Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilün

Bāġ-ı ‘ālemde ne bir sencileyin gül bulunur
Ne senüñ gibi güle dil gibi bülbül bulunur
Ne cihān içre senüñ gibi güzel şāh olur
Ne saña bencileyin ġam-zede bir ḳul bulunur
Bāġ-ı ‘ālemde ne ḳaddüñ gibi bir serv olur
Ne ser-i zülf-i siyāhuñ gibi sünbül bulunur
Sende ne ẕerre ḳadar mihr ü vefā fehm olunur
Ḳıl ḳadar bende ne ṣabr ile taḥammül bulunur
‘Işḳ-ı dilde ne ṣafā ḳodı ne ḫod ẕevḳ velī
Fażliyā miḥnet ü endūh ile ġulġul bulunur

In English

1. In the garden of the world there is found neither a rose like you, nor for a rose like you a nightingale like my heart.

2. In the world there is neither so beautiful a shah as you, nor is there found for you a grief-stricken slave like me.

3. In the garden of the world there is neither a cypress like your stature, nor is there found a hyacinth like the tip of your black tress.

4. In you not an atom of love and loyalty is to be perceived, nor in me is there found a hair's breadth of patience and endurance.

5. O Fazlî, the love in the heart has left neither delight nor pleasure; but (in the heart) there is found a tumult of suffering and sorrow.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün" pattern of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is "bulunur" (is found); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a Turkish single-word redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ul/-ül" in the words "gül, bülbül, ḳul, sünbül, taḥammül, ġulġul". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet in the form "Fażliyā". The ghazal is the sixty-fifth in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 236b) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Özkat counts this ghazal among Fazlî's yek-âhenk ghazals. Yek-âhenk is the name given to ghazals all of whose couplets treat the same subject with equal force and in the same manner of expression; in this ghazal too every couplet is built on a "neither... nor" structure and states side by side the matchlessness of the beloved and of the lover.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet of the ghazal appears as an example in two places in Özkat's study. According to Özkat, Fazlî, who achieved a plain manner of expression in his ghazals, also wrote couplets and ghazals in a style that can be regarded as Türkî-i Basit (plain Turkish), and this opening couplet is the first of his examples of them. Özkat also gives the same couplet when showing that the Arabic and Persian elements in his poems are easily understood, naturalised words and short compounds. Indeed, apart from "bāġ-ı ‘ālem" (the garden of the world), there is no compound in the opening couplet; a Turkish particle of comparison such as "sencileyin" (like you) and naturalised words such as "gül" (rose) and "bülbül" (nightingale) bring the expression close to the spoken language.

The ghazal proceeds through paired structures. In the first couplet the beloved is the rose and the lover's heart the nightingale; in the second the beloved is the shah and the lover the slave; in the third the beloved's stature is the cypress and the tip of his tress the hyacinth. In each couplet the first line states the matchlessness of the beloved, the second that of the lover or of another of the beloved's beauties. In the fourth couplet this balance is broken by a reproach: in the beloved there is not an atom of loyalty, in the lover not a hair's breadth of patience; "ẕerre" (atom) and "ḳıl" (hair) answer each other as two tiny units of measure. The last couplet says that love has left neither delight nor pleasure in the heart and has put the tumult of suffering and sorrow in their place; the word "ġulġul" is known both as tumult and as the sound of wine pouring from a flask, but it is not certain that this second meaning is intended here.

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. 322-323, ghazal no. 65 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 236b); also p. 64 (plain expression and yek-âhenk ghazals), p. 69 (redifs), p. 105 (Arabic and Persian elements) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources