Original Persian Text

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

Her tīr-i se-per k’ez tu resed ber dil-i çākem
Murġī şeved u raḳṣ kuned ber ser-i ḫākem

In English

1. Every three-feathered arrow that reaches my wounded heart from you becomes a bird and dances over my grave. ("Se-per" means an arrow fitted with three feathers at its end; the feathered arrow turns into a bird above the dead lover's grave. "Ḫâk", earth, stands here for the grave.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a Persian matla (opening couplet), a single couplet (beyit) whose two lines rhyme with each other, 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 biographical anthologies; it has been deduced from the scansion of the couplet and from its being in the same pattern as the couplet it answers. The rhyme is the sound "-āk" in "çākem" and "ḫākem"; the "-em" that follows is the first-person possessive suffix. The couplet is a nazire (response poem), that is, a reply written in the same metre and rhyme to another poet's poem. The text followed here is Âşık Çelebi's. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi gives the couplet as "Her tîr-i se-per-ke’z tu resed ber-dil-i çâkem / Murgî şeved ü raks koned ber-ser-i hâkem"; Beyânî also mentions Müeyyedzâde's response poem.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet keeps the pattern of the matla it answers and sets a new image within it. The arrows shot by the beloved have lodged in the lover's wounded heart. Because of the three feathers at their ends these arrows resemble birds; after the lover's death each of them becomes a bird and plays over his grave. There is a clear congruence of images (tenasüp) among arrow, feather and bird. The arrow turning into a bird makes the lover's death from love look less like a scene of mourning than a celebration: every wound that came from the beloved dances joyfully over the lover's earth even after his death. Between the "çâk", the torn state of the heart, and the earth of the grave a chain is formed that ties death to what comes after it.

Historical Context

The matla was written in answer to the Persian matla of Bayezid II, that is, the poet Adlî: "Her nāle ki peydā şeved ez sīne-i çākem / Ebrī şeved ü girye kuned ber ser-i ḫākem" (every moan that rises from my torn breast becomes a cloud and weeps over my grave). Âşık Çelebi writes that "ekābir-i ‘aṣr", the great men of the age, wrote response poems to this matla of the sultan, and gives in turn the couplets of Müeyyedzâde, Hâcı Hasanzâde, Kemalpaşazâde, Câfer Çelebi, Necâtî and Vasfî. Kınalızâde quotes the same response poems. Yavuz Bayram, in his edition of Adlî's divan, notes that a manuscript copied by Ali Emîrî Efendi also contains these response poems of Necâtî, Müeyyedzâde and Câfer Çelebi. The sources do not say when or in which gathering the response poems were composed.

All who wrote response poems were scholars and poets close to the sultan's court. Müeyyedzâde and Câfer Çelebi were two natives of Amasya who had been with Bayezid at his princely court in Amasya in his youth; both were raised to high office during his reign. This small chain of response poems suggests that the circle of poetry and conversation formed in Bayezid's Amasya years continued in Istanbul. Adlî's matla and the chain of response poems are discussed in a separate article in the Adlî section of our site.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources