Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ġurbetde meserretden es̱er derd ṣatardum
El-ḳıṣṣa ṣafāsı yoġ-imiş terk-i diyāruñ

In English

1. In exile I kept parading my grief in place of any trace of joy; in short, leaving one's homeland had no delight in it at all. (The phrase "derd ṣatmak" in the first line has been understood, as in the expressions "naz satmak" or "çalım satmak", in the sense of constantly displaying one's grief. 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 lines do not rhyme with each other. 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; this couplet is about exile. The couplet is found, together with the first müfred, on folio 127b of miscellany no. 314 of the Âşir Efendi collection in the Süleymaniye Library. When it was written is unknown.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet describes in plain language the disappointment of someone who has left his homeland. In the first line the poet describes his state in exile with a verb of habitual past ("ṣatardum"): where he expected joy, he had only grief in hand. The second line draws a conclusion from this experience and presents it like a verdict with the word "el-ḳıṣṣa" (in short). The inferential past tense of the verb "yoġ-imiş" (there was none, it turns out) conveys that the truth is understood only after it has been lived. There is a contrast of meaning between "meserret" (joy) and "derd" (grief), and between "ṣafā" (delight) and "terk-i diyār" (leaving one's homeland). These observations are our own interpretation. Whether the couplet can be connected with a particular separation in the poet's life, for example his years as a secretary in the service of the princes away from Istanbul, is unknown; there is no information to that effect in the source.

Bibliography

Online sources