Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Müstef‘ilün Müstef‘ilün Müstef‘ilün Müstef‘ilün

Gel iy ecel luṭf eyle ḳıl ben ḫasteyi cāndan cüdā
Tek bir nefes olmayayın ‘ālemde cānāndan cüdā
İy firḳatinde ol gülüñ ḫāli nedür diyin baña
Ḥāli nolısar bülbülüñ olsa gülistāndan cüdā
Ḳaddüñ elif iy māhir u nūn oldı tā ebrūlaruñ
Olmam hemān ol an olur dīnden hem īmāndan cüdā
Dīnüm ṣaçuñ küfrin senüñ her kim ki īmān bilmeye
Olsun murādum budur ol dīnden hem īmāndan cüdā
Derdā der-i dil-dādeden dūr eyledi devrān beni
İy Fażlī bende olmasun dergāh-ı sulṭāndan cüdā

In English

1. Come, O death, be kind and part me, the sick one, from my soul; let me not stay apart from the beloved for a single breath in this world.

2. O (you who ask), tell me yourselves what my state is in separation from that rose; what becomes of the nightingale if it is parted from the rose garden?

3. Your stature has become an alif, your brows a nun; when that "an" (the joining of these two letters) comes about, one is parted from both religion and faith, and so I am at once. (The couplet rests on a play on letters and its sense is not entirely clear.)

4. My religion is the unbelief of your hair; whoever does not hold this to be faith, my wish is that he be parted from both religion and faith.

5. Alas, the turning world has driven me far from the door to which I gave my heart; O Fazlî, let the servant not be parted from the sultan's threshold.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün" pattern of the recez 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 "cān, cānān, gülistān, īmān, īmān, sulṭān"; the third and fourth couplets end with the same phrase "dīnden hem īmāndan cüdā". According to Özkat's footnote, the manuscript has "vefā" for "cüdā" in the second line of the first couplet. The word in the first line of the second couplet is written "ḫāli" in the edition; together with "ḥāli" in the second line it has been read in the sense of "state". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the thirty-second in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 247b) 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 opens by turning the separation named in the redif into a matter of choice: rather than remain apart from the beloved, the lover would be parted from his soul, that is, die, and he calls on death to be kind. The closeness in sound between "cān" (soul) and "cānān" (beloved) expresses the heart of this choice; for the lover the true soul is the beloved. The second couplet uses the theme of the rose and the nightingale, and the lover asks others to understand his state by looking at the state of the nightingale parted from the rose garden.

The third couplet is a play on the shapes of Arabic letters. The beloved's upright stature is likened to the letter alif (ا), the curved brows to the letter nun (ن); when these two letters stand side by side the word "an" is read, and the second line contains the expression "ol an". Within this play the couplet is tied to being parted from religion and faith, but in the form given in the edition its sense cannot be fully resolved; nor is it clear in what sense the word "māhir" is used here. The fourth couplet reverses the contrast between unbelief and faith: the unbelief of the beloved's hair, by its darkness, is the lover's religion, and whoever does not count this as faith is wished to be parted from religion and faith. In the last couplet there is a contrast between "bende" (servant) and "sulṭān"; the lover, driven far away by the turning world, prays not to be parted from the sultan's threshold.

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. 303, ghazal no. 32 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 247b); also p. 69 (redifs) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources