Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Bir yaña ta‘n-ı raḳīb u bir yaña cevrüñ senüñ
Dād elinden dōstuñ feryād elinden düşmenüñ
N’eyleyem ben ḫil‘at-i sincāb geyüp dōstlar
Kim baña ḫākısteri sincāb olupdur külḫanuñ
Rūşen iden külbe-i aḥzānumı āhum yeter
Zerrece gözüme görinmez żiyāsı revzenüñ
Seng-i ḫārādur senüñ sīneñde olan dil velī
Bu ‘acāyib ḥāl kim rūḥ-ı muṣavverdür tenüñ
Daḫı taṣdī‘ itmez oldı kes̱ret-i renc-i ḫumār
Ey göñül meyḫāne-i vaḥdet olalı meskenüñ
‘Işḳ içinde ‘āḳıl olurdı idüp terk-i cünūn
Ey Basīrī görse ger şeydālıġuñ Mecnūn senüñ

In English

1. On one side the rival's reproach, on the other your cruelty; I cry "justice" against the friend and "help" against the enemy.

2. What should I do with putting on a robe of squirrel fur as my friends do, since for me the ashes of the bath furnace have become squirrel fur? (The külhan is the furnace that heats the bathhouse; the homeless used to sleep at night in its warm ashes. Ash resembles grey squirrel fur in colour.)

3. My sigh is enough to light up my hut of sorrows; the light of the window does not show to my eye in the least. (The sigh is thought of as fiery; the lover's sigh is a light that illuminates his hut.)

4. The heart in your breast is hard granite; yet this is a strange state, that your body is like the soul given form.

5. O heart, ever since the tavern of unity became your dwelling, the great pain of hangover no longer gives you a headache. (Unity, vahdet, is in Sufism the oneness of being, the state of seeing God in all things.)

6. O Basîrî, if Majnun saw your frenzy, he would give up madness and become wise in love.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of six 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 rhyme rests on the sound "-n", and the endings "-üñ / -uñ" that follow it stand in the place of a redif (refrain word): senüñ, düşmenüñ, külḫanuñ, revzenüñ, tenüñ, meskenüñ, senüñ. In the opening and closing couplets the word "senüñ" is repeated in rhyme position. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number IX 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 couplet describing the lover besieged from two sides: on one side the rival's reproach, on the other the beloved's cruelty. The second line meets these two sieges with two cries: "dād", justice, against the friend, and "feryād", help, against the enemy. The words friend and enemy, dâd and feryâd, are set against each other and give the couplet a symmetrical structure. That the friend, the beloved, should do as much harm as the enemy is the bitter point of the couplet.

The second couplet rests on an image taken from daily life, of a kind often found in Basîrî's poetry. The friends wear kaftans of squirrel fur; the lover's fur is the ash in the furnace of the bathhouse. The külhan is the bathhouse furnace, and the homeless and the forlorn used to spend the night in its warm ashes. The likeness in colour between ash and grey squirrel fur conveys the contrast between wealth and poverty as a jest. In the third couplet the lover's poverty continues in the image of a hut. "Külbe-i aḥzān", the hut of sorrows, is a familiar phrase in divan poetry expressing the lover's loneliness; this hut is lit not by light from the window but by the lover's fiery sigh.

The fourth couplet rests on a contrast. The heart in the beloved's breast is as hard as granite, while the body is so delicate that it is like the soul given form. Stone and soul, hardness and delicacy, meet in the same person, and the poet calls this "‘acāyib ḥāl", a strange state. The fifth couplet turns the ghazal toward Sufism. Kartal mentions this couplet among the examples showing that Sufism holds an important place in Basîrî's poems. The heart has settled in the "tavern of unity"; there the hangover, the headache that follows drinking, no longer has any effect. The images of tavern, wine and hangover express in Sufism the intoxication of divine love and the distress of sobering from it; the heart that has reached unity is freed from this distress.

The closing couplet is among those Kartal cites in which Basîrî compares himself with Majnun and Ferhad and considers himself superior to them. If Majnun saw Basîrî's frenzy, he would give up his own madness and become wise. The contrast between reason and cünûn, madness, joins with a hyperbole that makes even Majnun, the greatest example of the lover, appear sane beside Basîrî.

Bibliography

Online sources