Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Lebinsüz her ne mey ki içdüm ise
Urup bir sille burnumdan getürdi

In English

1. Whatever wine I drank without your lip, one slap brought it all out through my nose. (The blood flowing from his nose after the slap is likened to red wine.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the last couplet of the entry on Melîhî in Âşık Çelebi's Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ and is given under the heading "Beyt". Its two lines do not rhyme; according to the biographer it is a couplet composed on its own, on the spot. The edition of the biographical anthology (tezkire) does not indicate the metre. No other biographer quotes this couplet.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The wit of the couplet rests on the Turkish idiom "burnundan getirmek", literally "to bring something out through someone's nose". The idiom means to make someone forget a pleasure he has tasted through a bitter experience, to make him pay dearly for it. The poet also uses the idiom in its literal sense: the slap he received made his nose bleed. The likeness of colour between blood and red wine allows this blood to be read as "wine drunk without the beloved's lip". In divan poetry the beloved's lip is likened to wine and to the ruby; wine drunk without that lip counts as a fault in the lover. The slap is thus presented as the penalty for all the wine drunk in the days spent far from the beloved. Using both the figurative and the literal meaning of a word or idiom at once is a kind of tevriye (double entendre). Finding a poetic cause for the slap, setting aside the real one, also comes close to hüsn-i talil (poetic aetiology).

Historical Context

Âşık Çelebi relates the occasion of the couplet. Melîhî came across a beauty with a single pearl earring in his ear and recited to him the couplet "Müşterî oldı göñül bir ṣanem-i meh-çihre". The beauty responded harshly, slapped the poet, and blood came from the poet's mouth and nose. Melîhî then composed this couplet "bedîheten", that is, without a moment's thought. The biographer thus ends his entry with the poet's quick wit, which turned even a mishap that befell him into a jest. Together with the answers given before Mehmed II (the Conqueror) related by Latîfî and Sehî, this story completes Melîhî's image as a witty poet in the tezkires. For the poet's life, see the article Melîhî of Tokat.

Bibliography

Online sources