Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Yansa bir şeb iştiyāḳum şem‘-i bezm-ārā saña
Rūşen olurdı derūnum sūzişi cānā saña
Öldür[ür]süñ yazuġı yoḳdur günāhum bilürem
Ben ne ḥaddümdür derilem ‘āşıḳ-ı şeydā saña
Bu ne ḥüsn-i bī-naẓīr olur ki ancaḳ ben degül
Mübtelā olmış benüm yārüm bütün dünyā saña
Nāz iderseñ yaraşur her-dem ki Ḫayyāṭ-ı ezel
Ḫil‘at-ı nāzı biçüpdür iy ḳadi ra‘nā saña
Gül yüzüñ gördükçe Fażlī gibi itmezdi fiġān
Olmasa ‘āşıḳ eger kim bülbül-i gūyā saña

In English

1. O candle that adorns the gathering, if one night my longing were to burn in you, then, my soul, the burning of my heart would become bright, that is, plain, to you.

2. You kill me; the fault is not yours, I know the sin is mine; who am I that I should be called your frenzied lover?

3. What peerless beauty is this, my beloved, that it is not I alone who am smitten with you; the whole world is smitten with you.

4. O graceful one, it suits you to be coy at every moment; for the Tailor of pre-eternity cut the robe of coquetry to your measure.

5. If the speaking nightingale were not also in love with you, it would not lament like Fazlî whenever it saw your rose-like face.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün" pattern of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is "saña" (to you); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a Turkish single-word redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ā" at the end of the words "bezm-ārā, cānā, şeydā, dünyā, ra‘nā, gūyā". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the nineteenth in Özkat's edition. The text rests on the Fazlî divan section (fol. 231a) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library; it is also found in Pervâne Beg's anthology of response poems, Bağdat Köşkü 406 (fol. 17b). Özkat takes this second copy from the text in İbrahim Sevinç's thesis and records the differences: in Sevinç the first line of the second couplet reads "Öldürürsin yazuġı yoḳdur günāhı bilürem"; in the fourth couplet "bālā" is read for "ra‘nā", and in the last couplet "şeydā" for "gūyā". In the word "Öldür[ür]süñ" in the second couplet the syllable in square brackets is Özkat's addition for the metre.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet is built on the image of the candle. The beloved is a candle lighting the gathering; the lover wishes that his own longing might burn within it for one night, for only then would the burning of his heart become "rūşen" to the beloved. The word means both "bright" and "plain, evident", and forms a double entendre (tevriye) that joins in one word the candle's light and the coming of the truth to light. The second couplet rests on the lover's self-abasement: if the beloved kills him the fault is the lover's, not the beloved's, and the lover thinks even the title "frenzied lover" too much for himself.

The fourth couplet carries the most striking conceit of the ghazal. God is named "Ḫayyāṭ-ı ezel", the Tailor of pre-eternity, and the beloved's coquetry is imagined as a "ḫil‘at" (robe of honour) cut for him. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) between "ḫayyāṭ" (tailor), "ḫil‘at", "biçmek" (to cut) and "ḳad" (stature); just as a robe is cut to one's height, coquetry has been cut to the beloved's stature. The last couplet uses the theme of the rose and the nightingale: the nightingale's lament is explained by its being in love with the beloved's rose-like face. This is the figure of fanciful aetiology (hüsn-i talil), which sets aside the real cause and offers a poetic one.

The Nazire Relation

According to Özkat, this ghazal was written as a nazire (response poem) to Revânî's ghazal whose opening couplet is "‘Āşıḳ olmışdur güneş iy dilber-i ra‘nā saña / Ṭolanur dünyāyı her gün bulımaz hem-tā saña". Revânî's ghazal was answered by seven poets: İshak Çelebi, Fazlî, Muîdî, Senâyî, Amrî, Câmî and Hurremî. Özkat identifies Revânî as İlyas Şücâ Çelebi (d. Istanbul 1524), thought to have been born in Edirne in 1475 and one of the well-known poets of the reign of Selim I, and notes that Fazlî answered two of his ghazals. In Revânî's opening couplet it is the sun that is in love with the beloved; Fazlî carries the image of light over to the candle of the gathering and extends the love to the whole world. Özkat counts the anthologies of response poems as the most important sources for identifying the poets by whom a poet was influenced.

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. 295, ghazal no. 19 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 231a; Bağdat Köşkü 406, fol. 17b); also p. 69 (redifs), pp. 96 and 98 (response poems) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • İbrahim Sevinç, Pervâne Beg Nazire Mecmuası (1a-29b): Transkripsiyonlu, Edisyon Kritikli Metin, unpublished MA thesis, Marmara University Institute of Turkic Studies, Istanbul 2001, pp. 113-114 (as cited by Özkat). katalog.marmara.edu.tr