Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Bir ġarīb ü derd-mendem ‘āşıḳ-ı zār ey ḥabīb
Çekdi ḫāküm kūyuña ya āb u rūz oldı naṣīb
Bülbül-i gūyā-yı ‘ışḳ-ı yār ile her nev-bahār
Penç rūze ġulġul ile söyler andan ‘andelīb
Aġlamazsuz diyü vā‘iẓ şöyle kim ḫışm eyledi
Bizi çalardı eline girse şemşīr-i ḫaṭīb
Gördügüm ṭoñuzdur anuñ bilürem māhiyyetin
Hīc ta‘rīf itmesün kendüyi diñ baña raḳīb
Ḳaşuñ ile nergis-i şehlāñı görüp dir Münīr
Ḫaste arḳasına girmiş ṣanki Hindūdur ṭabīb

In English

1. O beloved, I am a stranger, a sufferer, a lamenting lover; my earth drew me to your quarter, or else water and daily bread fell to my lot (there).

2. The nightingale made eloquent by love of the beloved (is I); every new spring the andelib (nightingale), with its five days of warbling, speaks of him.

3. The preacher grew so angry, saying "You do not weep", that if the preacher's sword had come into his hand he would have struck us.

4. What I have seen is a swine, I know his true nature; tell the rival not to describe himself to me at all.

5. Seeing your eyebrow and your squinting narcissus eye, Münîr says: the physician is like an Indian who has stepped behind the sick one.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet Turkish ghazal (gazel) and is the fourteenth of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 14). The metre is "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". The ghazal has no refrain (redif); the rhyme is the sound "-īb": ḥabīb, naṣīb, ‘andelīb, ḫaṭīb, raḳīb, ṭabīb. The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 101b) and Vienna (VY 82a) manuscripts, and also in the anthologies of Pervâne Bey (PB 67b) and Nazmî of Edirne (MN 38b). According to the apparatus, in PB the opening couplet begins "Ben ġarīb…" and reads "u ġarīb" instead of "ey ḥabīb"; PB and MN give "şehrüñe" (to your city) instead of "kūyuña" (to your quarter). In the second couplet PB reads "niçe" instead of "penç" (five). To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the state of the lover far from home and his enemies around him: the preacher and the rival. In the opening couplet (matla) the lover presents himself as a stranger, a sufferer and a lamenter. The idiom "toprağı çekmek" (one's earth drawing one) expresses the belief that the earth of the place where one is destined to die draws one there; the lover came to the beloved's quarter by this pull. We have read the phrase "āb u rūz" in the second half of the line as water and daily portion. The reading "şehrüñe" in PB and MN shows the lover's strangeness more clearly as the state of a foreigner who has come to a city. This reading built on the idiom is our own observation.

The second couplet can be read in two ways. In the first reading the lover sees himself as a nightingale made eloquent by love of the beloved, and the andelib (nightingale) every spring speaks of him, that is, of this love. In the second reading the nightingale repeats through the five days of spring what it learned from the lover. "Penç rūz" (five days) in divan poetry expresses the short life of the rose and of the world. The closeness of sound between "andan" and "‘andelīb" is our own observation.

The third couplet is a satire aimed at the preacher. The preacher grows angry because he cannot make the congregation weep; the poet says that if the preacher's sword came into his hand he would strike the congregation. The preacher standing in the pulpit with a sword is also seen in another ghazal of the divan (tg 18/4). The couplet draws the angry preacher as a figure both ridiculous and frightening.

In the fourth couplet the rival is openly called a "swine". The lover says that he knows his true nature and that his self-praise is in vain. Münîrî's harsh language against the rival is also seen in the comparison "seg" (dog) in tg 6.

In the pen-name couplet the eye is likened to the narcissus through the divan motif of the "sick eye"; "şehlā" in its dictionary sense means a slightly squinting, languid eye. The eyebrow lies above the eye, black and curved; the poet likens it to an Indian physician who has stepped behind the sick one. A resemblance is set up between the blackness of the eyebrow and the dark skin of the Indian; the fame of Indian medicine also supports the comparison. This explanation is our own inference.

Bibliography

Online sources