Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Didiler ṣaḳın seni ṭutar cefāsı ṭaşına
Geldi hep didükleri ben mübtelānuñ başına

In English

1. They said: "Beware, he will stone you with the stones of his cruelty." All that they said has befallen me, the afflicted one.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The text before us is a single couplet written in the "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘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 the last fragment of that section and of the ghazal section of Özkat's edition; it is numbered as ghazal a hundred and fifty-three. Its source is Tuhfe-i Nâilî, Mehmet Nâil Tuman's compilation of short biographies of divan poets (II, p. 1254). Özkat also uses this work as one that weighs the differences in the sources about Fazlî's name and title. The redif (refrain word) is "-ına" and the rhyme words are "ṭaş / baş" (stone / head); Özkat counts this fragment among the ghazals with a suffix 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.

As Özkat reports, Tuman concludes that the poet whom Âşık Çelebi calls "Sarrâc-zâde Fazlî" and the "Kara Fazlî" of the other tezkires are one and the same person, because the sources give the same year of death, make both the divan secretary of a prince of the same name and attach both to works of the same name. 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 spoken by a lover who fell in love although he had been warned. Those around him warned him that he would meet with the stones of the beloved's cruelty, and what they said has befallen him. The couplet rests on two idioms: "taşa tutmak" (to pelt with stones) and "başına gelmek" (to befall, literally "to come to one's head"). That the rhyme words are "taş" (stone) and "baş" (head) also brings to life the literal sense of these idioms: the stone spoken of in the warning has in the end truly come to the head. This congruence of images (tenasüp) between stone and head and the repetition "didiler / didükleri" (they said / what they said) are our own observations. The lover calls himself "mübtelā" (smitten, afflicted); this word expresses both being seized by love and falling into calamity, and brings the two faces of the couplet together. The expression is an example of Fazlî's plain style, close to spoken language and woven with idioms.

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. 153 (Tuhfe-i Nâilî, II, p. 1254); also p. 13 (Tuhfe-i Nâilî), p. 62 (the couplets in the tezkires and the complete ghazals), p. 68 (redifs) and p. 103 (language and style), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • Mehmet Nâil Tuman, Tuhfe-i Nâilî (Divan Şairlerinin Muhtasar Biyografileri), ed. Cemal Kurnaz and Mustafa Tatçı, Bizim Büro Yayınları, 2001, II, pp. 1253-1254 (as cited by Özkat).

Online sources