Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Nā-gehān bir serv-i ḫoş-reftār[e] oldum mübtelā
Bir vefāsuz dilber-i cevvāre oldum mübtelā
Gitdi ‘aḳl u gitdi fikr ü gitdi ṣabr u gitdi dil
Hey ne müşkil derde ben bī-çāre oldum mübtelā
Ḳadd-i bālāsı ḳıyāmetler ḳoparur başuma
Āh kim ben bir belālu yāre oldum mübtelā
Vādi-i ġamda nice mecnūn-ı maḥzūn olmayam
Bir ṣaçı leylī perī-ruḫsāre oldum mübtelā
Fażliyā zülfi ġamından ol nigāruñ āh kim
Şāne gibi ḳurudum ṣad-pāre oldum mübtelā

In English

1. Suddenly I was smitten with a cypress of graceful gait; I was smitten with a faithless, cruel heart-stealer.

2. Reason went, thought went, patience went, the heart went; ah, what a hard pain I, the helpless one, was smitten with.

3. His tall stature raises doomsdays over my head; alas, I was smitten with a calamitous beloved.

4. How should I not be a grieving Majnun in the valley of sorrow? I was smitten with a fairy-faced one whose hair is Layla (dark as night).

5. O Fazlî, alas, from grief for that beauty's tresses I dried up like a comb and fell into a hundred pieces; (with such a pain) I was smitten.

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 "-e oldum mübtelā" (I was smitten with); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a phrase redif made of Turkish and Arabic words. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-āre" in the words "ḫoş-reftār[e], cevvāre, bī-çāre, yāre, ruḫsāre, ṣad-pāre". The "e" in square brackets in the first line of the opening couplet is Özkat's addition. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the thirty-eighth in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 248b) 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 long redif ends every couplet with the same confession: "I was smitten". The language of the ghazal is plain, and the couplets say one by one with what the lover was smitten. The second couplet is the most striking in the ghazal: the verb "gitdi" (went) is repeated four times, listing the departure one after another of reason, thought, patience and heart; this series, built by the figure of repetition (tekrir), is completed by the exclamation "hey ne müşkil derde" (ah, what a hard pain), close to the spoken language. In the third couplet there is a paronomasia (cinas) based on likeness of sound between "ḳadd-i bālā" (tall stature) and "belālu" (calamitous), and a play between "ḳāmet" (stature) and "ḳıyāmet" (doomsday), words from the same root; the beloved's stature raises doomsdays over the lover's head. Özkat gives this couplet as an example of the idiom "kıyameti koparmak" (to raise doomsday, to raise hell).

In the fourth couplet there is an allusion (telmih) to the story of Layla and Majnun. The words "vādi" (desert, valley) and "mecnūn" recall the story; the word "leylī" carries both the name Layla and the sense "like the night", and forms a double entendre (tevriye) tied to the beloved's dark hair. In the last couplet the lover is likened to a comb that has dried up and split into a hundred pieces from grief for the tresses; the teeth of the comb stand for the hundred pieces, its dry wood for the lover's withered body. The link between comb and tresses ties this comparison to the tresses.

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. 306-307, ghazal no. 38 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 248b); also p. 69 (redifs), p. 93 (idioms) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources