Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilün

Mu‘żıl-ı mes’ele-i bend-i miyānın ḥaḳḳā
Ḳılı ḳırḳ pāre idüp eyledi Vāżıḥ īżāḥ

In English

1. Truly, Vâzıh has explained the knotty problem of the beloved's waistband (her slender waist) by splitting a hair forty ways.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The short section of the Dîvânçe headed "Ebyât" (couplets) consists of four independent couplets; this is the first of them. A müfred is a single couplet (beyit) complete in its meaning and not part of a ghazal. According to Babaarslan, three of the couplets in the section are in Turkish and one in Arabic; this one is in the remel pattern "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün". No rhyme is required in a single couplet; wit and figures of speech carry the whole weight. To whom and on what occasion it was said is unknown.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In Ottoman divan poetry the beloved's waist is so slender that it is either likened to a hair or presented as if it did not exist at all. Whether the waist exists or not counts among poets as a problem hard to solve, a kind of riddle. Vâzıh expresses this familiar conceit in the language of a madrasa disputation: "mu‘żıl" (intractable, knotty), "mes'ele" (problem) and "īżāḥ" (explanation) are words of scholarly assemblies. A professor and mufti applying these terms to the beloved's waist gives the couplet a playful air.

The idiom in the second line, "kılı kırk yarmak" (to split a hair forty ways), means to examine a matter down to its finest detail. Since the beloved's waist is already as thin as a hair, the idiom is also read literally here: the poet has actually divided that hair into forty pieces and so solved the problem. The pen name (mahlas) joins the game. "Vāżıḥ" means clear, evident, and comes from the same root as "īżāḥ" (to make clear); so "Vāżıḥ īżāḥ eyledi" can be understood both as "Vâzıh explained" and "the clear one made it clear". This figure, which brings together words from the same root, is called iştikak. The analysis of the couplet's wordplay is ours.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Giyasi Babaarslan, "Amasyalı Vâzıh ve Dîvânçesi", Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi, 5(4), 2021, pp. 1922-1984 (text of the poem: p. 1967; Mustafa Vâzıh, Dîvânçe, Ankara University, Department of Manuscripts, Mustafa Con A 495/III, fol. 70a). https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/akaded/article/993264
  • Giyasi Babaarslan, "Amasyalı Vâzıh ve Dîvânçesi", Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi, 5(4), 2021, pp. 1924-1928 (life and description of the Dîvânçe; the "Ebyât" section: p. 1928). https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/akaded/article/993264
  • Fatma Özçakmak, "Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi ve Dîvânçe'si", Kesit Akademi Dergisi, 7(26), 2021, pp. 255-278, p. 274.

Online sources