Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ne diler dil leb-i yārı ne ider terk-i fiġān
Balyemez ṭop gibi her demde ṣıyāḥat ḳoparır
Yine şādam dil-i ṣad-pāresiyiz ḫāliñle
Begim ‘anberlü tütündür bu şeṭāret ḳoparır
Vāżıḥā yār nice ḳalḳmaḳ dilese meclisden
O ḳıyāmet günini işte o sā‘at ḳoparır

In English

1. The heart neither desires the beloved's lip nor gives up its wailing; like a Balyemez cannon it raises an uproar every moment.

2. I am cheerful again; with your beauty spot we are the owners of a heart broken into a hundred pieces. My lord, it is ambergris-scented tobacco that raises this merriment.

3. O Vâzıh, whenever the beloved wishes to rise from the gathering, at that very hour he raises the Day of Resurrection.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This poem is the first of the eighteen pieces in the section of the Dîvânçe headed "Mukatta‘ât". Earlier studies described all the poems of this section as kıt‘a or nazm. Babaarslan examines them one by one and counts some as incomplete ghazals (nâ-tamâm gazel) and some as nazm; this poem he describes as a kıt‘a. In a kıt‘a the lines of the first couplet do not rhyme with each other, and only the even lines rhyme. The three-couplet poem is written in the remel pattern "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is "ḳoparır" (raises), and the rhyme is the "-at" of "ṣıyāḥat, şeṭāret, sā‘at". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

All the couplets of the kıt‘a rest on different uses of the verb "koparmak" (to raise, to break out): to raise an uproar, to raise merriment, to raise the Day of Resurrection. In the first couplet the wailing heart is compared to the Balyemez, a large-calibre cannon. The poet's habit of bringing the objects of his own age into poetry is seen in the second couplet as well: the source of merriment in the gathering is ambergris-scented tobacco. A link may be intended between the black beauty spot and the dark colour of tobacco; but the first line of the second couplet is not fully clear, and the translation keeps to the literal sense of the words.

The last couplet closes with a double entendre (tevriye). The idiom "kıyamet koparmak" means to make a great fuss, to turn everything upside down; "kıyām" means standing up. The beloved's rising from the gathering is both a catastrophe like the Day of Resurrection for the lovers and, in the literal sense of the word, a "rising". Babaarslan presents Vâzıh as a poet who reflected the social life of his time in his poetry and used popular expressions; this kıt‘a, resting on a cannon, tobacco and idioms, is a small example. For the poet's life and his other poems see Kara Müftîzâde Mustafa Vâzıh.

Bibliography

Online sources