Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ḫaste dil cānından artuḳ lā‘l-i cānān[ın] sever
Cümleden yeğrek muḳarrerdür kişi cānın sever
Mücrim-i dil kākül ü çāh-ı zeneḥdānın diler
Görmedüm anuñ gibi bir bend ü zindānın sever
Göñlüm ol serv-i revānuñ zülf-i şeb-rengin diler
Cānum ol ġonca dehānuñ lā‘l-i ḫandānın diler
‘Arṣa-i ḥüsninde göñlüm dāyimā ol serverüñ
Başını ṭop itmek-içün zülfi çevgānın sever
Gülşen-i kūyında efġān eyle her-dem Fażliyā
Bülbülüñ ol yüzi gül çün zār u nālānın sever

In English

1. The sick heart loves the beloved's ruby lip more than its own life; yet it is certain that everyone loves his own life (above all).

2. The guilty heart longs for the forelock and the pit of the chin (the well); I have never seen anyone like it who loves his own fetters and dungeon.

3. My heart longs for the night-coloured tress of that swaying cypress; my soul longs for the laughing ruby lip of that rosebud-mouthed one.

4. In the arena of that sovereign's beauty my heart always loves the polo stick of his tress, so as to make its own head the ball.

5. O Fazlî, cry out at every moment in the rose garden of his quarter; for that rose-faced one loves the nightingale's wailing and lament.

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 "-ın sever" (loves his/its...); Özkat counts this ghazal among those whose redif is a group made of a suffix and a Turkish word. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ān" in the words "cānān, cān, zindān, ḫandān, çevgān, nālān". In the third couplet both lines end with "diler" (longs for) instead of "sever" (loves), and "diler" is also used in the first line of the second couplet; the change of the redif in this couplet is noteworthy; this is our own observation. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet in the form "Fażliyā". The ghazal is the seventieth in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 237b) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. In the word "cānān[ın]" in the first line the suffix in square brackets is Özkat's addition. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal turns on the verbs "sevmek" (to love) and "dilemek" (to long for), and in each couplet lists what the lover's heart loves. In the first couplet a comparison is made with a general judgement: everyone loves his own life most, but the sick heart loves the beloved's lip more than life; there is derivation (iştikak) between "cānān" (beloved) and "cān" (life, soul). In the second couplet the heart is imagined as a guilty prisoner: the forelock is the fetter, the pit of the chin the well of the dungeon, and the heart loves its own fetter and dungeon. In this couplet "kākül" (forelock) and "çāh-ı zeneḫdān" (pit of the chin) in the first line are answered in order by "bend" (fetter) and "zindān" (dungeon) in the second; this is an instance of leff ü neşr (enumeration and later matching), and the observation is our own.

The third couplet builds its two lines in parallel: the heart longs for the night-coloured tress of the cypress-statured one, the soul for the laughing lip of the rosebud-mouthed one; "serv-i revān" (swaying cypress) stands against "ġonca dehān" (rosebud mouth), and "zülf-i şeb-reng" (night-coloured tress) against "lā‘l-i ḫandān" (laughing ruby). The fourth couplet is a comparison taken from the game of çevgân (polo): the beloved's beauty is an arena, his tress the curved polo stick, and the lover's head the ball; likening the curling tress to a polo stick is a familiar convention of divan poetry. In the last couplet the relation of rose and nightingale is set up: the rose-faced beloved loves the nightingale's wailing, so the lover too should cry out without pause in the rose garden of his quarter.

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. 325-326, ghazal no. 70 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 237b); also p. 69 (redifs) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources