Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Geydügi ol ġoncenüñ gül gibi dāyim āldür
İtdügi dil ‘andelībine dem-ā-dem āldür
Āhuma meyl eylese ol serv-ḳadd olmaz ‘aceb
Bāde çünkim dāyimā serv-i sehī-meyyāldür
Sehv ile reyḥāna teşbīh eyledüm ḫaṭṭuñ şehā
İşidüp sünbüllerüñ anı perīşān-ḥāldür
Bī-güneh ‘āşıḳları ḳatl itmege cānlar virür
Ġamzeñ iy ḫūnī senüñ Allāh kim ḳattāldur
Bir gün ola yüzüme baṣa diyu pāyın o serv
Sāye-veş ayaḳlar altında göñül pāy-māldür
Kendü varmaz ḫalḳı da mey-ḫānelerden men‘ ider
Şeyḫ-i yārān-ı ṭarīḳat hem muḥal hem ḥāldür
Ḳatline her mühmelüñ ol ḫūni isti‘cāl ider
Olmasun mı Fażlī’ye gelse işi ihmāldür

In English

1. That rosebud (the beloved) always wears red (āl) like the rose; what he does to the nightingale of the heart at every moment is a trick (āl).

2. No wonder if that cypress-statured one inclines towards my sigh; for the straight cypress is always inclined towards the wind (bāde).

3. O shah, by mistake I likened the down on your cheek to basil; hearing this, your hyacinths (your locks) are in a dishevelled state.

4. O bloodthirsty one, your glance longs to give its life to slay innocent lovers; God knows it is a great killer.

5. So that one day that cypress might set his foot upon my face, the heart lies trampled under foot like a shadow.

6. The sheikh of the companions of the Sufi path does not go to the tavern himself, and he also forbids the people the taverns; (this) is both impossible and a "state". (The end of the line can be understood in two ways: "it is both absurd and real", or, taking "ḥāl" in its Sufi sense of a spiritual state, as an ironic remark.)

7. That bloodthirsty one hastens to slay everyone who has been neglected; when it comes to Fazlî, should his affair be neglected?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of seven couplets, written in the "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün" pattern of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain) is the suffix "-dür/-dur" (is); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a suffix redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-āl" in the words "āl, āl, meyyāl, ḥāl, ḳattāl, pāy-māl, ḥāl, ihmāl". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the sixty-second in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 236a) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. According to Özkat's note, the words "muḥal hem ḥāldür" at the end of the sixth couplet are written in the manuscript as "muḫal hem ḫāldür". It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet is built on a pun (cinas): the word "āl" means "red" in the first line and "trick" in the second. The rosebud-like beloved wears red like the rose and plays tricks on the nightingale of the heart; the familiar relation between rose and nightingale is tied to the play of sound between the beloved's red colour and his deceiving of the lover. This observation is our own; Özkat discusses the punning use of the word "al" separately for ghazal seventy-eight. In the second couplet, when the word "bāde" is read as the dative of "bād" (wind), the meaning emerges that the cypress always bends towards the wind; since the sigh is also counted a wind, the beloved may incline towards the lover's sigh. The word's meaning of "wine" also comes to mind; this double reading is our own observation.

In the third couplet, when the down on the cheek is mistakenly likened to basil, the hyacinths, that is the beloved's locks, are dishevelled with envy; finding a reason for the disorder of the hair has the character of hüsn-i ta'lil (poetic aetiology). The fourth couplet speaks of the glance "giving its life" to slay the lovers; Özkat counts this couplet among the examples of the idiom "can vermek" (to long for, to give one's life). In the fifth couplet the heart lies spread beneath the feet like a shadow, in the hope that the beloved will one day step on its face; there is a congruence of images (tenasüp) between the shadow lying on the ground and the tall stature of the cypress. The sixth couplet targets the sheikh of a Sufi order: just as the sheikh does not go to the tavern himself, he also keeps the people from it. In the last couplet there is a contrast between "isti‘cāl" (haste) and "ihmāl" (neglect), and derivation (iştikak) between "mühmel" (neglected) and "ihmāl": while the beloved hastens to slay everyone, he neglects Fazlî's affair, and the lover complains of this.

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. 321, ghazal no. 62 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 236a); also p. 68 (redifs), p. 91 (idioms) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources