Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilün

‘Aşḳ u ḥüsniyle iden şeydā beni zībā seni
İtdi Ḳays u Leyli’ye hem-pā beni hem-tā seni
Aṣıluben ḳarşuña sen ḳaṭ‘-ı peyvend itmedin
İtmemiş ḫālī Ḫudā aṣlā beni ḳaṭ‘ā seni
Ḳanı devlet iy perī bāb-ı sa‘ādet açılup
Ḫāneñ içinde görem peydā beni tenhā seni

In English

1. He who made me mad with love and you fair with beauty made me the companion of Kays (Majnun) and you the equal of Layla.

2. Before I clung to you and you cut the bond, God had never left me, nor ever you, apart (from each other). (The couplet is obscure; this reading is a conjecture.)

3. O fairy, where is (that) fortune, that the door of felicity might open and within your house I might see myself arrived and you alone.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The text before us is a fragment of three couplets written in the "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün" pattern of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). Özkat placed at the end of the ghazal section, under the heading "Couplets Appearing Independently in the Tezkires", those couplets of Fazlî's that appear in the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) and which he thinks may have been taken from ghazals; this fragment opens that section and is numbered as ghazal a hundred and forty in Özkat's edition. According to Özkat, the fourteen fragments under this heading amount to twenty couplets. The source of the couplets is Latîfî's anthology (p. 432). In the edition the first two couplets are both numbered "2" by mistake.

The fragment has a redif (refrain word) and double rhyme. The redif is the word "seni" (you); Özkat counts this fragment among the poems with a Turkish word as redif. At the end of every line two rhyme words stand within the pattern "beni ... seni" (me ... you): "şeydā / zībā", "hem-pā / hem-tā", "aṣlā / ḳaṭ‘ā", "peydā / tenhā". Özkat says that two of Fazlî's ghazals (this fragment and ghazal a hundred and thirty-five) are written in the form ẕü'l-ḳāfiyeteyn, that is, with double rhyme, which is very rarely seen in classical Turkish literature, and notes that Latîfî's phrase "brilliant ghazals with two rhymes" refers to this. Since there is no pen name, it is not known which couplets of the ghazal the fragment was taken from.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

All the couplets of the fragment set "I" and "you" face to face in the same line. In the opening couplet love has made the lover "şeydā" (mad) and beauty has made the beloved "zībā" (fair); therefore the lover has become the companion of Kays, that is, Majnun, and the beloved the equal of Layla. The pairing of the names Kays and Layla with the words "hem-pā" (companion) and "hem-tā" (equal) creates a figure of parallel arrangement (leff ü neşr): the first name is related to the first word, the second name to the second word. This is our own observation. The second couplet is obscure; there is a relation of sound and root between the verb "aṣıluben" (clinging, attaching oneself) and the word "aṣlā" (never), and between the phrase "ḳaṭ‘-ı peyvend" (cutting the bond) and the word "ḳaṭ‘ā" (by no means). These puns (cinas) are our own observation. In the last couplet the lover longs for a meeting in which the door of felicity opens and, in the beloved's house, he himself is "peydā" (arrived, present) and the beloved "tenhā" (alone).

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. 368-369, ghazal no. 140 (Latîfî's tezkire, p. 432); also p. 62 (the couplets in the tezkires), p. 69 (redifs), pp. 71-72 and 113-114 (ghazals with double rhyme), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ ve Tabsıratü'n-Nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, AKM, Ankara 2000, pp. 432 and 434 (as cited by Özkat).

Online sources