Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Senden ayru içdügüm ṣanma şarāb-ı nābdur
Ḳaṭre ḳaṭre çeşm-i giryāndan aḳan ḫūn-ābdur
Cām-ı gül-gūn ṣanma destümde görinen nesterīn
Giryeden geldi elüme çeşm-i pür-ḫūn-ābdur
Mey degül nūş itdügüm sensüz olur ise sebīl
Ḥaḳ bu kim ol semm-i ḳātil baña zehr-i nābdur
Meclisümde devr iden sāġar degül senden cüdā
Kāse-i sırdur ki pür-ḫūn-ı dil-i bī-tābdur
Bezm-i ġamda Fażliyā çalmaġa miḥnet sāzını
Sīne ḳānūnumdur aña nāḫunum mıżrābdur

In English

1. Do not think that what I drink apart from you is pure wine; it is bloody water flowing drop by drop from the weeping eye.

2. Do not take the eglantine (white wild rose) seen in my hand for a rose-coloured cup; what has come into my hand from weeping is an eye filled with bloody water. (The couplet is obscure.)

3. What I drink without you is not wine, even if it were free as a public fountain; truly, that deadly poison is pure poison to me.

4. What goes round in my gathering apart from you is not a cup; it is a bowl of secrets filled with the blood of the exhausted heart.

5. O Fazlî, to play the instrument of suffering in the gathering of grief, my breast is my kanun (zither) and my fingernail its plectrum.

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) is the suffix "-dur/-dür" (is); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a suffix redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-āb" in the words "nāb, ḫūn-āb, ḫūn-āb, nāb, bī-tāb, mıżrāb"; the rhymes "ḫūn-āb" and "nāb" are each used twice. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet in the form "Fażliyā". The ghazal is the seventy-sixth in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 239a) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. According to Özkat's note, in the word "nesterīn" in the second couplet the dots of the letters were inadvertently left out in the manuscript. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal says that everything taken for wine in the gathering of separation is in fact blood and tears. Each couplet proceeds through a correction beginning with "ṣanma" (do not think) or "degül" (is not): what is drunk is not wine but bloody water, what is seen in the hand is not a cup but a bloody eye, what is drunk is not wine but poison, what goes round is not a cup but a bowl filled with the blood of the heart. This structure is a play of feigned ignorance and correction that rejects what appears and states the real situation; the naming is our own. The words "ḫūn-āb" (bloody water), "ḫūn" (blood) and "pür-ḫūn" (full of blood) hold blood and tears together throughout the ghazal.

In the second couplet the eglantine, a white wild rose, is set against the rose-coloured cup; but the full meaning of the couplet is not clear. In the third couplet the word "sebīl", in the sense of water given out free, says that wine, even if plentiful and free, turns to poison when drunk without the beloved; "semm-i ḳātil" (deadly poison) and "zehr-i nāb" (pure poison) repeat the same meaning in two compounds. The last couplet is built with musical terms: to play the instrument of suffering in the gathering of grief, the lover's breast is the kanun (zither) and his fingernail the plectrum. Tearing the breast with the nails is known as a sign of mourning and pain; Fazlî likens this gesture to playing an instrument. The words "bezm" (gathering), "sāz" (instrument), "ḳānūn" and "mıżrāb" (plectrum) form a congruence of images (tenasüp).

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. 329, ghazal no. 76 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 239a); also p. 68 (redifs) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources