Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün

Gül germ oluben yoluña ṣaçılmasun ey dost
Ṣovuḳ geçer iken daḫî açılmasun ey dost

In English

1. O friend, let the rose not grow eager and strew its petals on your path; and let it not open while the cold is still passing. (The couplet can be read in two ways. In the first reading the words are aimed at the rose's haste: the rose should not warm untimely and throw itself on the beloved's path, nor open before the cold has passed. In the second, "growing warm" and "the cold passing" are understood as the behaviour of the beloved and those around her: while the beloved is cold, it is out of place for the rose to open in joy.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Since both lines rhyme, the couplet is the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal; the rest of the ghazal is not in the anthologies. Latîfî places it at the head of the examples he gives in his entry on Sâfî, saying "these one or two opening couplets are among his poems"; Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi and Beyânî also quote the couplet after Sâfî's ghazal "Sünbülüñ her dem". The metre is from the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre), "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün". The redif (refrain word) is "-masun ey dost" and the rhyme is the sound "-açıl": ṣaçıl, açıl. In the second line Kınalızâde and Beyânî read "igen" where Latîfî's text has "iken". To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The whole arrangement of the couplet rests on the contrast between warm and cold. "Germ olmak" means both to grow warm and to set about something eagerly, to be stirred; "ṣovuḳ" describes both cold weather and cold, indifferent behaviour. By setting these two words against each other in the same couplet the poet creates an antithesis (tezat). The verbs "ṣaçılmak" (to be strewn) and "açılmak" (to open) are also linked in both sound and sense: the rose opens, and its petals fall and are strewn. The rose's opening and shedding of its petals recall an old contrast between spring and winter, joy and mourning.

Since the couplet stands alone, its meaning is hard to fix with certainty. In divan poetry the rose is a flower that recalls the beloved's cheek and sometimes competes with it in beauty. Seen in this light, the poet may be telling the rose not to act before the beloved and strew itself on her path, nor to open and display its beauty before its season. On the other hand, the phrase "the cold passing" also suggests the beloved's coldness towards her lovers; the couplet then becomes the words of a lover who finds a display of joy in the garden out of place while the beloved is cold. Latîfî's view of Sâfî as a pioneer in the use of proverbs and idioms in poetry also suggests that everyday expressions such as "the cold passing" were chosen deliberately in the couplet.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ ve Tabsıratü'n-nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), p. 322, entry on Sâfî. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2017 (e-book), p. 495, entry on Sâfî. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Beyânî, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2017 (e-book), p. 107, entry on Sâfî. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr