Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Bellüdür bu ‘ālemüñ işi göñül
Yeg degül mi virmese kişi göñül
Nūş-ı dehr-i dūna meyl itdüñ ise
İḫtiyār itmek gerek nīşi göñül

In English

1. O heart, the business of this world is plain to see; is it not better if a man does not give his heart to it?

2. O heart, if you have inclined toward the honey (sweetness) of the base world, you must choose its poison (its sting) as well.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The fifth müfred of the edition is a piece of two couplets in the metre "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün". The edition prints these two couplets under the heading "Müfredler", with a space between them. Since the Kubbealtı Lugatı defines the müfred as a single couplet not bound to other couplets, the piece here has two couplets despite its name; the genre name is kept as in the edition. Ersoy writes in his introduction that the nine müfreds of the divan are found only in the Vatican manuscript (VT) and that all of them are in Turkish; they stand on folios 180b-181b of that manuscript.

The refrain word (redif) is "göñül" (heart), the rhyme words "işi", "kişi" and "nīşi". Both lines of the first couplet rhyme; the Kubbealtı Lugatı calls a couplet with rhyming lines musarra and notes that the opening couplets (matla) of poems are almost always musarra. In this respect the piece resembles the opening of a poem, a matla followed by one couplet (our observation). The first couplet is identical, letter for letter, with the first couplet of the 6th müfred; the two pieces part only in the second couplet. For whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The piece counsels against attaching the heart to the world. The refrain word "göñül" is repeated in different roles: in the first line it is the poet's own heart, whom he addresses; in the second it is part of the idiom "to give one's heart". The repetition adds both harmony and wordplay to the couplet.

The key to the second couplet is the play of sound and sense between "nūş" and "nīş". The Kubbealtı Lugatı gives "nûş" the meanings drinking and something sweet, and "nîş" the meanings the sharp point of things such as a needle or thorn, and poison. In both entries the same dictionary cites Rûhî-i Bağdâdî's line "Nûş âhiri nîş olmasa sûr âhiri mâtem" (if the end of honey were not poison, the end of feasting not mourning); naming honey with sting, sweetness with poison, is thus an established pattern of divan poetry. For Münîrî, whoever wants the world's sweetness must also accept its bitterness; the phrase "dehr-i dūn" (base, contemptible world) sharpens the judgement.

Bibliography

Online sources