Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Mihnet-i aşka esîr itdi beni devr-i felek
Düşeyim râh-ı belâya der-i dilber diyerek

In English

1. The turning of the heavens has made me a captive of love's suffering; (so be it,) let me set out on the road of calamity, saying "the beloved's door".

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is the only piece left of Harîmî. Since its two lines are tied to the same sound by the words "felek" and "diyerek", the couplet may be the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal (gazel); the rest of the ghazal, and to whom and when the couplet was addressed, are unknown. No metre is named, and Hüsameddin quotes the couplet on its own with the words "Şu beyt eş'ârındandır", this couplet is among his poems.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the first line the poet is passive, in the second he is the one who chooses; the tension of the couplet comes from these two opposite movements. In the opening line, what makes him a captive of love's pain is "devr-i felek", the ever-turning sky. In divan poetry the heavens are the wheel held responsible for what befalls a man, always turning against him. In the second line the initiative passes to the poet. The optative in "düşeyim", let me fall, shows a decision arising from within the captivity: since the heavens have thrown me into this pain, let me fall onto the road of calamity of my own accord. The Turkish idiom "yola düşmek" carries two senses here at once; it can be understood both as setting out on a road and as falling into misfortune. This double reading is our own; Hüsameddin leaves the couplet unexplained.

The phrase at the end of the line, "der-i dilber diyerek", turns the road of calamity into the beloved's door. For the lover the road to pain and the road to the beloved are the same; calamity is another name for the beloved's threshold. The words "devr" (turning), "râh" (road) and "der" (door) form a chain of motion and arrival in the couplet. The verb "diyerek" can also be read as "thinking so, taking it to be so"; the poet then knowingly puts the road of calamity in place of the beloved's door.

Historical Context

The couplet is the last line of Hüsameddin's short entry and has not been found in any other source. What is known of his teacher Hâcezâde Remzî Abdullah Efendi and of Şemsî Paşazâde Ahmed Paşa, whose secretary he was, is gathered in the article Harîmî Abdullah Çelebi.

Bibliography

Online sources