Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātü Mefā‘īlü Fā‘ilün

Gel tīġuñ ile başumı çal iki pāre ḳıl
Ġam mehterine sūr-ı belāda mekāre ḳıl

In English

1. Come, strike my head with your sword and cleave it in two; at the wedding feast of calamity make (the two halves) a "mekāre" for the band of grief. (The sense of the word "mekāre" in the edition is not clear; its connection with the band and the two halves suggests the reading "naḳḳāre", the small drums played in a pair in the Ottoman military band. 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 fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün" pattern of the muzari 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 fifty-one in that section and is taken from the tezkire of Kâfzâde Fâizî; as Özkat reports, Kâfzâde says that he copied the couplets after seeing Fazlî's divan. The redif (refrain word) is "ḳıl" (make) and the rhyme words are "pāre / mekāre"; Özkat counts this fragment among the poems with a Turkish word as redif. 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.

According to Özkat, Kâfzâde repeats almost word for word the information given by Riyâzî about Fazlî's death, namely that the poet 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 lover asks that his head be cleft in two by the beloved's sword. This request carries to its extreme the attitude of the lover in divan poetry who counts dying for the beloved a happiness: death turns into a wedding feast, and the two halves of the head into an instrument to be played at it. "Sūr" means wedding feast and festivity; the phrase "sūr-ı belā" (the wedding feast of calamity) presents the disaster befalling the lover as a celebration. In the phrase "ġam mehteri" (the band of grief) grief is personified as a band of musicians playing at the wedding. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) between "mehter" (band), "sūr" (feast) and the instrument in the second line. If the word "mekāre" in the edition is read as "naḳḳāre", the cloven head is seen to be likened to the small drums played in a pair; the head made "two pieces" by the sword also suits a pair of drums in shape. This reading is a conjecture, and the text has not been altered. The words "tīġ" (sword), "baş" (head) and "pāre" (piece) build the scene of violence in the first line. The opening of the couplet with the call "gel" (come) turns death into an invitation; the lover does not wait for the sword, he summons it. This interpretation is our own.

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. 372, ghazal no. 151 (Kâfzâde Fâizî's tezkire); also p. 21 (Kâfzâde's notes on the divan and the poet's death), p. 62 (the couplets in the tezkires and the complete ghazals) and p. 69 (redifs), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • Kâfzâde Fâizî, Zübdetü'l-Eş'âr, manuscript, Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Collection no. 1325 (as cited by Özkat).

Online sources