Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Nice taʿlîm eylemiş ʿışkı ezel üstâdı gör
Cân-ı şîrîni virür Şîrîn içün Ferhâdı gör
Hey ne ḫûnîdür gözüñ gün başına biñ ḳan ider
Hîç raḥm eyler mi âh ol ġamze-i cellâdı gör

In English

1. See how the Master of pre-eternity has taught love: look at Farhad, giving his sweet life for Shirin.

2. Oh, how bloodthirsty is your eye, it sheds a thousand bloods a day (it takes a thousand lives every day); ah, look at that executioner glance, does it ever know pity?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The refrain word (redif) is an imperative: "gör," see. Since both lines of the first couplet end in the sounds "-âdı gör," that couplet counts as the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal (gazel); in the second couplet only the second line is bound to the same rhyme and refrain. The rhyme is the sound "-âdı" in "üstâdı," "Ferhâdı" and "cellâdı." Âşık Çelebi gives the two couplets immediately after telling the poet's life, with the words "Şiir-i û" (his poem); the other couplets of the ghazal have not survived. As the edition does not state the metre, the pattern is our own reading: with lengthening (imale) of a few syllables, the couplets settle into the remel pattern fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün. The text is taken from Filiz Kılıç's edition; the long vowels that the edition marks with a macron are written here with a circumflex. A footnote in the edition reports that one manuscript reads "ġamzesi" instead of "ġamze."

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet alludes (telmih) to Farhad and Shirin, one of the best-known love stories of divan poetry. Farhad is the lover who cut through mountains to win Shirin and in the end gave his life for her. The poet here imagines love as a lesson, and God as the master who taught that lesson in pre-eternity. Farhad is the pupil who learned it best. The play of sound and meaning between "cân-ı şîrîn" (sweet life) and "Şîrîn" is the subtlety of the couplet: the lover gives his sweet life to Shirin, sacrificing what is sweet to the one who is sweet. This turn of phrase is an example of a pun that verges on double entendre (tevriye).

In the second couplet the subject turns to the beloved's eye. In divan poetry the beloved's eye and languid glance (gamze) are a weapon that wounds and kills the lover; hence the eye is called "hûnî," bloodthirsty, and the glance "cellâd," executioner. The phrase "gün başına" means every day, but since the word "gün" also evokes the sun, it lends an added brilliance to the glance that takes a thousand lives a day. The edition offers no such gloss; this second sense is a possibility drawn from the word itself. The refrain "gör" at the end of the line works in a different tone in the two couplets: in the first it is a call to admiration, in the second a call to complaint.

Historical Context

Âşık Çelebi attributes these couplets to Mehmed Çelebi Hayâtî, son of Fârsî Muslihüddin Halife, imam of the Sultan Selim Mosque, and does not mention Merzifon. It is Kınalızâde and Hüsameddin who count him as one with Latîfî's Hayâtî of Merzifon; the poem's attribution to the poet of Merzifon also depends on that identification. The life Âşık Çelebi relates is that of a poet who exhausted his fortune for love and finally went to the Hejaz; the couplet recalling Farhad's sacrifice of his life can readily be associated with that story, but there is no information on when or for whom the poem was composed. The question of identity and the poet's life are taken up in the article Hayâtî Çelebi of Merzifon.

Bibliography

Online sources