Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Mefā‘īlün Mef‘ūlü Mefā‘īlün

Ruḫsārı yiter yārüñ ‘uşşāḳa gül-i aḥmer
Berḳ-i güli yād itme bülbül varaḳ-ı diger

In English

1. The cheek of the beloved is enough for lovers as a red rose; O nightingale, do not recall the gleam (berḳ) of the rose: that is another leaf (another matter). (The edition reads "berḳ"; the reading "berg", that is, leaf, would accord better with the word "varaḳ". This is a conjecture.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The text before us is a single couplet written in the "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlün mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlün" pattern of the hezec 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-five in that section and appears in the tezkires of Riyâzî and Kâfzâde Fâizî; as Özkat reports, Kâfzâde says that he copied the couplets after seeing Fazlî's divan. There is no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is formed by the words "aḥmer / diger", and Özkat counts this fragment among the ghazals with half 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 turns around the rose-and-nightingale motif of divan poetry. The nightingale is the lover of the rose; the poet, however, tells it to leave the rose of the garden, because for lovers the true red rose is the beloved's cheek. The likening of the cheek to the gül-i aḥmer (red rose) is an open simile (teşbih); holding the thing compared superior and the real rose of no account is also a kind of hyperbole. The phrase "varaḳ-ı diger" (another leaf) in the second line carries two meanings: it recalls the petal of the rose and, on the other hand, a different page of a book, that is, another matter; as if saying "that is another page", it closes the subject of the rose. This observation is our own. The word "berḳ" in the edition means gleam or lightning; the gleam of the rose also makes sense, but the reading "berg" (leaf) would create a congruence of images (tenasüp) with "varaḳ". This reading is a conjecture, and the text has not been altered. Addressing the nightingale directly places the lover in the same realm of love as the nightingale, as a rival or a guide. This interpretation is our own.

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. 145 (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