Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Cān u dil pervānesini yaḳmaġa zülf-i dü-tā
Dāmeniyle āteş-i ruḫsārına eyler hevā
Bülbül-i bāġ-ı belāya ḳılmaġa zerrīn ḳafes
Çāk çāk itdi ser-ā-ser sīnemi tīġ-ı belā
Ḫvān-ı ḥüsninde pür oldı güllerüñ ṣaḥn-ı çemen
Bülbüli cem‘ itmege āb-ı revān eyler ṣalā
Kāẕib olur mı seni ḫurşīde teşbīh eyleyen
Ṣubḥ-ı ṣādıḳ gördügince yüzüñi ḳalur ṭaña
Ḫār elinden bülbül aġlarsa ‘aceb mi Fażliyā
Ġoncanuñ yanına geçmiş gösterür barmaḳ aña

In English

1. To burn the moth of soul and heart, the twofold (curling) tresses fan the fire of the cheek with their skirt (making it blaze).

2. To make a golden cage for the nightingale of the garden of calamity, the sword of calamity has torn my breast to shreds from end to end.

3. At the table of your beauty the courtyard of the meadow has filled with roses; the running water sounds the call to the feast to gather the nightingales.

4. Can one who likens you to the sun be a liar? The true dawn is left astonished whenever it sees your face.

5. O Fazlî, is it any wonder if the nightingale weeps at the hand of the thorn? The thorn has taken its place beside the rosebud and points its finger at it.

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 half rhyme. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ā/-a" at the end of the words "dü-tā, hevā, belā, ṣalā, ṭaña, aña". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the twenty-eighth in Özkat's edition and does not appear in the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library; the text rests only on Pervâne Beg's anthology of response poems "Mecmû‘atü'n-Nezâ'ir", Bağdat Köşkü 406 (fol. 15a), and Özkat takes it from the text in İbrahim Sevinç's thesis. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet carries the theme of the candle and the moth over to the beloved's face. The cheek is a fire, the lover's soul and heart the moth that flies into it; the tresses falling over the cheek are imagined as someone who shakes his skirt to make the fire blaze. "Hevā eylemek" means both to fan, to stir the air, and to desire. In the second couplet the lover's torn breast is likened to a cage: the wounds opened by the sword of calamity are like the bars of the cage, and in this cage dwells the nightingale of the garden of calamity, that is, the lover's heart. In the third couplet the rose garden becomes a banquet: the words "ḫvān" (table), "ṣaḥn" (courtyard, great dish) and "ṣalā" (call to the meal) form a congruence of images (tenasüp), and the sound of the running water is heard as an invitation calling the nightingales to the table.

In the fourth couplet there is a contrast between the word "kāẕib" (liar) and "ṣubḥ-ı ṣādıḳ". "Ṣubḥ-ı ṣādıḳ" is the true morning, the real breaking of the dawn, and its opposite, "ṣubḥ-ı kāẕib", is the deceptive first light; the couplet ties these two terms to the question whether one who likens the beloved to the sun is a liar. Since even the true dawn is left astonished before the beloved's face, the comparison is true. In the last couplet the thorn joins the theme of the rose and the nightingale: the thorn stands beside the rosebud and points its finger at it. Özkat gives this couplet as an example of the idiom "parmak göstermek" (to point the finger); the shape of the thorn recalls a finger, and the idiom suggests both pointing out and mocking. The nightingale's weeping can be read as jealousy born of another standing beside its beloved.

The Nazire Relation

According to Özkat, this ghazal was written as a nazire (response poem) to Nizâmî's ghazal whose opening couplet is "Cān u dildür sen meh-i bedrüñ mekānı dāyimā / Anuñ-içün dirler iy dilber saña bedr-i dücā". Nizâmî's ghazal was answered by 78 ghazals, Fazlî's included. Among the poets to whom Fazlî wrote nazires, Özkat names Nizâmî as Nizâmî of Karaman, a poet of the reign of Mehmed II (d. 1470, the date given with a question mark). The phrase "cān u dil" (soul and heart) of Nizâmî's opening couplet also appears in Fazlî's. Özkat notes that it is not known which of the poets he answered Fazlî actually met, but that his nazires are in no way inferior to their originals, and says that Pervâne Beg's anthology is of great importance because it contains the nazires Fazlî wrote to the poets of his time.

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. 300-301, ghazal no. 28 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Bağdat Köşkü 406, fol. 15a); also p. 69 (rhyme), p. 93 (idioms), pp. 96 and 99-100 (response poems), 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, p. 94 (as cited by Özkat). katalog.marmara.edu.tr