Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Zülfüñle degil çünki digergūn benefşe
Boynunı bıraḳmış yine maḥzūn benefşe
Pīr oldı ġam-ı sünbül-i zülfüñle çemende
Ḳolayına düşürmedi boynunı benefşe
Kākülleriñ içinde nice ḳaşıñı görsem
Ey ġonce-i nev-res ṣanuram nūn-ı benefşe
Ālūde-i ḳand-ı leb ü zülfeyni görüñ kim
Olmış ona nāzıñ hele ma‘cūn-ı benefşe
Beñzer mi siyeh ḫaṭṭ-ı dil-ārāya o Vāżıḥ
Bir mor çiçek encām bu mażmūn-ı benefşe

In English

1. Is the violet not distressed because of your locks, that once again it has let its neck droop so sorrowfully.

2. The violet in the meadow has grown old with grief for your hyacinth locks; it could never set its neck at ease.

3. O fresh rosebud, whenever I see your eyebrow among your locks, I take it for the nun of the word "violet".

4. Behold the one smeared with the sugar of your lip and your two locks: coquetry has become for him a violet electuary.

5. O Vâzıh, does that violet resemble the dark down that adorns the beloved's face; in the end this theme of the violet is just a purple flower.

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". The redif (refrain word) is "benefşe" (violet), repeated at the end of every couplet. The rhyme is the "-ūn" of "digergūn, maḥzūn, nūn, ma‘cūn, mażmūn"; in the second couplet the Turkish word "boynunı" stands in rhyme position, and with its "-un" sound it only approaches the rhyme. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. To whom it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

This is a redif ghazal, and all the couplets turn around the violet. In divan poetry the violet, with its bent neck, is compared to a sorrowful lover, and with its dark colour to the beloved's locks. The first two couplets interpret this posture: because the violet cannot compete with the beloved's locks it has become distressed, bent its neck, and even turned into an old man hunched with grief. The third couplet is a play on letters. When "benefşe" is written in Arabic letters it contains the letter "nun" (ن), and the curved shape of the nun is compared to the eyebrow. The eyebrow seen among the locks thus turns into the nun inside the word "violet".

In the fourth couplet "ma‘cūn-ı benefşe" is a violet electuary used in the old medicine. The poet says that when the sugar of the beloved's lip and the dark colour of the locks are combined a violet electuary results, and that coquetry is this electuary itself. The last couplet is the most interesting part of the ghazal. The poet questions the comparison of the violet to the dark down on the beloved's face and says that in the end this theme is nothing but "a purple flower". To belittle in plain Turkish an image worked for centuries is to play with the tradition. Babaarslan interprets Vâzıh's writing ghazals in the quatrain metre as a search by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets for a way out of a tradition that had begun to repeat itself; the mocking view in this couplet may be thought of as a reflection of the same search. This connection is our own interpretation.

Bibliography

Online sources