Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Dem-i vuṣlatda cemālüñi gözüm nice görür
Geh yaş örter yüzümi geh cigerüm ḳanı bürür
Senden öñdin baña gösterdügi yüzini raḳīb
Görmesün diyü cemālüñi gözüme kül urur
Varlıġum naḳdini la‘l-i lebüñe virmeden
‘Ömrümüz māyesi ṭurdı kötülük ile çürür
Böyle reftār ile sen seyr-i gülistān idicek
Servler ḫaclet ile ṭurduġı yirlerde ḳurur
Şol perī-çihre ki gitdi beni dīvāne ḳılup
Bilmezem ḳanḳı felekden gelür ol nirde ṭurur
Deste-i sünbüle el ṣunduġı-çün ḥayret ile
Rīşte-i zülfi tolaşdı dil-i miskīni sürür
Yüzi üzre sürinü gün gibi varur ḳapuña
Ṭavf-ı ḫāk-i derüñe günde Münīrī ki varur

In English

1. At the moment of union how should my eye see your beauty? Now tears cover my face, now the blood of my liver shrouds it.

2. The rival, by showing me his own face before you, throws ashes in my eyes (blinds me with a trick) so that I may not see your beauty.

3. Before I could give the coin of my being (my capital) to your ruby lip, the capital of our life has stood idle and is rotting in a sorry state.

4. When you go out to stroll in the rose garden with such a graceful gait, the cypresses wither with shame where they stand.

5. That fairy-faced one who went away and left me mad: I do not know from which sphere of heaven she comes, or where she dwells.

6. Because (the heart) in wonder stretched its hand toward the bunch of hyacinth (the lock), the thread of the lock became entangled with it; it drags the poor heart (after it).

7. Münîrî, who goes every day to circle the dust of your door in devotion, comes to your door crawling on his face like the sun.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a seven-couplet Turkish ghazal (gazel) and is the fifty-eighth of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 58). The metre is "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". Ersoy's list of refrains places this ghazal among those with the refrain (redif) "-ur"; the rhyme is built on the "r" sound before it: görür, bürür, urur, çürür, ḳurur, ṭurur, sürür, varur. The poem is found in all three manuscripts of the divan (VT 111a, VY 95b, Ü 28a). One variant is recorded in the apparatus: in VT the last word of the opening couplet is "yürür" instead of "bürür". To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The main theme of the ghazal is the impossibility of seeing the beloved. In the opening couplet (matla) the lover has reached the moment of union, yet he cannot see: tears and the blood of his liver cover his face by turns. These two veils that blind the eye are completed in the second couplet by a third. The idiom "gözüne kül urmak" (to throw ashes in someone's eyes) means, in its dictionary sense, "to deceive, to hoodwink". The rival throws ashes in the lover's eyes by showing his own face before the beloved's; the idiom seems used here in both its figurative and its literal sense, since ash really does close the eye. This is our own observation.

The third couplet is built with the language of trade: "naḳd" (cash, capital) and "māye" (capital, substance). The lover who does not give his being as capital to the beloved's lip finds the capital of his life rotting unused. The fourth couplet works a hyperbole frequent in divan poetry: before the beloved's swaying walk the cypresses are ashamed and wither. There is a contrast between "reftār" (gait) and the upright stillness of the cypress.

In the fifth couplet the beloved is drawn as a fairy-faced being whose home is unknown; the question "from which sphere does she come" carries her beyond the human world. The sixth couplet can be read in two ways. The one who stretches a hand toward the bunch of hyacinth may be the heart; then the thread of the lock has become entangled with the heart and is dragging it. Or the one who reaches out may be the beloved; in that case the beloved's touching of her own hair drags the heart after it. There is a closeness of sound and meaning between "deste" (bunch) and "el" (hand).

In the pen-name couplet the lover comes every day, crawling on his face like the sun, to circle the dust of the door. A likeness is drawn between the sun spreading its light on the ground and the lover rubbing his face in the dust; this is an inference. The word "ṭavf" (circumambulation) recalls the circling of the Kaaba and turns the beloved's door into a sacred place.

Bibliography

Online sources