Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün

Sāyesidür var ise ḳāmetüñüñ bir şebehi
Ol da üftādesidür ḳaddüñüñ ey serv-i sehī
Her gice meş‘aleler ṭutduġı saḥrā-yı dili
Ġālib oldur ki ḳonar ḫayl-i ḫayālüñ sipehi
Ben neye uġraduġumı bilür ey ġonca-dehen
Her gören Türk-i ḥarāmī gibi sen kec-külehi
Teşne-leb la‘l-i lebüñ yādına cān virür isem
Bitmeden yine ṣolup ḫāk ola ḳabrüm giyehi
Ḳadem-i rence ḳılup külbe-i aḥzānumuza
Göre gelseñ n’ola ben ḫaste-dili gāh gehī
Ṣaldısa dām-ı belāya dili zülf-i siyehüñ
Göñlümüñdür ṣuç anuñ yoḳ durur aṣlā günehi
Ruḫ-ı zībāyile sen māhı görüp didi Münīr
Perveriş mihre virür gör bu meh-i çār-dehi

In English

1. If your stature has any likeness, it is its shadow; and that too, O straight cypress, is a lover fallen at the foot of your stature. ("Üftâde" means both "fallen to the ground" and "lover".)

2. In the desert of the heart, where torches are lit every night, most likely the army of the troops of your image is encamped. (The torches are the fires within the lover; our reading.)

3. O bud-mouthed one, everyone who sees you, with your cap tilted like a highway-robber Turk, knows what I have met with.

4. If I give up my soul with parched lips while remembering your ruby lip, the grass of my grave will wither and turn to dust before it has even grown.

5. What if you took the trouble to step into our hut of sorrows and came now and then to see me, the sick at heart.

6. If your black curl has thrown the heart into the snare of calamity, the fault is my heart's; the curl has no sin at all.

7. Seeing you as a moon with your lovely face, Münîr said: look, this fourteen-night moon nourishes the sun. (The moon takes its light from the sun; here, conversely, the beloved, like a full moon, gives light to the sun; our reading.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a seven-couplet Turkish ghazal, the three hundred and twelfth of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 312). The metre is "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün". In the list of refrains in his introduction Ersoy gives the refrain of this ghazal as "-İ"; the rhyme rests on the sound "-eh": şebeh, sehī, sipeh, küleh, giyeh, gehī, güneh and çār-deh. The ghazal is found in the three manuscripts of the divan (VT 171b, VY 147b, Ü 60b) and in the Pervâne Bey anthology (PB 595a). The second and fourth couplets are missing in the Pervâne Bey anthology; the Istanbul manuscript reads "ṣolar" for "ṣolup" in the fourth couplet; in the first line of the pen-name couplet the Vienna and Istanbul manuscripts and the Pervâne Bey anthology give the order "görüp didi sen māhı". It is not known for whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet is built on shadow and stature. The Kubbealtı Lugatı explains "şebeh" as resemblance, likeness, and "sehî", of stature, as straight, upright, like a sapling, quoting the phrase "kadd-i sehî". For "üftâde" it gives both "fallen" and "lover"; Fuzûlî's line "Çekme dâmen nâz edip üftâdelerden" is the example for the second sense. The only thing that resembles the beloved's stature is the shadow it casts on the ground; the shadow is "üftâde" because it has fallen to the ground, and by the same word it becomes the stature's lover. This is a double entendre (tevriye).

In the second and third couplets the words of war and plunder come to the fore. The Kubbealtı explains "meş'ale" as a light made by burning something at the end of a stick, and gives an example from Ömer Seyfeddin describing how a camp could be seen from afar by its torches. The heart is a desert; every night torches burn there, so an army of the beloved's image must have encamped there. In the third couplet "harâmî", which the Kubbealtı explains as bandit, highwayman, comes together with the word "Türk"; the same dictionary notes that "Türk", when used of the beloved, means a cruel, bloodthirsty person. Wearing the cap tilted shows the beloved's careless, spoiled manner; under "külâh" the Kubbealtı quotes Nedim's line "Neden şikestedir tarf-ı külâhın" (why is the brim of your cap tilted).

The fourth and fifth couplets move around death and sickness. The Kubbealtı also gives the form "giyeh" of "giyah" and explains it as grass. Even the grass on the grave of a lover who dies with parched lips dries up before it has grown. The fifth couplet contains the phrase "külbe-i ahzân", which the Kubbealtı explains as "hut of sorrows". According to the dictionary, this name was given to the hut where the prophet Jacob lost his sight weeping with longing for his lost son Joseph, and passed into literature in this sense; the couplet alludes to this story.

In the sixth couplet the blame is lifted from the curl and laid on the heart. The pen-name couplet has the word "çâr-deh", which the Kubbealtı explains as "fourteen", with its example "mâh-ı çâr-deh" from Rûhî-i Bağdâdî; the moon of the fourteenth night is the full moon. The Kubbealtı explains "perveriş" as nourishing, rearing. While the moon takes its light from the sun, here it is the beloved's moon-like face that nourishes the sun; the usual relation is reversed.

Bibliography

Online sources