Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

El uzatsañ itmege ḳurbān beni iy dil-rübā
‘Īd olur ol gün baña ehlen ve sehlen merḥabā
Ṭa‘ni ṭā‘ūnından aġyāruñ ḳırıldı ehl-i ‘ışḳ
Serverā ol itleri ḳır kim ola def‘-i riyā
Yiller ile bulmadı bir şemme būy-ı zülfüñi
Ol hevāda gerçi kim çoḳ yeldi yopurdı ṣabā
Āfitāba ẕerre-i nā-çīzden gelmez ḫalel
‘Āşıḳ-ı ser-geştesinden itmesün ol meh imā
Şimdiki şā‘irlere bu resme ġālib olmağa
Himmet-i Ẕātī durur iy Fażli bā‘is̱ ġālibā

In English

1. O heart-stealer, if you stretch out your hand to sacrifice me, that day will be a feast for me; "welcome, most welcome" I shall say.

2. From the plague of the rivals' slander the people of love have perished; O lord, put an end to those dogs so that hypocrisy may be done away with.

3. Though the east wind ran and hurried a great deal in that air (for that longing), in all those years it did not find a single whiff of the scent of your tresses.

4. No harm comes to the sun from a worthless mote; let that moon not make signs (as if shrinking) towards its giddy lover. (The sense of the second line is not entirely clear.)

5. O Fazlî, the cause of prevailing in this way over the poets of today is, most likely, the favour of Zâtî.

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). It has no redif; Özkat counts this ghazal among those with full rhyme. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ā" at the end of the words "dil-rübā, merḥabā, riyā, ṣabā, imā, ġālibā". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the twenty-sixth in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 232b) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. The third couplet of the ghazal also appears, without any change, in the forty-first ghazal; Özkat lists this among Fazlî's faults of expression, as an example of the same couplet being repeated in different poems.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet rests on the congruence of images (tenasüp) between sacrifice and feast. If the beloved stretches out a hand to sacrifice the lover, that day becomes a feast for the lover; death is greeted like a union, and the lover awaits the beloved with an Arabic word of welcome, "ehlen ve sehlen merhaba". Özkat takes the idiom "el uzatmak" (to stretch out one's hand) from this couplet. In the second couplet there is a likeness in sound between "ṭa‘n" (slander, abuse) and "ṭā‘ūn" (plague); the rivals' gossip has struck down the people of love like a plague. The repetition of "ḳırıldı" (perished) and "ḳır" (put an end to) turns the couplet into a retaliation: the dogs that struck down the lovers must themselves be struck down.

The third couplet is woven with images of wind. The word "yiller" means "years" but also recalls the word "yel" (wind); "ṣabā" (the east wind), "hevā" (air, longing) and the verb "yeldi" (ran like the wind) complete this association. Özkat gives the phrase "yelmek yöpürmek" (to run and hurry about) in this couplet as an example of idioms that are forgotten or little known today. The fourth couplet uses the contrast between the mote and the sun: a tiny mote cannot harm the sun, and the lover's nearness costs the beloved nothing. In the last couplet the words "ġālib" (prevailing) and "ġālibā" (most likely), derived from the same root, stand side by side.

Historical Context

The closing couplet names Fazlî's master Zâtî (1471-1546), and it is one of the couplets Özkat draws on most in recounting Fazlî's life. According to Özkat, the person who had the greatest influence on Fazlî's literary development as a poet, and whom he recognised as his master, was Zâtî; in his youth Fazlî first learned Arabic grammar and syntax, then Persian from Riyâzî of Skopje, and his second teacher was Zâtî. The shop in the courtyard of the Bayezid Mosque where Zâtî told fortunes and wrote amulets was like an academy where the young poets of his time were trained, and Fazlî was one of its regulars. According to Haluk İpekten, as quoted by Özkat, young poets would first come to the shop on the pretext of having their fortunes told, bring out their poems and read them, and later come and go more freely, seeking the master's opinion. Özkat notes that Zâtî, who had a say in the training of many poets of the age including Bâkî, became the master of the Ottoman poets who came after Necâtî, and says that in this couplet Fazlî takes pride in being his pupil. Fazlî wrote a tahmis (five-line amplification) on one of Zâtî's ghazals and nazires (response poems) to two others.

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. 299, ghazal no. 26 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 232b); also pp. 16-17 and 73 (his relation to Zâtî), p. 69 (rhyme), pp. 86-87, 92-93 (idioms), p. 97 (response poems), p. 115 (faults of expression) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources