Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Başını ḳaṭ‘eyleseñ zülf[üñ] gibi iy dil-rübā
Lā dimez miskin durur göñl[üm] benüm ḳaṭ‘ā saña
‘Āri olsun bu libāsı ‘āriyetden evvelā
Kim ki baḥr-ı ‘ışḳ-ı yāre olmaġ ister āşinā
Yiller ile bulmadı bir şemme būy-ı zülfüñi
Ol hevāda gerçi kim çoḳ yeldi yopurdı ṣabā

In English

1. O heart-stealer, even if you were to cut off the head (of my heart) like your tresses, my humble heart would never say "no" to you.

2. Whoever wishes to become a swimmer in (to become acquainted with) the sea of love for the beloved, let him first strip off this borrowed garment (the body).

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.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The text that survives consists of three 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" at the end of the words "dil-rübā, ḳaṭ‘ā, evvelā, āşinā, ṣabā"; the second line of the opening couplet ends "ḳaṭ‘ā saña". The ghazal is the forty-first in Özkat's edition; Özkat places it in the group of incomplete ghazals rhyming in alif "whose last couplets are missing", and so the closing couplet with the pen name (mahlas) has not survived. The text is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 219b) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. In the words "zülf[üñ]" and "göñl[üm]" in the first couplet the suffixes in square brackets are Özkat's additions. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

In the ghazal section of the divan, Özkat gathers the ghazals whose beginning or end is missing because of lost pages into a separate group at the end of the letter in which they rhyme, and notes that these ghazals were not left unfinished by the poet but owe their state to missing pages in the miscellanies. According to him, among the 153 poems of the ghazal section there are 15 ghazals that could not be recovered in full because of lost or torn-out leaves. This ghazal is one of them, and Özkat records it as three couplets.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the first couplet the lover's heart is imagined like a braid of hair: even if the beloved were to cut off the heart's head as one has one's tresses cut, the heart would not say "lā" (no) to him. "Ḳaṭ‘ eylemek" (to cut) and "ḳaṭ‘ā" (never) come from the same root, and their use side by side forms a play of sound. The word "miskin" means humble, wretched, but since it is named together with the tresses it also recalls the scent of musk (misk). In the second couplet there is a paronomasia (cinas) between "‘āri" (naked, stripped) and "‘āriyet" (borrowed); the body is a garment the spirit has borrowed, and whoever enters the sea of love must take it off. The word "āşinā" means both "acquainted" and, in Persian, "swimming, a swimmer"; together with "baḥr" (sea) it forms a double entendre (tevriye).

The third couplet repeats, without any change, the third couplet of the twenty-sixth ghazal. Özkat lists this among Fazlî's faults of expression, as an example of the same couplet being repeated in different poems. He also counts the phrase "yelmek yöpürmek" (to run and hurry about) in the couplet as an example of idioms forgotten or little known today. The word "yiller" means "years" but also recalls the word "yel" (wind); "ṣabā" (the east wind), "hevā" (air, longing) and "yeldi" (ran like the wind) complete this association.

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. 308, ghazal no. 41 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 219b); also pp. 61-62 (incomplete ghazals), p. 69 (rhyme), pp. 86-87 and 93 (idioms), 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