Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü / mefā‘īlü / mefā‘īlü / fe‘ūlün

Olmuş ġazel-i ḥüsnüñe ey māh-ı müşa‘şa‘
Ol ceyb ile ol deşne hemān maṭla‘ u maḳṭa‘
Aḳ üzre ḳara ḳalḳdı diyü oldı şemātet
Berrāḳ cemālinden açıldıḳda o bürḳa‘
Bu dūd-ı dilim cāmi‘-i ‘aşḳıñda mināre
Evvelce şererler ‘alem altun muṣanna‘
Bu sīne-i zerdim benim ey şem‘-i cemālim
Olmuş varaḳ-ı nüsḫa-i mihriñe muşamma‘
Vāżıḥ yine dört ḳaşlıca bir verd-ruḫ-içün
Hep vird-i zebān-ı şu‘arā şimdi murabba‘

In English

1. O brilliantly shining moon, that open collar and that dagger have become the very matla and makta (the opening and closing couplets) of the ghazal of your beauty.

2. When that veil was lifted from your clear face, spiteful glee broke out, people saying "the black has risen off the white".

3. This smoke of my heart is a minaret in the mosque of your love; the sparks that rose before it are its finial worked in gold.

4. O candle of my beauty, this yellowed breast of mine has become the waxed leaf of the copy of your love.

5. O Vâzıh, once again, for a rose-cheeked youth with four eyebrows, the word on the tongue of every poet is now the murabba‘ (the four-line stanza).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal has five couplets and is written in the hezec pattern "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün". There is no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is the "-a‘" of "müşa‘şa‘, maḳṭa‘, bürḳa‘, muṣanna‘, muşamma‘, murabba‘". All these words end in the letter ayn, and according to Babaarslan's count of letters this is the only ghazal of the Dîvânçe listed under ayn. This difficult rhyme drew the poet towards heavy words of Arabic origin, but he chose most of the rhyme words from the world of writing and books and so gave the poem a unity. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. To whom it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Much of the imagery of the ghazal is taken from the world of poetry and books. In the first couplet the beloved's beauty is compared to a ghazal: the open collar that shows the breast is the matla, the opening couplet of this ghazal, and the dagger at the waist is its makta, the closing couplet. Since the word "maṭla‘" also means the place where the moon rises, the moon-faced beloved rising from the collar comes to mind as well, while "maḳṭa‘", from the root "to cut", forms a congruence of images (tenasüp) with the dagger. "Deşne" is the Persian word for dagger. The phrase "black on white" in the second couplet also recalls black writing on white paper; here the black veil has been lifted from the white face, and this has given rise to the gossip of the envious. The couplet can be read in two ways: the spiteful glee may belong to the rivals, or to the lover who reads the lifting of the veil in his own favour.

In the third couplet the smoke of sighs rising from the lover is compared to the minaret of the mosque of love, and the sparks in the smoke to the golden finial at the top of the minaret. In the fourth couplet the image of the candle is joined to an image of the book: the beloved is the candle of beauty, and the lover's yellowed breast has turned into the waxed paper of the copy of love. The last couplet closes the comparison with poetry that opened the ghazal. "Four eyebrows" is the Turkish form of the theme "çār-ebrū", which describes a youth whose first moustache has just appeared above his eyebrows. Looking at these four brows the poet names the murabba‘, the stanza form of four lines, and plays on "verd" (rose) and "vird" (words constantly on the tongue). This last couplet also hints at a circle in which poets wrote as if in competition for young beauties.

Bibliography

Online sources