Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Fe‘ūlün

Me‘ānī baḥrinüñ gevherlerini
Ma‘ārif çerḫinüñ aḫterlerini
Feṣāḥat dürci içre cem‘ ḳıldum
Belāġat burcı üzre şem‘ ḳıldum

In English

1. The jewels of the sea of meanings, the stars of the heaven of knowledge,

2. I gathered inside the jewel case of eloquence, and lit like candles upon the tower of rhetoric. (Fesahat is clarity and purity of speech; belagat is speech fitted to its occasion and effective.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a piece of two couplets (beyit), and the lines of each couplet rhyme with each other like a mesnevi (rhymed-couplet poem): "gevherlerini" with "aḫterlerini", "cem‘ ḳıldum" with "şem‘ ḳıldum". Özkat states that this poem is a mesnevi and that it was placed among the kıt'as because there are few examples of this kind. 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 "Mes̱nevī" stands at its head.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The two couplets form a single sentence: the poet says that he has gathered the pearls of meanings and the stars of knowledge and made them shine in his speech. The couplets are built on two parallel series. In the first, sea, jewel and jewel case (dürc) complete one another; in the second, heaven (çerḫ), star (aḫter) and tower or zodiacal sign (burc); this congruence of images (tenasüp) is distributed among the lines in a deliberate order. "Feṣāḥat" and "belāġat" are the two basic concepts of the art of speech and stand opposite each other within the same parallelism. The words "dürc" and "burc" are also close in sound. The details of this arrangement are our own observation. The poet's holding his own speech so high suggests that the piece may be a passage of self-praise placed at the beginning or end of a work; this is a conjecture.

Historical Context

Özkat says that this poem gives the impression of having been taken from Fazlî's mesnevi Gül ü Bülbül. According to Özkat's description of the manuscripts, folios 1b-66a of the same Âşir Efendi miscellany contain the mesnevi Gül ü Bülbül itself. Whether the piece is actually found in that mesnevi is not confirmed in the source; since the full text of the mesnevi could not be obtained, we were not able to compare them either.

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. 383, kıt'a no. 20 (Süleymaniye Library, Âşir Efendi 314, fol. 112a); also p. 64 and p. 66 (on the kıt'as) and p. 118 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources