Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün

Gözden ḫayāl-i la‘l-i şeker-bār dūr olur
Lā-büd acıyla gözlerümüñ yaşı şūr olur
Dilden ḫayāli sīnede incindügi bu kim
Mihmān bir evde ḫaste gire bī-ḥużūr olur
Menzil-geh-i perī diyü sīnemde ‘ūd-ı dil
Şevḳ-ı ḫayālüñ ile yanup ḫoş buḥūr olur
Vech ü yüzüñe baḳmaduġı zāhidüñ bu kim
Gün ṭoġsa çeşm-i şeb-pere elbette kūr olur
Şevḳ-ı ruḫuñla ḳabr-i Münīrīye baḳ da gör
‘Işḳuñ şehīdi yatduġı yir nice nūr olur

In English

1. When the image of your sugar-raining ruby lip is far from my eye, the tears of my eyes surely turn salty with bitterness.

2. The reason your image is troubled in the breast by the heart is this: if a sick man enters a house, the guest grows uneasy. (The heart is sick, and the image has come as a guest to the house of the breast.)

3. Because my breast is the lodging of a fairy, the aloeswood of the heart burns with longing for your image and becomes a fragrant incense.

4. The reason the ascetic does not look at your face is this: when the sun rises, the eye of the bat surely goes blind.

5. With longing for your cheek, look upon Münîrî's grave and see how the place where the martyr of your love lies becomes light.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet Turkish ghazal (gazel) and is the ninety-fourth of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 94). The metre is "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün". Ersoy's list of refrains gives the ghazal the refrain (redif) "olur" (becomes); the rhyme is the "-ūr" sound before it: dūr, şūr, bī-ḥużūr, buḫūr, kūr and nūr. The ghazal is found in two manuscripts of the divan (VT 119b, Ü 29a); it is not in the VY manuscript. According to the apparatus Ü reads "gündüz yitişse" (when day arrives) for "gün ṭoġsa" (when the sun rises) in the fourth couplet. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Most of the couplets of the ghazal follow a pattern of giving a reason: the second and fourth couplets offer an explanation beginning "… bu kim" (… is this), and the first and third tie a result to a cause. In each couplet the poet uses an everyday observation as proof of the state of love.

The opening couplet (matla) rests on the contrast of taste between "şeker" (sugar) and "şūr" (salty). While the image of the lip is before the eye all is sweet; when that image departs, the tears turn bitter and salty. The second couplet sets up a domestic scene: the breast is a house, the beloved's image has come to it as a guest, and the heart is a sick man lying in the house. Just as a guest cannot be at ease in a house where there is a sick man, the image too is uneasy beside the sick heart.

In the third couplet the breast is the lodging of a fairy; the beloved is imagined as a fairy. "‘Ūd" (aloeswood) is a fragrant wood burned as incense. The heart, burning like this aloeswood, becomes an incense worthy of the fairy. It is possible that the link between the fairy and incense rests on popular beliefs, but we have not been able to verify this from a source.

The fourth couplet is a fine example of the figure irsal-i mesel (the proverbial proof). The ascetic does not look at the beloved's face; the poet explains this by the bat's eye failing to see when the sun rises. The beloved's face is the sun, and the ascetic a bat that cannot bear the light. In this way the ascetic's turning away is shown as a blindness.

In the pen-name couplet the lover names himself a martyr of love. The grave of Münîrî, who dies of longing for the beloved's cheek, fills with light. The relation between "şehīd" (martyr) and "nūr" (light) and the illumination of the grave rest on conceiving death on the path of love as an exaltation. A congruence of images (tenasüp) of sight and light running from the beginning of the ghazal to its end is also set up between "göz" (eye) in the first couplet and "nūr" in the pen-name couplet; this is our own observation.

Bibliography

Online sources