Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Kimse ḳara gözlerinüñ döymez ey dil ālına
Bizi öldürdi ‘aceb bilsem ki daḫı ālı ne
Mecma‘-ı ṣun‘-ı İlāhī görmek isterseñ göñül
Baḳ bu zülf ü ḫadd ü ḫāl ü çeşm ü ḳaş u eline
Göñlümi ṣayd eyledi bir ġamzeyile gözlerüñ
Kim dir idi ḳal‘a-i dil bir oḳ ile alına
Ṣanma kim yārüñ kemīne çākeriyem ben hemīn
Bendeyem kemter ben anuñ küll-i ḳavm ü āline
Lāle-ḫaddüñsüz Münīrī şöyle kim ḳan aġladı
‘Aḳsi düşmişdür şafaḳ ḳanlu yaşumuñ alına

In English

1. O heart, no one can withstand the guile (āl) of her black eyes; they have killed us, and I wonder what more their guile (or their redness) could be.

2. O heart, if you wish to see the place where God's craftsmanship is gathered together, look at this tress and cheek, this mole and eye, this brow and hand.

3. Your eyes have hunted down my heart with a single glance; who would have said the fortress of the heart could be taken with one arrow?

4. Do not think I am merely the lowliest servant of the beloved; I am the humblest slave of all her people and her house (āl).

5. Parted from the tulip-cheeked one, Münîrî wept such blood that the red glow of twilight is the reflection of the redness (al) of my bloody tears.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a five-couplet Turkish ghazal, the two hundred and sixty-first of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 261). The metre is "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün". The number of this ghazal does not appear in Ersoy's list of refrains. The words at the end of the couplets, "ālına", "ālı ne", "eline", "alına", "āline" and again "alına", carry very similar sounds; the rhyme scheme is built on puns from beginning to end (our observation). The ghazal is found in the VT (160a) and VY (133b) manuscripts. According to the edition's apparatus, the word "göñül" in the second couplet appears in VY as "tamām". It is not known for whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The skill of the ghazal lies in the wordplay at the rhyme. The Kubbealtı Lugatı gives two separate words "âl": one from Old Turkish meaning guile, cunning, trickery, deceit, and one from Arabic meaning family, offspring, dynasty, lineage. The Turkish "al", meaning red, is added to these. In the opening couplet the "āl" of the beloved's black eyes is their guile; the "ālı ne" of the second line can be understood both as "what is their guile" and as a redness set against the black of the eye. There is a contrast of colour between black and red. The line by Zâtî quoted in the Kubbealtı's entry "âl", "âl ile aslan tutar" (with guile he catches the lion), shows that the word was alive in the language of poetry in Münîrî's time.

The second couplet is a list: tress, cheek, mole, eye, brow and hand are counted one after another as elements of the beloved's beauty, and all are praised as the place where God's craftsmanship is gathered. In the third couplet the rhyme word "alına" comes this time from the verb "alınmak" (to be taken); the heart is likened to a fortress, and this fortress falls to a single arrow, that is, to a single glance. The likeness between glance and arrow is one of the familiar conventional images (mazmun) of divan poetry.

In the fourth couplet "āl", placed beside the word "kavm" (people), is drawn towards the sense of family and lineage. The lover counts himself not merely the beloved's servant but the lowest slave of all her kin; this humility is a hyperbole that presents the beloved as a sovereign.

In the pen-name couplet the rhyme word is "al", meaning red. The Kubbealtı Lugatı explains "şafak" as the light seen on the horizon before sunrise and, in a second sense, as the redness that remains on the horizon after sunset. The poet ascribes this redness to the reflection, cast on the sky, of the bloody tears of the lover parted from the tulip-cheeked beloved. This is hüsn-i ta‘lîl (poetic aetiology); a congruence of colours (tenasüp) is also set up between tulip, blood and twilight. In the couplet the pen name begins in the third person and turns to the first person with the word "yaşumuñ" (of my tears).

Bibliography

Online sources