Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Ḳalye ḳoḳusı nesīm-i rūḥ-perverdür baña
Ṣalmanuñ her yapraġı berg-i gül-i terdür baña
Kef geçerem ger ḳavurma gelmezise sofraya
Yaḫni ger irişmese ölmek muḳarrerdür baña
Ṣalmanuñ her biri ṣıfr oldı vü māhīçe elin
Yufḳa evrāḳ-ı ḥisāb u sofra defterdür baña
Ṣunduġumca şekkeri pālūdeye her dem direm
Men midür men kim bugün vaṣlüñ müyesserdür baña
Dimegil baña Baṣīrī var mıdurur iştihāñ
Çün gelūnuñ āyeti Ḥırede ezberdür baña

In English

1. The smell of kalye is to me a soul-nourishing morning breeze; every leaf of salma is to me a fresh rose petal. (Kalye and salma are meat dishes. The breeze that brings news of the beloved and the rose petal of love poetry are here likened to the smell and the leaf of a dish.)

2. If no roasted meat (kavurma) comes to the table, "kef geçerem"; if the stew (yahni) does not arrive, death is certain for me. (The meaning of "kef geçmek" is not certain. Since "kef" means the palm of the hand, it may be understood as "I withdraw my hand, I give up"; with its other sense of foam, a meaning like "I foam at the mouth" could also be considered.)

3. Each piece of salma has become a zero, and the "mâhîçe"...; to me the yufka is sheets of accounts and the table-cloth a ledger. (The first line of the couplet is not clear. "Mâhîçe" means a small fish and is the edition's reading; the meaning of the word "elin" here could not be determined. In the second line the thin sheets of yufka pastry are likened to account papers, and the cloth spread on the floor for a meal to an open ledger.)

4. Each time I offer sugar to the paluze I always say to it: "Is this person granted union with you today really me, really me?" (Paluze is a sweet made of starch and sugar.)

5. O Basîrî, do not ask me "Do you have an appetite?"; for I know by heart the verse that contains the command "eat". ("Gelū" is most likely "külû", "eat", the command found in many verses of the Qur'an; in Arabic script k and g are written with the same letter. The meaning of the edition's "Ḥırede" is not clear; it may be connected with the word "ḫıred" (reason), and if read so the line means "for the verse 'eat' is memorized in my mind".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets in the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün"; the edition does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion. The redif (refrain word), together with the ending "-dür", is "baña", to me; the rhyme rests on the sound "-er": rūḥ-perver, ter, muḳarrer, defter, müyesser, ezber. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number XLII in Ahmet Kartal's edition. Kartal says that a notable feature of Basîrî's Turkish poems is two ghazals that contain the names of dishes of the period and tell which dishes the poet liked and which he did not; these are ghazals XLII and XLIV. To whom and when it was written is not known.

The text of the ghazal was transcribed by hand from a scanned edition, and a few of its words could not be resolved in meaning. "Kef geçerem" in the second couplet, "māhīçe elin" in the third and "gelū" and "Ḥırede" in the last are printed thus in the edition; some of them may be problems arising from the reading of the Arabic-script text. In the translation above these places are clearly marked, and uncertain suggestions of meaning are given in parentheses.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Like ghazal XLIV, "Bulgur aşını sevmezem", the ghazal carries all the patterns of love poetry to the dinner table. The first couplet is the clearest example of this. In divan poetry "nesîm", the morning breeze, is the wind that brings the beloved's scent to the lover and gives him life; "berg-i gül-i ter", the petal of a fresh rose, likewise recalls the beloved's cheek or beauty. Basîrî gives these two images to the smell of kalye and the leaf of salma. So from the first couplet onward a dish takes the place of the beloved, and the reader understands that the ghazal is not a serious love poem but a joke.

In the second couplet the poet applies the death threat of the lover who cannot reach the beloved to a stew: if the yahni does not reach the table his death is "mukarrer", certain. In love poetry separation from the beloved is equated with death; here the cause of death is a pot of stew arriving late. The third couplet builds a language of accounts and chancery: there is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words zero, account papers (evrâk-ı hisâb) and ledger. The thin sheets of yufka are likened to account papers, and the cloth spread out for the meal to a ledger. Although the first line of the couplet cannot be fully understood in its present reading, it may be thought that this imagery of accounts comes from a poet who knew the circles of the period's scribes and treasurers well.

In the fourth couplet the paluze takes the place of a beloved. On the day he is united with the beloved the lover cannot believe his luck and asks "Is this me?". Basîrî ties this astonishment to the moments when he offers sugar to the paluze. "Men" means "I". In the closing couplet the poet addresses himself and leaves no need to ask whether he has an appetite: he knows by heart the verse that carries the command "eat". This playful reference to a sacred text takes the ghazal's air of hezl, jest and banter, to its furthest point.

Historical Context

The biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) present Basîrî above all as a witty man of the gatherings. Âşık Çelebi writes that his poems were "gāh cidd ü gāh hezl", sometimes serious and sometimes in jest, that he joked with the grandees of the state and was the salt of every gathering. Kartal too notes that Basîrî's witticisms were generally of the nature of hezl and satire, yet he was a man sought after in the gatherings of the leading men of the state. These two food ghazals are examples of this side of Basîrî passing into his poetry. The kalye, salma, kavurma, yahni, yufka and paluze named in the ghazal also give a small list of dishes known at the Ottoman table of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), pp. 180-181, entry on Basîrî. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

Books

Online sources