Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün

O hercāyi ḳılur hercāda ġayr-ile tekellümler
Görüp ben reşkden āh eylerüm güm güm cihān gümler
Gülüp sen ġayr ile dāyim beni gel çoḳ çoḳ aġlatma
Ṣaḳın kim ḳan olur az günde ġarḳ olur bu merdümler

In English

1. That fickle one (the faithless beloved) holds conversations with others everywhere; seeing this, I sigh from jealousy, and (with my sighs) the world booms and booms.

2. Do not always laugh with others and make me weep so very much; beware, in a few days these pupils (of my eyes) will drown in blood.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The text we have consists of two couplets, written in the "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün" pattern of the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is the suffix "-ler"; Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a suffix redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-üm" in the words "tekellüm, güm, merdüm". The ghazal is the ninety-seventh in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 240b) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. Özkat gives it under the heading "incomplete ghazals rhyming in the letter rā", among those whose last couplets are missing; what remains to us is the opening couplet and one more. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

In the ghazal section of the divan, Özkat gathers the ghazals whose beginning or end is missing because of lost pages into a separate group at the end of the letter in which they rhyme, and notes that these ghazals were not left unfinished by the poet but owe their state to missing pages in the miscellanies. According to him, among the 153 poems of the ghazal section there are 15 ghazals that could not be recovered in full because of lost or torn-out leaves.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the opening couplet there is a pun (cinas) between the words "hercāyi" and "hercā": "her-cā" means "every place" in Persian, and "hercāyi" is a person who calls everywhere and stays nowhere, a faithless one. The beloved talks with others everywhere; the lover sighs from jealousy, and with this sigh the world "booms and booms" (güm güm gümler). The phrase is an imitation of sound (onomatopoeia), and, joined with the rhyme word "güm", it gives the couplet a resounding noise; this is our own observation. In the second couplet antitheses are set up between laughing and weeping, and between "çoḳ çoḳ" (so very much) and "az günde" (in a few days). The word "merdüm" means both the pupil of the eye and people; the lover's pupils will drown in tears of blood. The two meanings of the word form a double entendre (tevriye).

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. 341-342, ghazal no. 97 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 240b); also p. 62 (incomplete ghazals), p. 68 (redifs) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources