Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Hâl kim ol goncenin la’l-i mey-âşâmındadır
Dâğ-ı hasretdir ki gönlüm lâlesi câmındadır

In English

1. The mole on the wine-drinking ruby lip of that rosebud, that is, of the beloved whose mouth is a rosebud, is the brand of longing that lies in the cup of my heart's tulip.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening couplet (matla) of a kaside (qasida) that Edâyî presented to Prince Mustafa; both lines end with the same rhyme and redif (refrain word). The redif is "-ındadır", and the rhyme is the sound "-âm" in the words "âşâm" and "câm". The rest of the kaside is unknown today. Hüsameddin gives the couplet while telling the poet's life and says that the kaside changed his fortunes. In Hüsameddin's quotation from Gelibolulu Âlî's Künhü'l-Ahbâr the same couplet begins "Hâli kim"; in the text that TEİS also quotes from Âlî it appears with readings closer to the old spelling, such as "goncanuñ" and "-dur". The sources do not indicate the metre of the couplet.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is built on a mole on the beloved's lip. The "gonca" is the unopened rose, the rosebud, and in divan poetry it stands for the beloved's mouth, small and closed. "La'l" is a red precious stone, used here for the lip; "mey-âşâm" means wine-drinking. In the second line the poet likens his own heart to a tulip. In divan poetry the dark spot at the centre of the tulip is seen as the burn mark on the lover's breast, the "dâğ"; its cup-shaped flower is also likened to a wine cup. Combining these two images, Edâyî takes the black mole on the beloved's lip to be the wound of longing in the cup of his own heart's tulip.

The skill of the couplet lies in the tight weave of correspondences: red lip and red tulip, black mole and the tulip's dark spot, wine-drinking lip and cup answer one another. A part of the beloved's beauty thus becomes a part of the lover's pain. The double meaning of the word "hâl", both mole and state or condition, becomes even clearer in the reading "Hâli kim" quoted by Âlî. This analysis is our own.

Historical Context

According to Hüsameddin, Edâyî attached himself to Prince Mustafa in Amasya on the advice of his teacher Fazlı Çelebi, and entered the circle of his companions by writing ghazals praising the beauty of Gonca Keyvân Bey, the prince's favourite, and kasides in praise of the prince. When he presented the kaside with this opening couplet, the prince liked it so much that he made the poet secretary of his divan. Kınalızâde also writes that Edâyî gained great favour with the prince by composing a murabba (quatrain poem) for Gonca Keyvân. It is striking that the word "gonce" in the opening couplet recalls the name of Gonca Keyvân, the favourite of the same court; the sources do not say so explicitly, and this possibility is our own observation. For the poet's life see Edâyî Receb Bey.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources