the wit of the couplet springs from this closeness.

The fourth couplet is one of those Kartal cites where Basîrî compares himself with Majnun and claims to surpass him in love. Majnun was once king of the realm of love; now the emperor of the realm of grief sits on that throne. The difference in rank between king and emperor, between the realm of love and the realm of grief, carries the lover's claim to have outdone Majnun. The closing couplet turns to the poem's own fire. If this ghazal is written down it will burn the divan; the poet does not know where to set it as the "final entry". The double meaning of the word "dīvān", both the book in which poems are collected and the council of state, may be read in the couplet as a double entendre (tevriye).

Bibliography

Online sources