Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün

Reyhân hatuña mahrem-i berg-i semen olmışdur
Sünbül saçuña hem-dem-i yâsemen olmışdur
Bir gülşen-i zîbâdur hüsnüñ sanemâ ki_anda
Münbit gül-i hamrâya tarf-ı çemen olmışdur
Bir merdüm-i serhoşdur gözüñ gözüm içinde
Kim gûşe-i mey-hâne aña vatan olmışdur
Bir zerre ki pinhândur içinde anuñ pervîn
Gelmiş bu kamer-rûya şimdi dehen olmışdur
Dür dişi hayâsıyla olup düre tâ yilden
Bahr ile sadef dürre gûr u kefen olmışdur
Gül yañagı üstinde gördükçe dirüm zülfin
Cem‘iyyet-i Şâmîyle saçuñ neden olmışdur
İçdükçe ciger kanın câm-ı dil-i her gamzeñ
Zî-mey içüben merdüm-i şîşe-şiken olmışdur
Bu şi‘r-i teri Tâcî çün sûz-ı dem-i Dâvûd
Âvâz-ı Hüseynîde savt-ı Hasen olmışdur

In English

1. Your basil-like down has become the intimate of the jasmine petal (your white cheek); your hyacinth hair has become the companion of the jasmine. (Hat, literally "script", is the fine, greenish down on the cheek; jasmine stands for white skin and hyacinth for black hair. "Reyhân" (basil) is also the name of a style of calligraphy.)

2. O idol of beauty, your loveliness is an adorned rose garden; there the edge of the meadow has become the soil that brings forth the red rose. (The red rose is the cheek and the meadow at its edge is the down: the rose of the cheek blooms where the down encircles it.)

3. Your eye is a drunken man within my eye; the corner of the tavern has become his homeland. ("Merdüm" means both "man" and "pupil of the eye". The image of the beloved's languid eye lives in the lover's eye, and the corner of the lover's eye, weeping blood, is likened to a corner of the tavern.)

4. A mote within which the Pleiades lie hidden has come to this moon-faced one and has now become a mouth. (The beloved's mouth is likened to a mote for its smallness, and the teeth within it to the stars of the Pleiades set side by side.)

5. Ashamed before your pearl-like teeth, the pearl has withdrawn far away; the sea and the shell have become grave and shroud to the pearl. (The reason the pearl stays hidden at the bottom of the sea, inside the shell, is the shame it feels before the beloved's teeth. There is a play on "dür" (pearl) and "dûr" (far); the meaning of the phrase "tâ yilden" is not wholly clear.)

6. Whenever I see your locks upon your rose cheek, I say: how has your hair become one with the gathered darkness of evening? ("Şâm" means both evening and the city of Damascus; "cem‘iyyet" means both a gathering and the composure of the heart. Locks are associated with dishevelment in divan poetry; here their appearing gathered upon the rose cheek like the dusk is met with wonder. The couplet can also be read in other ways.)

7. As each of your glances drinks the blood of my liver from the cup of my heart, it has drunk of wine and become a brawler who smashes bottles. (Gamze is the beloved's languid, wounding glance; here it is likened to a drunken reveller who drinks the lover's blood like wine and, once intoxicated, breaks the glass of the heart.)

8. O Tâcî, this fresh poem, like the burning of David's breath, has become a beautiful voice in the Hüseynî mode. (The prophet David is remembered for the beauty of his voice. Hüseynî is a musical mode, and "savt-ı hasen" means "beautiful voice"; the two words also recall Hüseyin and Hasan, the grandsons of the Prophet.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal has eight couplets and appears under the heading "Nazîre-i Tâcî" as no. 1676 in Mecma‘u'n-Nezâ'ir, the great anthology in which Edirneli Nazmî gathered the response poems written up to 940 (1533-34). The metre is the hezec pattern of aruz (quantitative metre) "Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün". The refrain word (redif) is "olmışdur" (has become), and the rhyme falls on "-en": semen, yâsemen, çemen, vatan, dehen, kefen, neden, şiken, Hasen. In the last couplet the poet names his pen name (mahlas). No second witness of this ghazal has been found elsewhere in the anthology or in another source; the text therefore rests on Köksal's edition.

The ghazal was not written on its own; it is a nazire (response poem) to Şeyhî's ghazal beginning "Tâ boyuñ ile bûyuñ serv ü semen olmışdur", that is, a reply in the same metre, rhyme and refrain. In the anthology Şeyhî's ghazal is followed by two response poems by Necâtî and one by Mihrî Hatun; Tâcî's ghazal stands fourth, and after it come the responses of Şâhidî, Kâdirî, Zâtî, Sabâyî, Kıvâmî, Mu‘îdî, Kâmî, Sun‘î and the compiler Nazmî. It is striking that the poems of two Amasya poets, Tâcî and Mihrî, written on the same model stand side by side in the anthology; the source, however, gives no information that the two responses were composed in the same gathering or on the same occasion.

