Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātü Mefā‘īlü Fā‘ilün

İy şūḫ u şīve-kār u nigār-ı ‘itāb-ı telḫ
Sensüz meẕāḳ-ı cāna gelür ḳand nāb-ı telḫ
Lā‘lüñle acı sözleri key ḫōş gelür baña
Şīrīn olur ne deñlü olursa şarāb-ı telḫ
Sāḳī ki meclis içre o şīrīn-leb olmaya
Mey baña zehr-i nāb ola nuḳl ü kebāb-ı telḫ
Ṣōfī yüzin ḫumārla gögersin gören kişi
‘Arż eyler ekşi ṣūreti virür cevāb-ı telḫ
Bir ḳaṭre eşk-i çeşmüñ eger yire ṭamlasa
Deryā ṣuyı gibi ola Fażlī her āb-ı telḫ

In English

1. O playful, coquettish picture of a beauty with bitter reproaches, without you even pure sugar tastes bitter to the palate of the soul.

2. Bitter words (spoken) with your ruby lip are very pleasing to me; the bitterer the wine, the sweeter it is.

3. Cupbearer, if that sweet-lipped one is not in the gathering, wine becomes pure poison to me, and the relish and the kebab are bitter.

4. To the person who sees the Sufi's face turned blue with the craving for drink, (the Sufi) shows a sour face and gives a bitter answer. (The structure of the first line is obscure; it can also be understood as "Sufi, may the one who sees you turn his face blue with craving".)

5. O Fazlî, if a single drop of your tears were to fall to the ground, every bitter water would become like the water of the sea (salty).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün" pattern of the muzâri family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is "telḫ", Persian for "bitter"; Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a Persian single-word redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-āb" in the words "‘itāb, nāb, şarāb, kebāb, cevāb, āb". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the fifty-fifth 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. 104a), and Özkat takes it from the text in Yakup Yılmaz's thesis. Özkat corrects Yılmaz's reading in two places: the word "key" (very) in the second couplet appears in the thesis as "gey", and the word "gögersin" (turns blue) in the fourth couplet as "görersin". It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal ties the word "bitter" of the redif to something different in each couplet and is built on the contrast between bitter and sweet. In the first couplet the beloved is a beauty "with bitter reproaches", and without her even pure sugar tastes bitter. In the second couplet the contrast is reversed: the bitter words from the beloved's ruby lip please the lover, just as bitter wine is found sweet. Özkat cites this couplet among the examples of the idiom "acı söz" (bitter word). In the third couplet, when the beloved stays away from the gathering, wine turns to poison and the relish and kebab to bitterness; the contrast between "şīrīn-leb" (sweet-lipped) and "zehr" (poison) and "telḫ" repeats the idea of the first couplet.

The fourth couplet is addressed to the Sufi. The Sufi, his face turned blue with the craving for wine, gives a bitter answer with a sour face to whoever looks at him; Özkat gives this couplet as an example of the idiom "suratı ekşi" (sour-faced). Placing sour beside bitter continues the images of taste. In the last couplet the lover's tears are so salty that if a drop fell to the ground every water would turn to sea water. Measuring the lover's tears against the sea is one of the familiar exaggerations of divan poetry; here "bitter water" forms a congruence of images (tenasüp) with salty sea water.

The Nazire Relation

According to Özkat, this ghazal was written as a nazire (response poem) to Resmî's ghazal whose opening couplet is "İy ḳand-i leblerüñ-ile şīrīn şarāb-ı telḫ / Gūş eyleyen sözüñi görür ḳand-i nāb-ı telḫ", and this ghazal of Resmî's was answered by thirteen poets (Atâ-yı Üskübî, Mesîhî Beg, Fazlî, Râyî Beg, Zâtî, Sehî Beg, Muhibbî, Mu‘îdî, Nazmî, Sebzî, Sabûhî, Helâkî and Mübînî) with one ghazal each. Özkat identifies Resmî as Resmî of Bursa, a contemporary and companion of Ahmed Paşa. Fazlî keeps Resmî's metre and the rhyme and redif "-āb-ı telḫ"; the phrase "ḳand-i nāb-ı telḫ" of Resmî's opening couplet recurs in Fazlî's opening couplet in the form "ḳand nāb-ı telḫ". In Resmî bitter wine grows sweet through the beloved's sugar lip, while in Fazlî pure sugar grows bitter when the beloved is absent; this comparison is our own.

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. 316-317, ghazal no. 55 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Bağdat Köşkü 406, fol. 104a); also p. 43 (idioms), p. 69 (redifs), pp. 90 and 93 (idioms), pp. 96 and 100 (response poems), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • Yakup Yılmaz, Pervâne Beg Nazire Mecmuası (99b-129a): Transkripsiyonlu, Edisyon Kritikli Metin, unpublished MA thesis, Marmara University Institute of Turkic Studies, Istanbul 2001, pp. 32-38 (as cited by Özkat). katalog.marmara.edu.tr