Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilün

İrmedi gitdi senüñ ḳāmet ü zülfüñe elüm
Gice gündüz bu idi ṭoġrısı ṭūl-i emelüm
Dehenüñ dāyiresin ḫaṭ ṭut[arı]sa ne ġam
İsteyüp bulımazam kūy-ı ‘ademde ecelüm
Kūy-ı yār içre ḳomaz yanumı bir laḥẓa ḥasūd
Bu yüzi ḳara benüm ṣanki olupdur ‘amelüm
Yār ‘ışḳuñ büküben ḳaddümi çevġān itdi
Ḥüsnünüñ ṭōpı göge aġsa yiridür güzelüm
Gūyiyā şem‘-i dili yaḳmaġa bir āteşdür
Fażliyā şerḥ ideli ḥālet-i ‘ışḳı ġazelüm

In English

1. My hand passed away without ever reaching your stature or your tresses; night and day this, truly, was my long ambition.

2. What matter if the down encircles the round of your mouth; I seek my death in the street of nonexistence and cannot find it.

3. The envious rival does not leave my side for a moment in the beloved's street; as if this black-faced one had become my deeds.

4. The love of the beloved has bent my stature into a polo stick; O my fair one, it is fitting if the ball of your beauty rises to the sky.

5. O Fazlî, since my ghazal has expounded the state of love, it is like a fire to light the candle of the heart.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün" pattern of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is the first person possessive suffix "-üm" (my); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a suffix as redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-el" in the words "el, emel, ecel, ‘amel, güzel, ġazel". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet in the form "Fażliyā". The ghazal is the hundred and twenty-eighth in Özkat's edition and is found in the anthology of response poems compiled by Pervâne Beg, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Bağdat Köşkü 406 (fol. 409b); Özkat takes the text from Kısmet Gül Şener's thesis. In the word "ṭut[arı]sa" in the first line of the second couplet the syllables in square brackets are Özkat's addition for the sake of the metre.

Historical Context

According to the note Özkat cites from Şener, this ghazal was written as a nazire (response poem) to Necâtî Beg's ghazal opening "Fikr-i sevdā-yı ser-i zülfüñ ucından güzelüm / Ḳıṣṣa-i Leylī vü Mecnūna dönüpdür mes̱elüm". This ghazal of Necâtî was answered by sixteen poets with one ghazal each: Atâ, Tâcîzâde Cafer Çelebi, Nihânî, Zâtî, Niyâzî, Revânî, Zamânî, Ânî, Muhibbî, Sabûhî, Hevesî, Nazmî, Vüsûlî, Fazlî, Sürûrî and Hilâlî. The list shows how much the ghazal was loved at the beginning of the sixteenth century; among them is also Muhibbî, the pen name of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. Özkat says that it is unthinkable that Fazlî, as a follower of the tradition of using proverbs and idioms in poetry which began with Necâtî and matured with Zâtî, was not influenced by these two poets, and gives this ghazal as an example of Fazlî's response poem to Necâtî.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the opening couplet the beloved's stature and tresses are named for their length; the lover's "ṭūl-i emel" (long ambition) was also to reach them. That a relation is made between the length of the stature and tresses and the length of the ambition is our own observation. In the second couplet the beloved's mouth is thought of as a circle, and the down encircles it. In divan poetry the beloved's mouth is imagined as so narrow, because of its smallness, that it cannot be seen, that is, as all but nonexistent; the lover's seeking his death "in the street of nonexistence" is tied to this image. This tie is our own inference. Özkat lists the third couplet among the places where the idiom "yüzü kara" (black-faced, disgraced) occurs: the rival does not leave the lover's side in the beloved's street, just as a man's evil deeds do not leave him.

The fourth couplet rests on the game of çevgân. Çevgân is the game in which a ball is driven on horseback with a stick bent at the end, that is, polo; the lover's stature, bent by love, resembles this crooked stick, and the beloved's beauty is a ball rising to the sky. The words polo stick and ball form a congruence of images (tenasüp). Özkat quotes the last couplet as an example of Fazlî's view that poems on love must be fiery enough to burn the reader: the ghazal that tells the state of love is a fire that lights the candle of the heart.

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, pp. 360-361, ghazal no. 128 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Bağdat Köşkü 406, fol. 409b); also p. 42 (view of poetry), p. 69 (redifs), pp. 92-93 (idioms) and p. 97 (response poems), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • Kısmet Gül Şener, Pervâne Beg Nazire Mecmuası (392a-415b): Transkripsiyonlu, Edisyon Kritikli Metin, unpublished MA thesis, Marmara University Institute of Turkic Studies, Istanbul 2002, p. 114 (as cited by Özkat). katalog.marmara.edu.tr