Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Fe‘ūlün

Kemāl ehline olmışdur bu şāyi‘
Ki medḥi naḳş olur naḳḳāşa rāci‘
Görüp naḳşını her kim itse sābāş
Ṣafā kesb eyler andan cān-ı naḳḳāş

In English

1. Among those who have reached perfection this saying has become common: the praise of a picture returns to the painter.

2. Whoever sees his picture and says "well done", the painter's soul takes delight in it.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a piece of two couplets (beyit). Its lines rhyme in pairs like a mesnevi (rhymed-couplet poem): "şāyi‘" with "rāci‘", "sābāş" with "naḳḳāş". Özkat gathered such poems, which bear no heading of kıt'a or nazım, in the kıt'a section of the divan, and stated that two of them, the eighteenth and twentieth kıt'as, were written in the manner of a mesnevi. The metre is "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün" of the hezec family. There is no pen name (mahlas). The poem is found on folio 112a of miscellany no. 314 of the Âşir Efendi collection in the Süleymaniye Library; in the manuscript the word "beyt" stands at its head. In describing how he established the text, Özkat says that among the manuscripts the chronograms and kıt'as are found only in the Hazine miscellany; yet the footnotes to the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth kıt'as cite the Âşir Efendi manuscript. This detail is our own observation. To whom and when it was written is unknown.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Özkat states that in this poem the poet praises the people of perfection. The two couplets express, through the painter and the picture, the idea that the praise of a work reaches the one who made it. "Naḳş" (picture, ornament) and "naḳḳāş" (painter, ornamentalist) come from the same root and are used together in both couplets; this repetition shows the idea itself in the very words. The poem can also be understood as saying that praise of a work, or of a pupil, returns to the one who formed it; and it is open to a mystical reading in which admiration for the created turns towards the Creator. These two readings are our own interpretation. The phrase "kemāl ehline olmışdur bu şāyi‘" in the first couplet presents the statement as a known and accepted piece of wisdom.

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. 382, kıt'a no. 18 (Süleymaniye Library, Âşir Efendi 314, fol. 112a); also pp. 64-65 (on the kıt'as), pp. 118-119 (description of the manuscripts) and p. 123 (establishment of the text), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources