Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Mefā‘īlü Mefā‘īlü Fe‘ūlün

Leylā’yı firdevs eyledüginde zen-i dünyā
Mecnūn işidüp didi ki el-leyletü ḥublā

In English

1. When the woman called the world made Leylâ "of paradise", Mecnun heard it and said, "The night is pregnant." (What the first line means exactly is not clear. "Firdevs eylemek" may describe sending Leylâ to paradise, that is, her death; in that case Mecnun's words say that no one knows what the morning will bring forth, that hope is not at an end. This is a conjecture.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a müfred (single couplet). A müfred is a poem consisting of a single couplet (beyit) that carries a meaning of its own. In this couplet the two lines rhyme with each other (dünyā, ḥublā); this observation is our own. The metre is "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün" of the hezec family. Özkat says that in establishing the divan he identified two müfreds by Fazlî, and that these müfreds, which he finds quite accomplished, treat the themes of love and exile. The couplet is found on folio 127b of miscellany no. 314 of the Âşir Efendi collection in the Süleymaniye Library. To whom and when it was written is unknown.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

"El-leyletü ḥublā" in the second line of the couplet is an Arabic saying; in a footnote Özkat gives its meaning as "The night is pregnant". Özkat cites this couplet as an example of Fazlî's use of the Arabic equivalents of certain proverbs and pairs it with the Turkish proverb "Geceler gebedir" (Nights are pregnant, that is, no one knows what tomorrow will bring); he also mentions the same couplet among the Arabic expressions in Fazlî's poems. The subtlety of the couplet lies in binding the story of Leylâ and Mecnun to this proverb. The closeness in sound and sense between the name "Leylā" and the word "leyle" (night) in the saying gives Mecnun's words a double meaning: what he says is heard both as "the night is pregnant" and as words recalling Leylâ. This play on words is our own observation. The likening of the world to a woman, "zen-i dünyā", also appears in the couplet as a metaphor.

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. 384, müfred no. 1 (Süleymaniye Library, Âşir Efendi 314, fol. 127b); also p. 66 (on the müfreds), p. 89 (proverbs) and p. 107 (Arabic expressions), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources