Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātün Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātün / Müstef‘ilün Fe‘ūlün Müstef‘ilün Fe‘ūlün

Didüm ki yoḳ mı cānā cevr ü cefāna ġāyet
Didi ki cevrüm ile cān viresin nihāyet

In English

1. I said: "O beloved, is there no end to your cruelty and torment?" She said: "In the end you will give up your soul through my cruelty."

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The text before us is a single couplet. Özkat gives the metre with two patterns together: "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün" and "müstef‘ilün fe‘ūlün müstef‘ilün fe‘ūlün"; the two names describe the same sequence of syllables. Özkat gathers Fazlî's couplets found in the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) at the end of the ghazal section, under the heading "Couplets Appearing Independently in the Tezkires"; according to Özkat the fourteen fragments under this heading amount to twenty couplets. This couplet is numbered as ghazal a hundred and forty-three in that section and is taken from the tezkires of Riyâzî and Kâfzâde Fâizî. As Özkat reports, Kâfzâde says that he saw Fazlî's divan and copied the couplets from it ("Dīvānı görülüp bu ebyāt yazıldı"); his is one of the two tezkires that report the existence of an arranged divan, which is not extant today. The couplet has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is formed by the words "ġāyet / nihāyet", and Özkat counts this fragment among the ghazals with rich rhyme. Since both its lines rhyme, the couplet is probably the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal; this is our own inference. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

As Özkat reports, the entry on Fazlî in Riyâzî's tezkire gives the poet's name as Muhammed, counts him a native of Istanbul and says that he was known by the title "Kara Fazlî"; the same entry also records that Fazlî died in 971 and that Gelibolulu Âlî composed a chronogram on his death with the words "Fażlī öldi" (Fazlî has died). Most of Fazlî's ghazals that have come down complete are of five couplets; according to Özkat, eighty-three of the hundred and twenty-four complete ghazals are of this length. The length of the ghazal to which this lone couplet belonged, however, is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is a question and answer built on the pattern "I said / she said". The lover asks whether there is an end to the beloved's cruelty; the beloved replies that the end will be the lover's death. The words "ġāyet" and "nihāyet" have the same meaning (end, limit); while forming the rhyme they also bind the question to the answer: the end of cruelty is asked about, and the answer is given with death. The words "cevr" (cruelty), "cefā" (torment) and "cān" (soul) call to one another in sound; "cān" appears in the first line as a form of address to the beloved (O beloved, literally "O soul") and in the second as part of the idiom "cān virmek" (to give up the soul). These observations are our own. The beloved's cold-blooded answer is the point of the couplet: instead of the consolation the lover hoped for, he is told that the cruelty will end only with death. The expression is close to everyday speech, and apart from "cevr ü cefā" the Arabic and Persian words form hardly any compounds.

Bibliography

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. 370, ghazal no. 143 (the tezkires of Riyâzî and Kâfzâde Fâizî); also pp. 13 and 21 (Riyâzî's entry on Fazlî and Kâfzâde's note on the divan), p. 62 (the couplets in the tezkires and the complete ghazals) and p. 69 (rhyme), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Books

  • Riyâzî Mehmed, Riyâzü'ş-Şu'arâ, manuscript, Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Collection no. 765 (as cited by Özkat).
  • Kâfzâde Fâizî, Zübdetü'l-Eş'âr, manuscript, Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Collection no. 1325 (as cited by Özkat).

Online sources