Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Şol ḥūr-ı perī-çihre k’olur ṭavr-ı beşerde
Rūḥumdur o kim menzili var küllī ṭamarda
Bu vech ile çeşmüñi görüp ḫᵛāb ile didüm
Elbette bahār uyḫu virür vaḳt-i seḥerde
Gördi dil ölür sīnede peykān-ı ḫadengüñ
Aġzına ṣu ṭamzurmaġ içün ḳaldı cigerde
Ḳanlu yaşı perverdesidür kūh-kenüñ hep
Her lāle ki dāġ ile biter kūh u kemerde
Sen āteş-i ‘ışḳa düşeli şöyle Münīrī
Āhum odıla ḳaldı felek küllī şererde

In English

1. That fairy-faced houri who appears in human form is my soul; her dwelling is in all my veins.

2. Seeing your eye thus heavy with sleep, I said: surely spring brings sleep at the hour of dawn.

3. The heart saw that the arrowhead of your arrow was dying in the breast; it stayed in the liver to drip water into its mouth. (The couplet can be read in two ways: what stayed in the liver may be the heart or the arrowhead.)

4. Every tulip that grows branded on mountain and mountainside is wholly a nursling of the bloody tears of the mountain-digger (Ferhad).

5. Münîrî, ever since you fell thus into the fire of love, the sky has been left all in sparks from the fire of my sigh.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a five-couplet Turkish ghazal, the two hundred and eighty-fourth of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 284). The metre is "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün". In the list of refrains in his introduction Ersoy gives the refrain of this ghazal as "-dE"; the rhyme rests on the sound "-r": beşer, ṭamar, seḥer, ciger, kemer and şerer close the couplets with this locative suffix. The word "küllī" (all, wholly) is repeated in the opening and last couplets, and the beginning and end of the ghazal are thus bound together (our observation). The ghazal is found only in the Vatican manuscript (VT 165b). It is not known for whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet uses the word "hûr", which the Kubbealtı Lugatı explains as a maiden of paradise, a very beautiful girl or woman. The beloved is a houri who has taken human form; the lover counts her his own soul and says that, as the soul moves through all the veins, so the beloved dwells in all his veins. In the second couplet the beloved's sleepy eye is linked to the sleep of spring mornings. The link drawn between the hour of dawn and spring is a hüsn-i talil (poetic aetiology) that explains the beloved's languid gaze by a natural occurrence (our observation).

The third couplet draws the most unusual picture of the ghazal. The Kubbealtı explains "hadeng" as arrow and "peykân" as the pointed iron at the tip of the arrow, the arrowhead. The arrowhead lodged in the breast is conceived as someone dying; and the heart, after the custom of dripping water into the mouth of the dying, stays beside it in the liver (that the custom is alluded to is our reading). Arrowhead and heart lie in the same wound; the enmity between arrow and lover has here turned into closeness.

The fourth couplet contains an allusion (telmih) to the story of Ferhad and Shirin. The Kubbealtı explains the phrase "kûh-ken" as one who pierces, who digs the mountain, and notes that the word is used for Ferhad. The same dictionary gives "dâğ" the meanings of a brand burned with a hot iron, the burning wound of love, and the black spot at the centre of flowers such as the tulip and the poppy. The tulip's black-spotted centre is Ferhad's wound of love; the red of the tulip, too, has been nourished by his bloody tears. This is an example of hüsn-i talil (our observation). We understand the word "kemer" here as the shoulder or side of the mountain (our reading); there is also a likeness of sound between "kûh u kemer" and "dâğ".

In the pen-name couplet the sky is filled with sparks through the word "şerer", which the Kubbealtı explains as sparks. The fire of the sigh rising to the sky and scattering sparks presents the stars as sparks leaping from the lover's sigh (our reading). In this couplet the poet addresses himself as "you", then passes to the first person with "āhum" (my sigh).

Bibliography

Online sources