Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Her ne şi‘ri kim baña ol serv-ḳāmet söyledür
Rāstī ġāyet bülend olur ḳıyāmet söyledür
Ṭa‘n idersin ‘ışḳ ile dīvāne olan ‘āşıḳa
Zāhidā sen aḥmaḳı bildüm ḥamāḳat söyledür
Leblerüñ emdükçe dil söyler ḥadīs̱-i ‘ışḳuñı
Ādemüñ mey rāz-ı pinhānın tamāmet söyledür
Dōst olduñ düşmene diyü ider şekvā göñül
N’eylesün hey pādişāhum anı ġayret söyledür
İy şeker-leb ṭūṭi gibi Fażlī’yi mir’āt-ı cām
Ẕevḳ ü şevḳ ile virüp biñ dürlü ḥālet söyledür

In English

1. Whatever poem that cypress-statured one makes me speak, truly it becomes very lofty; it makes (me) speak of the Resurrection (it raises a tumult).

2. O ascetic, you reproach the lover who has gone mad with love; I have understood that you are a fool, it is folly that makes you speak.

3. As it sucks your lips, the heart speaks the tale of your love; wine makes a man tell his hidden secret entirely.

4. The heart complains, "You have become a friend to the enemy"; what can it do, my padishah? It is jealousy that makes it say so.

5. O sugar-lipped one, the mirror of the cup gives Fazlî joy and longing and makes him speak, like a parrot, of a thousand kinds of states.

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 "söyledür" (makes speak); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a Turkish single-word redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-et" in the words "ḳāmet, ḳıyāmet, ḥamāḳat, tamāmet, ġayret, ḥālet". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the seventy-fifth in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 238b) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Each couplet of the ghazal describes a force that makes someone speak: the beloved's stature makes the poet speak poetry, folly makes the ascetic speak reproach, wine makes the lover tell his secret, jealousy makes the heart complain, and the mirror of the cup makes Fazlî speak of a thousand states. The redif, built from a causative verb, therefore points to a cause in each couplet. In the first couplet there is a connection both of sound and of meaning between "ḳāmet" (stature) and "ḳıyāmet" (the Resurrection, tumult): the rising of the cypress-statured one is a resurrection, and the poem he makes the poet speak "raises a tumult". The words "rāstī" (straightness, truth) and "bülend" (lofty) also form a congruence of images (tenasüp) with the straight, tall stature of the cypress.

In the second couplet the ascetic's reproach of the lover is attributed to his own folly; the opposition between "dīvāne" (mad) and "aḥmaḳ" (fool) questions who is truly without sense. The third couplet rests on the idea that wine makes a man tell his hidden secret: the heart that sucks the beloved's lip reveals the secret of its love. In the fourth couplet the heart complains that the beloved has made friends with the rival, and this complaint is attributed to jealousy. In the last couplet the cup is likened to a mirror that teaches the parrot to speak; that the parrot is made to speak before a mirror is a familiar image in divan poetry. The words "şeker-leb" (sugar-lipped), "ṭūṭī" (parrot) and "mir’āt" (mirror) form a congruence of images around this image.

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. 328, ghazal no. 75 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 238b); 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