Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Mefā‘īlü Mefā‘īlü Fa‘ūlün

Hammâma girer ol gül-i nâzük-bedeni gör
Pehlû-yı temâşâdur o billûr teni gör
Cân virse sana tûtî-i dil itme ta’accüb
Ko söyleyeni sözüm işit söyleteni gör
Bir mâhun olup âyine-i hüsnine nâzır
Dil-dâdesi olursan eger sende seni gör
Bî-ayş nice yâr ile hem-sohbet olur dil
Kır tevbeleri bâde-i peymân-şikeni gör
Âşık olalı Hâtemî ol mihr-i münîre
Za’f ile hilâl itdi gam u gussa beni gör

In English

1. See that delicate-bodied rose entering the bath; see that crystal skin, a sight one cannot have enough of. ("Rose" here is the beloved himself; "crystal skin" describes a fine, gleaming whiteness.)

2. If the parrot of the heart gives its life to you, do not be surprised; leave the one who speaks, listen to my word and see the one who makes him speak. (Parrots learned to talk in front of a mirror by repeating the voice of someone hidden behind it; the true speaker is the one who makes the parrot speak.)

3. If, gazing into the mirror of a moon-faced beauty, you give him your heart, see yourself within yourself. (The couplet can be read in two ways: in the beloved's mirror the lover sees his own image; or the one who loves the beloved must seek him within himself.)

4. How can the heart keep company with the beloved without wine and pleasure? Break your vows of repentance and see the wine that breaks oaths. ("Peymân" means a promise or oath, and "peymâne" means a cup; in the couplet the two words call each other to mind.)

5. Ever since Hâtemî fell in love with that shining sun, grief and sorrow have turned me into a crescent from weakness; see me. (Before the sun-faced beloved the lover has grown as thin as a crescent moon.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets (beyit), written in the metre "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fa‘ūlün" of the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre). The metre is not stated in the source; it has been deduced from the scansion of the couplets. The redif (refrain word) is the imperative "gör", "see", repeated at the end of every couplet; the rhyme is built on the sound "-eni" in bedeni, teni, söyleteni, seni, şikeni and beni. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet in the form "Hâtemî".

This ghazal does not appear in the biographical anthologies (tezkire). Its text was published by Yunus Kaplan in the examples section of the Hâtemî entry in TEİS, from a poetry miscellany in the National Library in Ankara (06 Mil A 7076, fol. 36a). As it rests on a single record in that miscellany, it could not be compared with another manuscript. The transcription is TEİS's simplified spelling and has been kept as it is. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi says that besides his Arabic and Persian kasides Müeyyedzâde's Turkish poems too were "bî-hadd ü bî-şümâr", beyond count; yet the anthologies quote only a few couplets from them. This ghazal shows that one of his lost Turkish poems was able to come down to us through the miscellanies. To whom and when the ghazal was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens with a scene showing the beloved entering the bath. The beloved is a delicate-bodied rose, with skin like crystal. But this image in the first couplet is not carried through the rest of the poem; from the second couplet onwards the words turn to the lover's inner world. The redif "see" that closes each couplet calls the reader, or the heart, to keep on looking: first at the beloved's skin, then at the hidden one who makes the parrot speak, then at oneself, at wine, and finally at the lover who has wasted into a crescent.

The second couplet rests on a well-known image of divan poetry. Parrots were taught to speak by having them repeat the words of someone hidden behind a mirror set before them; the parrot thought it was talking to its own reflection. With this image the poet advises leaving the speaker aside and looking at the one who makes him speak; the couplet carries the idea that the true owner of a spoken word is someone unseen. The mirror in the third couplet can be tied to the same thought: the lover who looks into the beauty's mirror ends by seeing his own image. That this couplet can also be read in a mystical sense is plain, but the source offers no such interpretation.

In the fourth couplet the word "peymân" (oath), through the closeness of its sound, recalls "peymâne" (cup); there is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among repentance, oath and wine. In the last couplet both congruence and antithesis (tezat) are set up between sun and crescent: the beloved is a shining sun, while the lover, worn by the weakness of his love, has thinned into a crescent.

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