Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün
Dil-i pür-ġuṣṣam oldı vādi-i ġam içre nā-peydā
Meded bir iki māl-ā-māl cām it sāḳiyā peydā
‘Aceb mi sāġara düşsem baş ortaya ḳoyup sāḳī
Ḥabāb-ı mey gibi oldı derūnumda hevā peydā
Piyāle sāḳi ṣun cām-ı sürūr-encāmı billāhi
Ki bir dem eksik olmaz ḳalb-i ġam-gīne pey-ā-pey vā
Şeġaf gün bāde aldı ṣubḥ gibi destine sāḳī
N’ola dil maṭla‘ından olsa ḫūrşīd-i ṣafā peydā
Getür nūş idelüm sāḳī şarāb-ı şāḫı şerbetdür
Degüldür andan özge derd-i endūha devā peydā
Mücellā eyle luṭf it ṣayḳal-ı cām-ile iy sāḳī
Göñül āyīnesinde oldı jengār-ı belā peydā
Demidür şevḳle vaṣf-ı şarāb-ı lā‘l-i sāḳīde
Yine mest-āne bir rengīn ġazel ḳıl Fażliyā peydā
In English
1. My grief-filled heart has vanished in the valley of grief; help, O cupbearer, find and bring one or two cups filled to the brim.
2. O cupbearer, is it any wonder if I stake my head and fall into the cup? Like the bubble on the wine, a longing (an air) has appeared within me.
3. Cupbearer, for God's sake, offer the cup, the cup whose end is joy; for not for a moment does a "woe" upon "woe" leave the grieving heart.
4. The cupbearer, like the morning, has taken the wine in hand; is it any wonder if a sun of delight rises from the heart's place of dawning? (The sense of the words "şeġaf gün" at the beginning of the line is not clear.)
5. Cupbearer, bring it and let us drink; the wine of the branch (of the vine) is a sherbet; no remedy other than it is found for pain and sorrow.
6. O cupbearer, be kind and polish the heart with the burnish of the cup; the rust of calamity has appeared on the mirror of the heart.
7. It is the moment to describe with longing the ruby wine of the cupbearer's lip; O Fazlî, bring forth once more, as if drunk, a colourful ghazal.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Structure of the Poem
The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of seven couplets, written in the "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün" pattern of the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is "peydā" (appearing, brought forth); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a Persian single-word redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ā" at the end of the words "sāḳiyā, hevā, ṣafā, devā, belā, Fażliyā"; the first line of the opening couplet, however, ends with the word "nā-peydā" (vanished), the negative of the redif. In the form given in the edition the redif is missing from the third couplet: the line ends "pey-ā-pey vā" ("woe" upon "woe") and recalls the redif only in sound. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the twenty-third in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 232a) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. It is not known to whom or when it was written.
Meaning and Figures of Speech
The ghazal is from beginning to end an invitation to wine addressed to the cupbearer; in six of the seven couplets the cupbearer is called upon. It is wine that will find and bring out the heart lost in the valley of grief, and the word "peydā" in the redif says again in each couplet what the wine brings forth in the heart: longing, a sun of delight, a remedy, and finally a new ghazal. In the second couplet there is a comparison between the bubble (ḥabāb) on the surface of the wine and the "hevā" within the lover; the word means both "air" and "desire", and joins through a double entendre (tevriye) the bubble full of air and the lover full of longing. Özkat gives the phrase "baş ortaya ḳoymak" (to stake one's head) in this couplet as an example of the idiom "baş koymak (bir yola)" (to devote oneself to a path); "sāġara düşmek" (to fall into the cup) is likewise an expression for being given to drink.
In the fourth couplet the cupbearer is likened to the morning and the wine in his hand to the rising sun. The word "maṭla‘" means both the place where the sun rises and the opening couplet of a ghazal; thus a link is drawn between the "sun of delight" that will rise in the heart and the poem that will rise from the poet's pen. The sixth couplet rests on an image taken from the metal mirrors of old: the heart is a mirror, calamity has left rust upon it, and only the "ṣayḳal", the burnish, of the cup can remove this rust; "āyīne" (mirror), "jengār" (rust) and "ṣayḳal" form a congruence of images (tenasüp). The last couplet ties the ghazal to poetry itself: the cupbearer's ruby lip and the ruby-coloured wine merge, and in this drunkenness the poet counsels himself to compose a "rengīn", that is, a colourful and ornate, ghazal.
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. 297-298, ghazal no. 23 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 232a); also p. 69 (redifs), p. 91 (idioms) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
Online sources
