Kara Fazlî, Ghazal 135: From Madman to Madman

Kara Fazlî's double-rhymed ghazal praised by Latîfî: from beloved to beloved, moth to moth, tavern to tavern, and the chain of tresses handed down from Majnun to Fazlî.

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Müstef‘ilün Müstef‘ilün Müstef‘ilün Müstef‘ilün

‘Āşıḳ dil ü cān ṣaḳlamaḳ cānāneden cānāneye
Yaḳmaġa şem‘e bāl ü per pervāneden pervāneye

Ḳış erdi çıḳ mey-ḫāneden gel oda ḳarşu odada
Nūş idelüm gelsün şehā mey-ḫāneden mey-ḫāneye

Muṭrib rübābı çalmada efsūn ider gūş idelüm
Billāhi zāhid başlama efsāneden efsāneye

Şāhā ḳadīmī saña ḳul olanları yād itmeyüp
Gel āşinālıḳ eyleme bīgāneden bīgāneye

Mecnūnlarına zülfüñi ol leyli zencīr eylese
İy dil ser-i mū degmeye dīvāneden dīvāneye

Zencīr-i zülfüñ Fażlī’ye Mecnūn’dan irdi yādigār
Bu silsile gelmiş durur dīvāneden dīvāneye

In English

1. As the lover keeps his heart and soul (passing) from one beloved to the next, so the wings (pass) from moth to moth to burn in the candle. (The couplet is obscure; with the reading "ṣalmaḳ" in Latîfî, the first line means "the lover's casting his heart and soul from beloved to beloved".)

2. Winter has come, leave the tavern, come, let us drink in the room facing the fire; O king, let (wine) come from tavern to tavern.

3. The musician works enchantment as he plays the rebab, let us listen; for God's sake, O ascetic, do not start from one tale to another.

4. O king, do not forget (do not treat as strangers) those who have long been your servants, and do not make friends from stranger to stranger.

5. If that night-haired (Layla-like) beloved should make his tresses a chain for his madmen, O heart, not even the tip of a hair would reach from one madman to the next.

6. The chain of your tresses has come down to Fazlî as a keepsake from Majnun; this chain has come from madman to madman.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of six couplets, written in the "müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün" pattern of the recez family of aruz (quantitative metre). Every line ends with the same word repeated twice in the pattern "-den ... -e" (from ... to ...): "cānāneden cānāneye, pervāneden pervāneye, mey-ḫāneden mey-ḫāneye, efsāneden efsāneye, bīgāneden bīgāneye, dīvāneden dīvāneye". Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a suffix as redif and notes that it has double rhyme. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the hundred and thirty-fifth in Özkat's edition. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Özkat had no manuscript copy of the ghazal; the text has been combined from two printed sources. Three couplets (1, 5 and 6) appear in Latîfî's biographical anthology of poets (tezkire) and five couplets (1, 2, 3, 4 and 6) in Vasfi Mahir Kocatürk's Divan Şiiri Antolojisi; Özkat combined the couplets from the two sources and rendered them in transcription. In Latîfî the first line of the opening couplet reads "‘Āşıḳ dil ü cān ṣalmaḳ cānā neden cāneye"; the first word of the second line is "Yaymaga" instead of "Yaḳmaġa" in Kocatürk; the words "gelmiş durur" of the last couplet appear in Latîfî as "degmiş durur".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The artistic value of the ghazal lies in the double rhyme created by the "from X to X" pattern repeated in every line. Özkat quotes Latîfî as saying of Fazlî that he "made brilliant ghazals with two faces, two metres and two rhymes, and rare couplets and wondrous arts", and says that these words point to Fazlî's ghazals with double rhyme. According to Özkat, two of Fazlî's ghazals (this one and ghazal a hundred and forty, gathered from the anthologies) are written in the form ẕü'l-ḳāfiyeteyn, that is, with double rhyme, which is very rarely seen in classical Turkish literature, and Latîfî assesses with these words his effort to strengthen the meaning and bring poetry closer to music. That the ghazal is known chiefly through the couplets Latîfî chose may come from the anthologist's citing it to exemplify this art; this is our own inference.

The opening couplet is obscure; the reading "ṣalmaḳ" (to cast) in Latîfî describes the lover casting his heart and soul from one beloved to another, and this is likened to moths giving their wings to the candle one after the other. In the second couplet the coming of the words "od" (fire) and "oda" (room) with the same sounds in the phrase "oda ḳarşu odada" (in the room facing the fire) creates a pun (cinas); the wine drunk by the hearth on a winter night is described. This pun is our own observation. In the third couplet the musician's rebab works enchantment, while the ascetic's counsels are idle words jumping from tale to tale. In the fourth couplet the phrase "yād itmek" calls up both the sense of remembering and, from the Persian word "yād" (stranger), that of treating as a stranger; this double entendre (tevriye) is our own observation. This reproach addressed to the king speaks to a master who forgets his old servants and makes friends with strangers. In the last two couplets the tresses are a chain handed down from Majnun to Fazlî; the word "silsile" means both chain and the line of a family or a Sufi order passed down from generation to generation.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ ve Tabsıratü'n-Nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, AKM, Ankara 2000, pp. 434-435 (as cited by Özkat).

Academic studies

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. 365, ghazal no. 135 (text combined from Latîfî's tezkire p. 435 and Kocatürk 1963 p. 100); also p. 69 (redifs), pp. 71-72 and 113-114 (ghazals with double rhyme), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

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