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
Sipihri bīsütūnı çāk iderken tīşe-i āhum
Daḫı bilmezdi adın Bīsütūn’uñ kūh-ken ‘āşıḳ
Eger biñ yirde bāġı olsa durmaz bāġ-ı cennetde
Cihānda gülşeni kūyuñ idinmişken vaṭan ‘āşıḳ
Alup cānını aġyāruñ viṣāle irgürürsin āh
Ne dirsin ġamdan ölsün mi seni cāndan seven ‘āşıḳ
Çün irdi tīġı ‘ışḳuñ cāna Fażlī n’eylesün cismi
Şehīd-i ‘ışḳ olıcaḳ istemez ‘ömrüm kefen ‘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. While the pickaxe of my sigh was splitting the pillarless vault of the sky, the mountain-digging lover (Ferhad) did not yet even know the name of Bîsütun.

3. Once the lover has made your street his rose garden and his homeland in this world, he would not stay in the garden of paradise even if he had gardens in a thousand places.

4. Ah, you take the souls of others and bring them to union; what do you say, should the lover who loves you with his soul die of grief?

5. O Fazlî, once the sword of your love has reached the soul, what should the body do; O my life, the lover who becomes a martyr of love wants no shroud.

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); the rhyme is formed by the sound "-en" in the words "ten, cümleten, kūh-ken, vaṭan, seven, kefen". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the hundred and fourteenth in Özkat's edition and is found in miscellany no. 1082 of the Yapı Kredi Sermet Çifter Research Library (fol. 44a). According to Özkat's description, this small miscellany, copied in the sixteenth century, contains three ghazals by Fazlî among poems by such poets as Rif'atî Çelebi, Sipâhî, Âlî, Bâkî, Ulvî and Âhî. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

The opening couplet of the ghazal is identical with that of the hundred and thirteenth ghazal, which stands immediately before it in the edition; Özkat gives this as an example of a couplet repeated unchanged in different poems and says it may be a copyist's error or the poet's reuse of a turn of phrase he liked. The fourth and fifth couplets of this ghazal are also very close to the fourth and third couplets of the other: "aġyāruñ" comes in place of "ġayruñ", "viṣāle ... āh" in place of "vaṣluña cānā", and "tīġ" (sword) in place of "tīr" (arrow). This comparison is our own observation. Since the text in the Hazine miscellany breaks off after the first two couplets and the other ghazal had to be completed from a biographical anthology, the relation between the two texts cannot be settled with certainty.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Özkat cites the repetition of the word "‘āşıḳ" in the opening couplet as an example of Fazlî's use of repetition (tekrir) and of his effort to create harmony through the repetition of words. The second couplet alludes to the story of Hüsrev and Şîrîn: Ferhad is the lover who cut through Mount Bîsütun for Şîrîn. By saying that he split the sky with the pickaxe of his sigh while Ferhad did not yet even know the name of Bîsütun, the poet presents his own love as earlier and greater than Ferhad's. The phrase "sipihr-i bīsütūn" means the vault of the sky, thought of as standing without pillars; that the same word is also the name of Ferhad's mountain creates a double entendre (tevriye). This is our own observation.

In the third couplet the beloved's street is held superior to paradise: the lover who has made it his homeland would not stay even in the garden of paradise. Özkat cites the fourth couplet as an example of the figure of istifham (rhetorical question); the question expects no answer and voices the beloved's injustice as a reproach. He quotes the last couplet as an example showing that Fazlî now and then achieved very beautiful turns of phrase in his love ghazals. In the couplet the sword of love has reached the soul; the lover who has become a martyr of love wants no shroud. That the pen name appears in this couplet in the form "Fażlī" is the main difference from the same couplet in the other ghazal, where it has no pen name.

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. 352, ghazal no. 114 (Yapı Kredi Sermet Çifter Research Library 1082, fol. 44a); also p. 62 (subjects of the ghazals), p. 69 (redifs), p. 85 (figures of speech), p. 113 (manner of expression), p. 115 (the repeated opening couplet) and p. 122 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources