Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Yâ Rab ne perîsüñ ki yüzüñ görse melekler
Bir âh ideler oda yana cümle felekler

In English

1. O Lord, what kind of fairy are you, that if the angels saw your face they would heave a single sigh, and all the heavens would burn in the fire of it.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Since its two lines rhyme ("melekler / felekler"), the couplet is the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal; the rest of the ghazal is not known. It appears in Latîfî's entry on Sâfî under the heading "Velehu" (also his). The metre is from the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre), "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün". The rhyme is "-ek" and the redif (refrain word) is the suffix "-ler". To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet describes the beloved's beauty with extraordinary exaggeration. The beloved is a fairy (peri); in the old belief a peri is an invisible, beautiful being that bewitches people. Humans and angels alike are moved by this beauty. A single sigh from the angels would be enough to set all the spheres, the layers of the heavens, on fire. In divan poetry the lover's sigh is fiery and burns the skies; by transferring this established image to the angels, Sâfî raises the effect of beauty from the earth to the heavens. This kind of exaggeration, contrary to reason and reality, was counted in the old rhetoric as the highest degree of hyperbole (mübalağa).

The wording of the couplet is also notable. The rhyme words "melekler" and "felekler" differ only in their first letters; this closeness of sound binds the two lines tightly together. Fairy, angel and sphere, that is, the enchanted being of the earth, the luminous beings of the heavens and the heavens themselves, are ranged in the same couplet. There is also a congruence of images (tenasüp) between sigh, fire and burning. The opening of the line with the invocation "Yâ Rab", O Lord, expresses the poet's wonder and lends the couplet the air of a prayer as well.

Bibliography

  • 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