Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Mefā‘īlü Mefā‘īlü Fe‘ūlün

Göñlüm dolaşup zülfüñe ṭutġun olacaḳdur
Her kim ki sever Leylī’yi Mecnūn olacaḳdur
Gördüm ki düzer ‘askerini zülf-i siyāhuñ
Didüm bu gice üstüme şeb-ḫūn olacaḳdur
Her kim ki benüm gözlerümüñ yaşını gördi
Bu çeşme didi āḫiri Ceyhūn olacaḳdur
Ger bād-ı ṣabā virmese zülfüñ ḫaberinden
Āh kim cigerüm nāfe gibi ḳan olacaḳdur
Olsun ġam ile Fażlī sezādur dimedüm mi
Her kim ki sever ḫūbları maġbūn olacaḳdur

In English

1. My heart will be entangled in your tress and become its captive; whoever loves Leyla will become Majnun (a madman).

2. I saw the black tress drawing up its soldiers; I said, "Tonight there will be a raid upon me." (The manuscript reads "şeb-ḫvān" instead of "şeb-ḫūn".)

3. Everyone who saw the tears of my eyes said, "This fountain will at last become the Oxus."

4. If the morning breeze brings no news of your tress, ah, my liver will turn to blood like a musk pod.

5. Let Fazlî be filled with grief, he deserves it; did I not say: whoever loves the fair ones will be cheated (will come to loss)?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün" pattern of the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is the word "olacaḳdur" (will become); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a Turkish word redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ūn" in the words "ṭutġun, Mecnūn, şeb-ḫūn, Ceyhūn, maġbūn"; the word "ḳan" (blood) in the fourth couplet does not fit this series, and the Persian word "ḫūn" (blood) would complete the rhyme. This last observation is our own. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the ninety-first in Özkat's edition and is not found in the Hazine miscellany; it is found only in the "Mecmū‘a-i Eş‘ār" in the Yapı Kredi Sermet Çifter Research Library, no. 242 (fol. 45a). Özkat states that this miscellany was copied in the seventeenth century and contains a single ghazal by Fazlî. In the second couplet the manuscript reads "şeb-ḫvān" instead of "şeb-ḫūn" (night raid). It is not known to whom or when it was written.

The opening couplet of the ghazal is one of the couplets most often cited as an example in Özkat's study. Özkat gives this couplet as an example of Fazlî's use of words whose roots go back to the earlier periods of Turkish ("ṭutġun": captive), of his plain and sincere expressions close to the spoken language, of the style that brings him near to the "Türkî-i basit" (plain Turkish) approach, and of the fact that Turkish words in his poems far outnumber Arabic and Persian ones.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The second line of the opening couplet is built like a proverb, with an allusion to the story of Leyla and Majnun: whoever loves Leyla becomes Majnun, that is, mad. The fact that the word "Mecnūn" means both the name of the lover in the story and "madman" makes the couplet a double entendre (tevriye). The name Leyla recalls the Arabic word "leyl" (night), which sets up a relation with the black tress; this is our own observation. In the second couplet the tress is likened to an army preparing a night raid; the strands of black hair are the ranks of soldiers, and their darkness is the night. In the third couplet there is a relation of sound and meaning between "çeşm" (eye) and "çeşme" (fountain): the fountain of tears will in the end become the Oxus (Ceyhun), the great river of Central Asia.

In the fourth couplet the nâfe is the musk pod formed in the navel of the musk deer; since in divan poetry musk is thought to be formed from blood, the liver of the lover who has no news of the beloved's tress is likened to a musk pod turned to blood. That the morning breeze carries the musk scent of the tress is also a familiar image. The last couplet returns to the opening: the words "Her kim ki sever" (whoever loves) also occur in the second line of the first couplet, and the ghazal opens and closes with the same pattern; this is our own observation. "Maġbūn" is a person who has been cheated, who has suffered loss in a bargain; whoever loves the fair ones will in the end have been cheated.

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. 338-339, ghazal no. 91 (Yapı Kredi Sermet Çifter Research Library 242, fol. 45a); also p. 44 (Turkish words), p. 69 (redifs), pp. 102-107 (features of language and expression) and p. 121 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources