Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün
Saña göz ‘āşıḳ u dil ‘āşıḳ u cān ile ten ‘āşıḳ
Tenümde her ḳılum cānā olupdur cümleten ‘āşıḳ
Ciger ḫūn-īn u ten pür-dāġ u nermī maġz u ḳaddüm ḫam
Gözüm giryān u dil biryān u cān ḥayrān u ben ‘āşıḳ
Çün irdi tīr-i ‘ışḳuñ cāna ayruḳ neylesün cismi
Şehīd-i ‘ışḳ olıcaḳ istemez ‘ömrüm kefen ‘āşıḳ
Alup cānını ġayruñ irgürürsin vaṣluña cānā
Ne dirsin ġamdan ölsün mi seni cāndan seven ‘āşıḳ
Ser-ā-ser sūz u ḥāl olmaḳ gerek iy Fażlī eş‘āruñ
Ki yanup yaḳıla ger-gāh anuñla oḳuyan ‘āşıḳ
In English
1. For you the eye is a lover, the heart a lover, the soul and the body lovers; O beloved, every hair of my body has become a lover altogether.
2. My liver is blood, my body full of wounds, my brain softened, my stature bent; my eye weeps, my heart is roasted, my soul bewildered, and I am a lover. (The sense of the words "nermī maġz" is not wholly clear.)
3. Once the arrow of your love has reached the soul, what should the body do any more; O my life, the lover who becomes a martyr of love wants no shroud.
4. O beloved, you take the soul of another and bring him to union with you; what do you say, should the lover who loves you with his soul die of grief?
5. O Fazlî, your poems must be burning and ecstasy from beginning to end, so that the lover who reads them may now and then burn and be consumed.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Structure of the Poem
The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün" pattern of the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is the Arabic word "‘āşıḳ" (lover); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with an Arabic word as redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-en" in the words "ten, cümleten, ben, kefen, seven, oḳuyan". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the hundred and thirteenth in Özkat's edition. It is not known to whom or when it was written.
The text of the ghazal has been established from two sources. In the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (fol. 245b) only the first two couplets survive because of a missing page. The ghazal appears in the biographical anthology of poets (tezkire) of Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi as four couplets, the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th; Özkat completed the text with the help of this anthology. In the miscellany the first word of the second couplet is "çeker" instead of "ciger". The opening couplet of the ghazal is identical with that of the hundred and fourteenth ghazal, which follows it immediately in the edition. Özkat says that the repetition of a couplet in different poems may be a copyist's error, or may arise from the poet's wish to use a turn of phrase he liked in other poems as well. The resemblance between the two ghazals is not confined to the opening couplet: the third and fourth couplets of this ghazal are, with small differences, the same as the fifth and fourth couplets of the other. This second resemblance is our own observation, and that the two texts may be two wordings of the same ghazal reflected in different copies is our own inference.
Meaning and Figures of Speech
The opening couplet repeats the word "‘āşıḳ" three times in one line and counts up the lover's whole being: eye, heart, soul and body; in the second line every hair of the body has also become a lover. The second couplet uses the same method to build a series of short nominal sentences: the liver bloody, the body wounded, the stature bent, the eye tearful, the heart roasted, the soul bewildered. This enumeration carries the music of the ghazal. In the third couplet the arrow of love has reached the soul and the lover is a martyr of love; the thought that the martyr needs no shroud is the ground of the couplet. The word "‘ömrüm" in this couplet has been read as an address to the beloved, "O my life".
The fourth couplet is a reproachful question: the beloved takes the soul of another and grants him union, while leaving in grief the one who loves him with his soul. The last couplet is the most frequently quoted couplet of the ghazal. Özkat quotes it in several places as a statement showing Fazlî's view of poetry: he notes that the poet says poems on love must be burning from beginning to end, that lovers should all but burn and be consumed as they read them, and that with these words he shows the importance he gives to lyricism. The relation between the words "sūz" (burning) and "ḥāl" (inner state, ecstasy) and the phrase "yanup yaḳıla" (burning and being consumed) strengthens the sense of the couplet.
Bibliography
- Mustafa Özkat, Kara Fazlî'nin Hayatı, Eserleri, Edebî Kişiliği ve Dîvânı (İnceleme-Tenkitli Metin), MA thesis, Marmara University Institute of Turkic Studies, Istanbul 2005, p. 351, ghazal no. 113 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 245b; Kınalızâde's tezkire); also pp. 39, 42, 63 and 82 (view of poetry), p. 69 (redifs) and p. 115 (the repeated opening couplet), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
- Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ, ed. İbrahim Kutluk, TTK, Ankara 1981, II, p. 756 (as cited by Özkat).
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