Original Persian Text

Metre: Mefā‘ilün Fe‘ilātün Mefā‘ilün Fa‘lün

رموز غیب در آینه ارتوان دیدن
توان در آیینهء رویت ان دهان دیدن
Rumūz-ı ġayb der-āyīne er tüvān dīden
Tevān der-āyine-i rūyet ān dehān dīden

In English

1. If it were possible to see the secrets of the unseen in a mirror, it would be possible to see that mouth in the mirror of your face. (In divan poetry the beloved's mouth is held to be so small as to be invisible, almost non-existent; to see it is therefore as hard as seeing what is hidden. The shining face, in turn, is likened to a mirror.)

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 "mefā‘ilün fe‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fa‘lün" of the müctes family of aruz (quantitative metre). The metre is not stated in the biographical anthologies; it has been deduced from the scansion of the couplet. The redif (refrain word) is "dīden" (to see), and the rhyme is the sound "-ān" in "tüvān" and "dehān". The couplet appears in Âşık Çelebi's Meşâ‘irü'ş-şu‘arâ, in the entry on Müeyyedzâde, under the heading "Ve lehu" (also his), after the Persian kaside with the refrain "dagger". According to Filiz Kılıç's edition, the couplet is missing in the F manuscript of the anthology. Kılıç gives a Turkish translation of the couplet in a footnote; the rendering here rests on that translation.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet rests on one of the best-known hyperboles of divan poetry, the smallness of the beloved's mouth. Poets make the beloved's mouth so small that it becomes almost invisible; at times they even call it "non-existent". Müeyyedzâde joins this idea to the notion of the gayb, the hidden world that cannot be known by the senses. If it were possible to see the secrets of the unseen in a mirror, it would also be possible to see that invisible mouth in the mirror of the beloved's shining face. The beloved's mouth thus becomes something as unattainable as the secrets of the hidden world.

There are two mirrors in the couplet: the first a hypothetical mirror that could show secrets, the second the beloved's face. The face is likened to a mirror because of its brightness and because the onlooker sees himself in it; there is an explicit simile (teşbih) here. A congruence of images (tenasüp) is set up between the words secrets, unseen and seeing, and between mirror, face and mouth. By making one impossibility depend on another, the conditional structure of the couplet says indirectly that the beloved's mouth cannot be seen.

Historical Context

One manuscript of Sehî Bey's Heşt-Bihişt adds this note to the entry on Müeyyedzâde: "Ve bu Pārisī maṭla‘ anuñ eş‘ārındandur. merḥūm Sulṭān Selīm ḥażretlerine yazup virmişdür." That is, this Persian matla is among his poems, and he wrote it and presented it to Sultan Selim. The couplet given in the footnote of the edition is in Arabic script. In the Original Text section this Arabic-script text is given first; the Latin-script reading below it is the transliteration in Filiz Kılıç's edition of Âşık Çelebi. The couplet in the Sehî manuscript is word for word the same as the text in Âşık Çelebi. The spelling differs only in small points: "eger" (if) is written in its shortened form "er" and joined to "tüvān", "āyīne" (mirror) in the second line is written with two ye letters, and the izafet (possessive link) is marked by a hamza at the end of the word. If this note is correct, the couplet must have been written during the reign of Selim I (1512-1520), in the years when Müeyyedzâde was kadıasker (chief military judge) for the second time. Âşık Çelebi relates that Selim often invited Müeyyedzâde to his private gatherings and showed him various favours. The presentation to a sultan of this elegant couplet built on the beloved's mouth reflects the atmosphere of such gatherings.

Bibliography

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