Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Künc-i ġamda olalı ben ḫaste cānāndan cüdā
Gūyiyā bir mürde-i pejmurdeyem cāndan cüdā
Baḥr-ı vaṣluñdan beni dūr ideli emvāc-ı hicr
‘Aynıyam şol ḳaṭrenüñ kim ola ‘ummāndan cüdā
Āh u efġān oldı kārum hicrde sensüz benüm
Nāle itmez gerçi kim bülbül gülistāndan cüdā
Cānum al sevdā-yı küfr-i kākülinde ol bütüñ
Yā İlāhī eyleme ṣoñ demde īmāndan cüdā
Dirlügüm it dirlügidür itlerinsüz Fażliyā
Olmasun itler daḫı ġurbetde yārāndan cüdā

In English

1. Since I, the sick one, fell apart from the beloved in the corner of grief, I am like a wretched corpse separated from its soul.

2. Since the waves of separation drove me far from the sea of your union, I am the very drop that is cut off from the ocean.

3. In separation, without you, sighs and laments have become my whole occupation; yet the nightingale parted from the rose garden does not lament. (The line can also be read as a question: "does the nightingale parted from the rose garden not lament?")

4. Take my soul in the passion for the unbelief of that idol's forelock; but, O God, do not part me from the faith at my last breath.

5. O Fazlî, without his dogs my life is a dog's life; may the dogs too not be parted from their friends in a strange land.

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 "-dan cüdā" (apart from); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a compound redif made of a suffix with Turkish and Persian elements. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ān" in the words "cānān, cān, ‘ummān, gülistān, īmān, yārān". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the twentieth in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 231b) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. According to Özkat's footnote, the word "bir" in the second line of the first couplet is written "bu" in the manuscript. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the separation named in the redif, and each couplet finds a new comparison for it. In the first couplet the lover parted from the beloved is a corpse parted from its soul; the closeness in sound between "cānān" (beloved) and "cān" (soul) suggests that the beloved is the very soul of the lover. In the second couplet union is a sea, separation its waves, and the lover a drop torn from the ocean; the words "baḥr" (sea), "emvāc" (waves), "ḳaṭre" (drop) and "‘ummān" (ocean) form a congruence of images (tenasüp). The third couplet uses the theme of the rose and the nightingale. The line can be read in two ways: either the nightingale falls silent when parted from the rose garden while the lover, without the beloved, does not; or the lover laments just as the nightingale laments when parted from the garden.

The fourth couplet rests on the contrast between unbelief and faith. The beloved's forelock is likened to unbelief because of its darkness, and the lover asks that his soul be taken in the passion for this unbelief; in the second line he turns to God and prays not to be parted from the faith at his last breath. The language of love and the language of religion are set against each other in the same couplet. The last couplet is the plainest and most Turkish in the ghazal. The lover counts himself among the beloved's dogs; to live apart from them is "it dirliği", a dog's life, that is, a wretched one. The repetition of "dirlügüm" and "dirlügidür", "it" and "itler" gives the couplet a cadence. Özkat cites this couplet in two places: as an example of expressions bearing the marks of the Türkî-i Basit movement, which arose at the end of the fifteenth century as a reaction against the influence of Persian literature, and of the plain, sincere expressions close to the spoken language that brought Fazlî near to this approach.

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, pp. 295-296, ghazal no. 20 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 231b); also p. 44 (Türkî-i Basit), p. 69 (redifs), p. 103 (plain Turkish) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources