Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Hazînim durmayıp ağlar dü-çeşmim
Boğup âhım gelûmu makta' etdi
Bu kalbin nâlesi ağlatdı halkı
Figânî göklere yükseldi gitdi

In English

1. I am full of grief, my two eyes weep without ceasing; my sighs have choked my throat and cut it off (from sighing my throat is knotted and my voice is cut short).

2. The moaning of this heart has made the people weep; its lament rose to the heavens and departed. (The line is also read as "Figânî rose to the heavens and departed".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a four-line kıt'a, that is, a short verse piece of two couplets (beyit) in which only the second and fourth lines rhyme. The rhyme is formed by the words "etdi" and "gitdi". The source does not indicate the metre; the lines fit the pattern "mefâ'îlün mefâ'îlün fe'ûlün" of aruz (quantitative metre), and this reading is ours. Nothing is missing at the beginning or end of the quatrain; Hüsameddin gives it as a complete piece.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain speaks the language of mourning from beginning to end: weeping eyes, a sigh that chokes the throat, a moan that makes the people weep. "Dü-çeşm" in the first line means "two eyes" and also recalls the word Çeşmî, the poet's pen name (mahlas); the poet may have placed his own name inside the weeping eyes. In the second line "gelû" is Persian for throat, and "makta'" means the place where something is cut, a cut. The same word is also used in divan poetry for the last couplet of a ghazal. That the sigh made the throat a "makta'" suggests both the cutting short of the voice and the end of speech; this second sense is our interpretation.

The real art lies in the last line. "Figân" means a cry of lament, a moan. The words "Figânî göklere yükseldi gitdi" say on the one hand that the heart's lament rose to the heavens, and on the other that the poet with the pen name Figânî rose to the heavens and departed. This is tevriye (double entendre), the figure that uses a word's near and far meanings together, and it is this word that reveals to whom the quatrain was addressed. It is also striking that images of the throat, of choking and of cutting should have been chosen for a poet who died on the gallows.

Historical Context

Hüsameddin gives the quatrain while describing Prince Ahmed's years in Amasya, immediately after the death of Figânî İshak Çelebi. Figânî, a descendant of the Torumtay family and companion of Prince Murad Bey, had composed a ballad close to satire that attacked the Persian faction whose influence was growing at court. The ballad, recited among the people, angered the Persians. They in turn invented the claim that Figânî bore ill will towards Prince Murad and persuaded Sultan Ahmed of it, and Figânî was hanged without inquiry in the month of Shawwal of the year 912 (February-March 1507). Hüsameddin says that this quatrain, which he found in an anthology of poets that came into his hands in Amasya, "must surely be about Figânî". That the quatrain was written on Figânî's death therefore remains Hüsameddin's conjecture; the play on the name in the last line, however, strengthens it. Hüsameddin further writes that Muslihzâde Abdurrahman Efendi, judge of Amasya and related to Figânî by marriage, fell ill and died because of this affair and the bitter words of the people. The words "made the people weep" in the quatrain match the effect the execution left in the city. For Çeşmî's life see the article Çeşmî Mehmed Çelebi, and for Figânî the article Figânî İshak Çelebi.

Bibliography

Online sources