A note on attribution is needed. In the anthology the heading is simply "Tâcî", and Köksal's index of poets records him as "Tâcî" without further identification. In the biographical anthologies of the period the only poet known by this pen name is Tâcî Bey, father of Câfer and Sa'dî Çelebi; his son Câfer Çelebi appears separately in the same anthology under the heading "Tâcî-zâde". It is therefore highly probable that the ghazal belongs to Edip Tâcî (Tâcî Bey), but the editor does not state this explicitly. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam records that Tâcî Bey also had a ghazal in Ömer b. Mezîd's Mecmûatü'n-nezâir; since that edition could not be consulted, it could not be verified whether the two ghazals are the same.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first half of the ghazal is a portrait of beauty, and the beloved's face is built from start to finish as a garden. In the opening couplet the down on the cheek is likened to basil, the skin to jasmine and the hair to hyacinth; flower names such as reyhân, semen, sünbül and yâsemen thus form a chain of congruent images (tenasüp). The word "reyhân" is also the name of one of the six classic styles of script, and this double meaning is often used in divan poetry, which calls the down on the cheek "hat", that is, writing. Moreover Tâcî, according to the sources, was a statesman who practised calligraphy alongside Şeyh Hamdullah; the sources, however, draw no direct link between the couplet and this craft. The second couplet continues the same garden: the red rose is the cheek, and the meadow around it is the down.

In the third couplet the word "merdüm" is a double entendre (tevriye): it means both "man" and "pupil of the eye". The beloved's drunken eye sits like a man inside the lover's eye, and the corner of the lover's eye, weeping blood, becomes his tavern corner. In the fourth couplet the smallness of the mouth is likened to a mote and the teeth to the Pleiades; in the fifth, the pearl's staying in its shell at the bottom of the sea is explained by its shame before the beloved's teeth. This is a typical instance of the figure called hüsn-i ta‘lîl, finding the poem's own beautiful cause for a fact of nature. The likeness of sound between "dür" and "dûr" is also worked into this couplet.

The sixth couplet is the most obscure in the ghazal. The word "Şâm" means both evening and the city of Damascus; "cem‘iyyet" means both a gathering and the composure of the heart. Since locks are always linked with dishevelment in divan poetry, their resting on the rose cheek like a gathered dusk astonishes the lover. In the seventh couplet the glance is drawn as a reveller who drinks the lover's liver-blood like wine and, when drunk, smashes the glass of the heart; the drunken eye of the third couplet and this drunken glance are like two figures of the same drinking party.

The final couplet plainly shows the response poem's tie to its model. In his own final couplet Şeyhî praises his patron as "lutfı Hüseynî vü hulkı Hasan" (Hüseyin-like in grace, Hasan-like in character); Necâtî too uses the phrase "nazmı hasen" (his verse is beautiful) at the end of his response. Tâcî carries the same play into music: his poem has become a "savt-ı hasen", a beautiful voice, sung in the Hüseynî mode. The words Hüseynî and Hasen, by recalling Hüseyin and Hasan, create a congruence of images; the beauty of the prophet David's voice and the burning of his breath complete this musical picture. In the response-poem tradition, following the model this closely and rebuilding the same conceit in one's own way was counted a measure of mastery.

Historical Context

When the ghazal was written is not known. Among those who wrote responses to Şeyhî's ghazal are poets of the reign of Bayezid II such as Necâtî and Mihrî Hatun; Mihrî was from Amasya and a well-known poet in the circle of the princely court. Tâcî too served in Prince Bayezid's household at Amasya as treasurer and chancery secretary. This shared ground suggests that the ghazal may have been recited in or around the prince's gatherings at Amasya, but there is no record in the sources to show this. Latîfî's remark about Tâcî, "eş‘ârı nâdir ü kem-yâbdur" (his poems are few and hard to find), also explains why a complete ghazal such as this could reach us only through an anthology of response poems.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-Şuarâ ve Tabsıratü'n-Nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2018 (e-book), pp. 158-159, entry on Tâcî.
  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 8, pp. 12-18, entry on Tâceddin İbrahim Paşa (Tâcî Bey).

Official sources

  • Edirneli Nazmî, Mecma‘u'n-Nezâ'ir, ed. M. Fatih Köksal, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2017 (e-book), p. 593, poem no. 1676; Şeyhî's model ghazal no. 1672, response poems nos. 1673-1686.

Books

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 39, Istanbul 2010, pp. 353-356. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr

Online sources