Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ḫāk-i derüñ irdükçe seḥer-geh yüzüm üzre
Yüz ‘izzet ile gösterürem yir gözüm üzre
Bir kerre seḥer yili gibi zülfüñe irsem
İrmezdi daḫı kimsene izüm tozum üzre
Göstermiş iken yüzüñi zülfüñ yine ṭutdı
Gör ṭāli‘i kim gün ṭutulur gündüzüm üzre
Cān didüm ise la‘lüñe döndi mi ṣanursın
Başum da giderse ṭururam ben sözüm üzre
Ṭāli‘ beni ol yāre Münīr irgürebilse
Sulṭān-ı felek geçmez idi yılduzum üzre

In English

1. Whenever the dust of your door reaches my face at dawn, I give it, with a hundred honours, a place upon my eye.

2. If I could once reach your curl like the dawn breeze, no one would ever again catch up with my track and dust.

3. Your face had been shown, yet your curl covered it again; behold my fortune: the sun is eclipsed in my daytime.

4. If I called your ruby lip "soul", do you think I have gone back on it? Even if I lose my head, I shall stand by my word.

5. Münîr, if fortune could bring me to that beloved, the sultan of the heavens (the sun) would not pass above my star (my fortune).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a five-couplet Turkish ghazal, the two hundred and fifty-second of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 252). The metre is "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün". Ersoy's list of refrains gives the redif (refrain word) of this ghazal as "üzre" (upon); the rhyme, together with the possessive suffix, rests on "-üzüm, -özüm": yüzüm, gözüm, tozum, gündüzüm, sözüm and yılduzum. The ghazal is found in all three divan manuscripts (VT 157b, VY 135b, Ü 53a); no variant readings are recorded in the edition. It is not known for whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Through the word "üzre" in the redif the ghazal places one thing upon another in every couplet: dust upon face and eye, track upon dust, an eclipse upon the daytime, word upon word, the sun upon the star. In the opening couplet there is a pun (cinas) between "yüzüm" and "yüz ‘izzet": the first is "face", the second the number "hundred". The dust of the beloved's door comes to the lover's face with the dawn breeze, and he gives it a place upon his eye; a congruence of images (tenasüp) is also set up between face and eye. In the second couplet the dawn breeze is a traveller able to touch the curl; the lover says that if he could once reach it he would go so far that no one could catch up with him. The phrase "iz toz" (track and dust) gives the couplet the colour of everyday speech; there is also a congruence between the dawn breeze and dust.

The third couplet uses the sense given in the Kubbealtı Lugatı's entry "tutulmak": of the sun and moon, to undergo an eclipse. The face is the sun, the curl the darkness that covers it; the sun eclipsed in daytime is the beloved covering her face with her curl as soon as she has shown it. There is also a play on words of the same root (iştikak) between "gün" (sun, day) and "gündüz" (daytime). In the fourth couplet the idiom "sözünde durmak", which the Kubbealtı Lugatı explains as "to keep one's promise", is used together with the redif in the form "sözüm üzre ṭururam" (I stand by my word); the phrase "even if I lose my head" shows the lover's resolve.

The pen-name couplet (mahlas) is built on the link between star and fortune. The Kubbealtı Lugatı records that "yıldız" (star) figuratively means luck, fortune, destiny, and that this sense arose because judgements were once drawn about a person's fate from the heavenly bodies; it explains "tâli‘" as fortune, luck. If the lover could reach the beloved, his star would rise so high that even the sun, the sultan of the heavens, could not pass above it. There is a congruence of images between "ṭāli‘" (fortune), "sulṭān-ı felek" (sultan of the heavens) and "yılduz" (star).

Bibliography

Online sources