Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Sebʿa-i seyyâle ṣun sâḳi k'anuñ bir keşfine
Zâhid-i murtâż irişmez çekse biñ yıl erbaʿîn

In English

1. O cupbearer, pass round the flowing seven; the self-mortifying ascetic could not attain a single unveiling of theirs though he kept forty-day retreats for a thousand years. ("Sebʿa-i seyyâle", the flowing seven, is understood here as seven cups of wine offered in succession; this reading is ours.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Latîfî gives this couplet immediately after the preceding couplet "Gözüñ aç ḥâleti çoḳdur mey-i nâbuñ ṣûfî", with the word "Velehu", "and also his". Since its two lines do not rhyme, it must be an inner couplet of a ghazal (gazel) or a couplet composed on its own. The edition of the biographical anthology (tezkire) does not indicate the metre. The other biographers do not quote this couplet.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet compares the Sufi path of self-mortification with the libertine's path of wine and gives preference to wine. The phrase "sebʿa-i seyyâle" at the beginning of the first line literally means "the flowing seven" and evokes "sebʿa-i seyyâre" (the seven wandering stars), the phrase used in divan poetry for the seven planets of the sky. Through this likeness the poet may be asking the cupbearer for seven cups, a round of cups turning like the seven planets in the sky. This connection is our own interpretation. In the second line "zâhid-i murtâż" is the ascetic who disciplines his self through self-mortification, that is, hunger, sleeplessness and seclusion. The word "erbaʿîn" means forty and in Sufism denotes the forty-day retreat (halvet), the ordeal of seclusion. "Keşf", too, is a Sufi term for the lifting of veils and the revealing of hidden truths.

The poet opposes the ascetic with the very words of Sufism: the ascetic who kept forty-day retreats for a thousand years could not attain even one of the unveilings that wine gives. The successive use of the numbers seven, thousand and forty in the couplet is also striking. Keşf, erbaʿîn, zâhid and murtâż form a congruence of images (tenasüp) of Sufi terms, while sâkî and the verb "ṣun-" (offer) belong to the world of the drinking gathering. Setting the two worlds against each other in one couplet is a familiar attitude of libertine (rind) poetry.

Historical Context

According to Latîfî, the Halveti sheikh Rûşenî tried to draw his friend from youth Melîhî away from the tavern and invited him to his lodge, saying he would give him "the wine of love" to drink. Melîhî replied that if the sheikh could give him the delight and rapture that two cups of wine gave, he would become his disciple. This couplet is the second of the two couplets given after that story. Its use of fundamental concepts of the Halveti path such as the retreat and unveiling makes it meaningful to read it together with an answer given to a Halveti sheikh. The tezkire does not say explicitly that the couplet was composed on this occasion. For the poet's life, see the article Melîhî of Tokat.

Bibliography

Online sources