Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ṣabrum yaḳasın çāk ider isem n’ola her gāh
El irmedi dāmān-ı viṣāline anuñ āh
Egnüme ṣafā cāmesini eyledi kūtāh
Āvāreler [a]parası çıḳ Derzi Memī Şāh
Ḳızdurmaġ içün ütüsini ol dili āhen
Nār-ı ġam-ı ‘ışḳ itdi tenüm gerçi ki külḫen
Iṣınmadı ammā ki baña ṣoġıdı benden
Āvāreler [a]parası çıḳ Derzi Memī Şāh
Āvāre iken ‘ışḳına ol tāze cüvānuñ
Miḳrāż-ı ġamından şu ki yüz döndüre anuñ
Kessin ben isem cāme-i ‘ömrin o ḳabānuñ
Āvāreler [a]parası çıḳ Derzi Memī Şāh
Dāġ ile tenüm eyledi zībā-yı pelengī
Ḳan yaşum ile itdi yüzüm āl-i Firengī
Çaldı yine bir pāreye geçdi baña rengi
Āvāreler [a]parası çıḳ Derzi Memī Şāh
Pehlū-keş ola diyü çü cāme o vefāsuz
Dem olmadı āvāre göñül ola recāsuz
Derdā ki ḳodı ben ḳulın iy Fażlī yaḳasuz
Āvāreler [a]parası çıḳ Derzi Memī Şāh

In English

1. Is it any wonder if I tear the collar of my patience at every moment; ah, my hand has not reached the skirt of union with him; he has cut the garment of joy short on my back. You who carry off the vagabonds, come out, Tailor Memî Şah. (The sense of "[a]parası" in the refrain is not certain; it has been understood as "who carries off".)

2. To heat his iron, that iron-hearted one has indeed turned my body into a furnace with the fire of the grief of love; but he has not warmed to me, he has grown cold towards me. You who carry off the vagabonds, come out, Tailor Memî Şah.

3. While I am a vagabond in love with that fresh youth, if I should be the one who turns away from his shears of grief, let that robed beauty cut the garment of my life. You who carry off the vagabonds, come out, Tailor Memî Şah.

4. With wounds he has made my body spotted and adorned like a leopard's skin; with bloody tears he has dyed my face the red of Frankish cloth; once again he has dyed a piece, and its colour has passed to me. You who carry off the vagabonds, come out, Tailor Memî Şah. (The sense of the last line is not entirely clear.)

5. The vagabond heart has not lost hope for a moment that that faithless one would cling to me like a garment; O Fazlî, alas, he has left me, his servant, without a collar. You who carry off the vagabonds, come out, Tailor Memî Şah.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a murabba (quatrain stanza poem) of five stanzas. The first three lines of each stanza rhyme among themselves; the fourth is repeated in every stanza as the refrain "Āvāreler [a]parası çıḳ Derzi Memī Şāh". In the first stanza the refrain also shares the rhyme "-āh" (gāh, āh, kūtāh, Şāh). The rhymes of the other stanzas are "-en", "-ānuñ", "-engī" and "-āsuz". The metre is the "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün" pattern of the hezec family. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last stanza. The first letter of the word "[a]parası" in the refrain is a completion made in the edition.

Özkat publishes the poem as the tenth musammat of the divan. The text is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 223a) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. According to Özkat's description, this part of the miscellany was copied in 1149 (1736) and later bound in; it bears the note "left unfinished".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

According to Özkat, Fazlî wrote murabbas of praise for beauties who had become famous in his time, and there are three murabbas written for the beauty called Derzi (Tailor) Memî Şâh (musammats 10, 12 and 17). This poem is the first of them. Since the beloved's trade is tailoring, all the images of the poem are taken from the tailor's shop: collar, skirt, garment, iron, shears, cloth, dye, robe. In the first stanza the lover tears the "collar" of his patience, his hand does not reach the "skirt" of union with the beloved, and the beloved has cut the "garment" of joy short on his back. Özkat illustrates the idiom "eli ermemek" (for one's hand not to reach) from this stanza. In the second stanza the beloved turns the lover's body into a furnace to heat his iron; but he himself does not warm, on the contrary he grows cold. The contrast between warming and growing cold here combines with the sense of the verb "ısınmak" (to warm) as "to take a liking to someone".

In the third stanza the tailor's shears become "the shears of grief"; if the lover turns away from these shears, he asks the beloved to cut the garment of his life. The link between cutting cloth and cutting a life is the find of the stanza. In the fourth stanza images of cloth and dye come to the fore: the lover's body has been spotted with wounds like a leopard's skin, and his face has been dyed with bloody tears to the colour of "Frankish red", the red cloth that came from Europe. In the last stanza the vagabond heart hopes that the beloved will cling to him like a garment; but the beloved has left him "without a collar". Being left without a collar suggests both a garment sewn incomplete and being left without a protector. Thus the words evoked by the name of a trade spread through the whole poem, and the poem becomes a known example of verses describing the beauties of the craftsmen's shops.

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. 238, musammat no. 10 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 223a); also pp. 57-58 (on the murabbas), p. 92 (idioms) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources