Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Revzenüñden giren iy māh degüldür ẕerrāt
Nerdübān urdı diler ḫāneñe ine ḫūrşīd

In English

1. O moon (O moon-faced beloved), what comes in through your window is not motes of dust; the sun has set up a ladder, longing to descend into your house.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The text before us is a single couplet written in the "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün" pattern of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). 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-four in that section and is taken from Riyâzî's tezkire. There is no rhyme between the lines ("ẕerrāt / ḫūrşīd"); Özkat counts this couplet among the eight fragments whose beginning and end could not be established and which survive as single couplets. For this reason it is not known from which part of the ghazal the couplet was taken. Nor is it 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 finds a poetic cause for an everyday sight. Motes of dust drift in the sunlight falling through a window; the poet says that they are not motes but a ladder set up by the sun, which longs to come down into the beloved's house. Putting a fine cause in place of the real one is the figure called hüsn-i talil (poetic aetiology). It appears that the shaft of light streaming through the window is likened to a ladder and the motes shining in rows within it to its rungs; this detail is our own inference. The beloved is addressed as "māh" (moon); the congruence of images (tenasüp) between the moon and the sun (ḫūrşīd) creates the real point of the couplet: the sun, which outshines the moon in the sky, here needs a ladder to reach the moon on earth, that is, the beloved. The words "revzen" (window), "nerdübān" (ladder) and "ḫāne" (house) are also in harmony as parts of the house. These observations are our own. The verb "diler" (longs) in the second line lends the sun a desire: like a lover, the sun seeks a way into the beloved's house. This personification too is our own observation.

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. 370, ghazal no. 144 (Riyâzî's tezkire); also pp. 13 and 21 (Riyâzî's entry on Fazlî), p. 62 (the couplets in the tezkires and the complete ghazals) and p. 69 (single-couplet fragments), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • Riyâzî Mehmed, Riyâzü'ş-Şu'arâ, manuscript, Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Collection no. 765 (as cited by Özkat).

Online sources