Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Mümkin olmazdı begüm sensüz tekellüm ʿâşıḳa
Derd-i ʿışḳuñ sînede olmasa nefs-i nâṭıḳa

In English

1. My lord, were the pain of your love not the rational, speaking soul (nefs-i nâtıka) in the lover's breast, it would not be possible for him to speak without you.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Everything turns on a philosophical term. In the old books of ethics and philosophy, "nefs-i nâtıka" is the rational, speaking soul that distinguishes man from beast; human thought and speech are ascribed to it. Ehlî dresses the pain of love in this term: the lover has been parted from the beloved and is so spent that without the beloved he could say nothing, yet if he can still speak, the reason is the pain of love in his breast. The pain has taken the place of his speaking soul.

The closeness in meaning between "tekellüm" (speech) and "nâtıka" (speaking) binds the two lines of the couplet together. When introducing Ehlî, Âşık Çelebi speaks of his "diḳḳat-i ṭabʿ", the subtlety of his mind; a poet from madrasa circles placing a philosophical term inside a ghazal couplet is a fitting example of that praise. The address to the beloved as "begüm", my lord, is also one of the usual instances in the sixteenth-century ghazal of the beloved being spoken of as a bey, a master. The couplet is found only in Âşık Çelebi's anthology; he gives it second in Ehlî's entry, right after the couplet "Kopar fitne".

Bibliography

Online sources