Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Başım üzre yeri var dilberin ağyârı ile
Gül gibi dokunuruz başımıza hârı ile

In English

1. The beloved has a place above my head, that is, I hold her dear, even together with her rivals; just as we put the rose on our head together with its thorn, so we accept her. The couplet can be read in two ways: the second line can also be understood as "we bear it even if the rose's thorn pricks our head".

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal (gazel); both lines end with the redif (refrain word) "ile", and the rhyme is the sound "-âr" in the words "ağyâr" and "hâr". Hüsameddin gives this couplet as the first of the poems he quotes from those of Edâyî "seen in the biographical anthologies (tezkire) and in the Matla'ü'n-Nezâ'ir"; he does not state separately which source the couplet comes from. The rest of the ghazal is unknown, and there is no record of to whom or when it was addressed. The source does not indicate the metre of the couplet.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet opens with the everyday idiom "başım üstünde yeri var" (she has a place above my head); it means to accept something or someone with respect and affection. "Ağyâr" are the rivals around the beloved, the strangers of whom the lover is jealous. In divan poetry the rose stands for the beloved and the thorn most often for the rival or for the torment the beloved inflicts. The poet turns this familiar pairing into a statement of acceptance: there is no rose without a thorn, and no beloved without rivals; whoever wears the rose on his head consents to its thorn as well.

The word "baş" (head) appears in both lines. In the first it is used figuratively within the idiom, in the second literally as the place where the rose is worn; this repetition binds the two lines together. The verb "dokunmak" here calls up both the sense of fixing the rose to the head and that of the thorn pricking the head; this is why the couplet can be read in two ways. This analysis is our own.

Bibliography

Online sources