Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilātün Mefā‘ilün Fe‘ilün

Şöyle ḥayrānlar olmuşuz ki bugün
Geçmege kendümüzden oldı yaḳīn
Ben didüm Rüstem’e murāduñ ne
Döndi ol da murāda didi hemīn
Ki bize n’olsa beng ile ‘acebā
Āteş-i cū[yı] bulmaġa teskīn
Döndi ol dem murād açup dehenin
İtdi kām-ı murādumuz şekerīn
Didi kim olsa ṭatlu ḳısmından
Her ne olursa lā-‘ale’t-ta‘yīn
Rüstem ider şeker börek nicedür
Ḳılmaġa kām-ı cānı ẕevḳe ḳarīn
Ben didüm olmaz ise ol ḥāṣıl
Şekerüñ şerbeti daḫı şīrīn

In English

1. Today we have become so dazed and bewildered that we are close to passing out of ourselves.

2. I said to Rüstem, "What is your wish?"; he in turn turned to Murad and said, "Just this."

3. "Along with this hashish (beng), I wonder what we might get to calm the fire of hunger?"

4. At that moment Murad turned, opened his mouth, and made the palate of our wish sweet as sugar.

5. He said, "Anything of the sweet kind, whatever it may be, no matter which."

6. Rüstem says, "How about sugar börek, to bring the palate of the soul close to delight?"

7. I said, "If that cannot be had, sugar sherbet is sweet as well."

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a kıt'a (fragment) of seven couplets (beyit); the second lines rhyme on the sound -īn (yaḳīn, hemīn, teskīn, şekerīn, ta‘yīn, ḳarīn, şīrīn), and Özkat counts this kıt'a as having rich rhyme. The metre is "fe‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün" of the hafif family. There is no pen name (mahlas). The kıt'a is found only in the Fazlî divan section of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (fol. 249a). The square brackets in the third couplet mark a suffix that Özkat added to the text for the sake of the metre. When it was written is unknown.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Özkat states that the ninth and tenth kıt'as concern the taking of a pleasure-giving substance, hashish (esrar). This kıt'a is a short scene from a gathering of friends: the word "beng" in the third couplet names this substance, and then those present want something to eat and drink. The talk proceeds as a dialogue: the poet asks the question, Rüstem and Murad answer, and at the end the poet adds his own suggestion. This lively spoken language and everyday words such as "şeker börek" (sugared pastry) and "şerbet" (sherbet) give the kıt'a a playful air.

Some places in the text can be read in two ways. When the word "murād" in the second and fourth couplets is understood as a personal name, the talk turns into a fluent scene; since the same word is also used in the sense of "wish", the poet makes a pun (cinas) between the name and the wish. In the edition, however, the word is written in lower case, and reading it as a personal name is our own interpretation. In the phrase "āteş-i cū" in the third couplet, the word "cū" has been understood as the Arabic "cū‘" (hunger); this too is our conjecture. On this reading the couplet describes the hunger and craving for sweets that follow hashish, and the kıt'a's ending with sugar, börek and sherbet fits this reading.

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. 379, kıt'a no. 9 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 249a); also p. 65 (on the kıt'as), p. 69 (rhyme) and pp. 123-124 (signs used in establishing the text), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources