Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilün

Ṣanmañuz ‘ālemde hergiz kār ü bār ister göñül
El çeküp her kārdan bir özge kār ister göñül
‘Işḳ sevdāsıyle ‘ālemden kenār ister göñül
Ṣabra ṭāḳat ḳalmadı terk-i diyār ister göñül
Kūy-ı ḥasretde nice bir bī-ser ü sāmān olam
Rūz u şeb ḫalvet-nişīn ü gūşe-i hicrān olam
Vaḳtdür kim ‘ışḳ ile ḥayrān u ser-gerdān olam
Ṣabra ṭāḳat ḳalmadı terk-i diyār ister göñül
Cān ise sā‘at-be-sā‘at ‘ışḳa ṭālib olmada
‘Işḳ ise günden güne göñlüme ġālib olmada
Yār ise her laḥẓa aġyāre muṣāḥib olmada
Ṣabra ṭāḳat ḳalmadı terk-i diyār ister göñül
Derd-i ‘ışḳ ile cihān içre olanlar nā-tüvān
Bulmayup dünyāda bu derdüñ devāsın bī-gümān
Didiler kim çāresi ṣabr u seferdür her zamān
Ṣabra ṭāḳat ḳalmadı terk-i diyār ister göñül
Yāri iy Fażlī görüp aġyār ile zār olmadın
Her zamān derd ü belā vü miḥnete yār olmadın
Ṣabr ile ḳurtulmadum çünkim giriftār olmadın
Ṣabra ṭāḳat ḳalmadı terk-i diyār ister göñül

In English

1. Do not think that the heart ever wants profit and goods in the world; letting go of every task, it wants a different kind of work altogether; with the passion of love it wants to withdraw from the world. No strength is left for patience, the heart wants to leave its homeland.

2. How much longer shall I remain headless and destitute in the quarter of longing, one who sits withdrawn night and day in the corner of separation; now it is time to be bewildered and wandering with love. No strength is left for patience, the heart wants to leave its homeland.

3. The soul longs for love hour by hour, love prevails over my heart day by day, and the beloved converses with strangers every moment. No strength is left for patience, the heart wants to leave its homeland.

4. Those in the world who have grown weak with the pain of love, finding no cure for this pain in the world, have said without doubt: "its remedy is always patience and travel". No strength is left for patience, the heart wants to leave its homeland.

5. O Fazlî, even before I wailed at seeing the beloved with strangers, before I became at every moment the friend of pain, calamity and affliction, before I was taken captive, I was not saved by patience. No strength is left for patience, the heart wants to leave its homeland. (The syntax of the stanza is not entirely clear.)

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 "Ṣabra ṭāḳat ḳalmadı terk-i diyār ister göñül". In the first stanza all the lines end with the redif (refrain word) "ister göñül". The redifs "olam" in the second stanza, "olmada" in the third and "olmadın" in the fifth are used; the rhyme of the fourth stanza is "-ān". The metre is the "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün" pattern of the remel family. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last stanza. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Özkat publishes the poem as the seventh musammat of the divan. The text is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 222a) 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", and some of its leaves are missing.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the poem is the decision to leave the homeland in order to escape the pain of love. The first stanza says from the outset that this decision has nothing to do with worldly reckoning: the heart wants neither profit nor goods, it lets go of every task and wants a different "work", and with the passion of love it wants to withdraw from the world. Özkat illustrates the idiom "el çekmek" (to let go, to withdraw one's hand) from this stanza. The second and third stanzas list the reasons for the decision: the lover has been left destitute in the quarter of longing, the soul longs for love hour by hour, love prevails over the heart day by day, and the beloved converses with strangers. The three lines of the third stanza are built on the same pattern ("Cān ise... ‘Işḳ ise... Yār ise...": the soul, for its part... love, for its part... the beloved, for her part...); this structure sets side by side the lover, love and the beloved each going its own way.

The fourth stanza builds the logic of the poem. Those who have fallen into the pain of love, finding no cure for it in the world, have said that "its remedy is patience and travel". The refrain says that the first half of this advice is used up: no strength is left for patience, and only travel, that is, leaving the homeland, remains. Thus the refrain line turns into a concluding sentence in the fourth stanza. The phrase "terk-i diyār" (leaving one's homeland) rests on the idea of love as a force that leaves the lover homeless and drives him into exile; Mecnun's going out into the desert is the best-known example of this idea. The language is plain and carries the flow of spoken speech.

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, pp. 235-236, musammat no. 7 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 222a); 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