Original Persian Text

Metre: Müstef‘ilün Fe‘ūlün Müstef‘ilün Fe‘ūlün / Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātün Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātün

هر شاعري كه باشد از علم و معرفت دور
مانند خواجگان مغرور و بي بضاعت
مخلص نهادن خود بی شعر مرد نادان
دعواي پادشاهست بي لشكر و رعيّت

Reading in Latin script: 1. Her şā‘irī ki bāşed ez ‘ilm ü ma‘rifet dūr / Mānend-i ḫvācegān-ı maġrūr u bī-biżā‘at
2. Maḫlaṣ nihāden-i ḫod bī-şi‘r merd-i nādān / Da‘vā-yı pādişāhest bī-leşker ü ra‘iyyet

In English

1. Every poet who is far from learning and true knowledge resembles proud merchants who have no capital.

2. For an ignorant man with no share of poetry to give himself a pen name is like someone without army or subjects laying claim to kingship.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a Persian kıt'a (fragment) of two couplets (beyit). The kıt'a is a short verse form without an opening couplet (matla), that is, the lines of its first couplet do not rhyme with each other; here only the words "bıżā‘at" and "ra‘iyyet" at the end of the second lines rhyme, and Özkat counts this kıt'a as having half rhyme. Özkat gives two patterns for the metre: "müstef‘ilün fe‘ūlün müstef‘ilün fe‘ūlün" and "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün". That the two patterns yield the same sequence of syllables is our observation. There is no pen name (mahlas). The kıt'a is found in the Fazlî section of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (fol. 249b). To whom and when it was written is not known.

According to Özkat there are two kıt'as written in Persian in Fazlî's collection: the twelfth and the fourteenth. The edition gives this kıt'a in Arabic script, does not show its reading, and supplies the Turkish meanings of the couplets in the footnotes. The original text is Özkat's Arabic-script text. The reading in Latin script beneath it is ours; the English rendering rests on the meanings in Özkat's footnotes.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The kıt'a expresses, through two similes, the idea that poetry is a matter of knowledge. In the first couplet the poet who has no share of learning and true knowledge is likened to a merchant who, though he has no capital, gives up nothing of his pride. The word "ḫvācegān" here denotes great merchants; like a man who fancies himself a merchant with no goods in hand, the man who fancies himself a poet without knowledge carries an empty claim. In the second couplet the simile grows larger still: an ignorant man who understands nothing of poetry taking a pen name is likened to someone without army or people claiming kingship. The pen name (mahlas) is the assumed name a divan poet uses in his poems and is regarded as a mark of being a poet; for Fazlî this mark is meaningless if there is no skill behind it.

In both couplets a title is set against the thing that supports it: merchant and capital, king and army and subjects, poet and learning. These comparisons form a chain of similes. Özkat notes that the Persian twelfth kıt'a and the Turkish thirteenth kıt'a, which stand side by side in the collection, reflect Fazlî's thoughts on poetry and on those who pass themselves off as poets. In the thirteenth kıt'a too it is said that not everyone who bears a pen name is a poet; just as the Antichrist (Deccal), called by the epithet Messiah, is not one with the true prophet, the poet and the pretender to poetry are not one. That the two kıt'as treat the same idea, one in Persian and one in Turkish, shows the importance Fazlî attached to this subject.

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. 380, kıt'a no. 12 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 249b; meanings of the couplets in the footnotes); also pp. 64-65 (on the kıt'as), p. 69 (rhyme) and pp. 110-111 (Persian poems), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources