Original Persian Text

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

Eşkem be-bīn be-çihre ki reng-i diger girift
Ya‘nī be-ḫūn-ı nāb çonīn rūy-ı zer girift
Vaḳt-i seḥer fütād merā seyr-i gül-sitān
Bī-gül-şen-i cemāl-i tovem derd-i ser girift
Bād-ı seḥergehī ser-i zülfet ki mī-rübūd
Ez-rūy-ı ḫāk-i ṣad dil-i üftāde ber-girift
Ez-her sūy-ı vücūd-ı men-i ḫaste ey nigār
Āteş zi-sūz-ı īn dil-i bī-içāre der-girift
Ez-ḫāk-i dergeheş ki be-çeşm-i Münīr hest
Z’ān yādgār şod ki nesīm-i seḥer girift

In English

1. Look at the tear on my face, how it has taken on another colour; that is, it has thus dyed the golden face with pure blood. (The lover's sallow face is likened to gold and his bloody tear to pure blood. Ersoy explains the couplet as "look how pure blood has covered the gold, that is, the sallow face".)

2. At the hour of dawn it fell to my lot to stroll in the rose garden; but without the rose garden of your beauty, my head began to ache. ("Derd-i ser", in its dictionary sense, means "headache", and also vexation. Ersoy understands the first line as "the desire arose to view the rose garden".)

3. As the dawn breeze was carrying off the tip of your lock, it lifted a hundred fallen hearts from the face of the earth. (The couplet can be read in two ways. According to the wording of the lines, when the wind stirs the lock it also lifts from the ground the hearts caught in it or fallen to the earth. Ersoy, however, understands the couplet as "the dawn wind, blowing from the dust of hundreds of fallen lovers, set the tip of your lock in motion".)

4. O beloved fair as a painting, every part of the body of me, the sick one, has caught fire from the burning of this helpless heart. ("Nigār", in its dictionary sense, means a painting, an ornament, and in divan poetry it is used as an address to the beloved.)

5. The dust of his threshold that is in Münîr's eye has become a keepsake that the dawn breeze carried away from there. (The couplet can be read in two ways; the "ez", "from", at the start of the first line makes the construction ambiguous. Ersoy explains the couplet as "the dawn breeze keeps as a keepsake the dust of his threshold that fills Münîr's eye". Applying the dust of the beloved's threshold to the eye like kohl is a familiar conventional image of divan poetry.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet ghazal (gazel) written in Persian; in the edition it is the eighteenth of the Persian ghazals (fg 18). The metre is "mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün". The refrain (redif) is the verb "girift"; in Ersoy's list of refrains this is the only Persian ghazal written with this refrain. The rhyme is the sound "-er": diger, zer, ser, ber, der, seḥer. The fact that the verb takes on different meanings together with the word preceding it, as in "ser girift", "ber-girift" and "der-girift", adds an element of play to the rhyme scheme: "derd-i ser girift" means "a headache seized", "ber-girift" "lifted", and "der-girift" "caught fire". The poem is found only in the Vatican manuscript (VT 65b). To whom and when it was written is not known.

Ersoy counts this ghazal among the seventeen Persian ghazals that are nazire (response poems) to Hâfız of Shiraz, and as its counterpart he points to page 32 of the Istanbul 1290 printing of Hâfız's Divan; he does not name the ghazal. The TDV article also records that seventeen Persian ghazals are nazire to Hâfız. Hâfız's ghazal written in the same metre, with the refrain "girift" and the rhyme "-er", begins with the opening line "Sāḳī biyā ki yār zi-ruḫ perde ber-girift". That ghazal uses the rhymes "der-girift", "ser girift", "ber-girift", "zer girift" and "diger girift"; all of them are also found in Münîrî's ghazal. This comparison rests on reading the two texts side by side; it does not appear in Ersoy.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens with a change of colour. The lover's tear dyes the yellowness of his face with blood; the contrast (tezat) between gold and blood, yellow and red, creates the image of the first couplet. The second couplet goes to the rose garden at dawn, but without the beloved's face the rose garden gives the lover a headache. The same image also occurs in Münîrî's fifteenth Persian ghazal. The word dawn occurs in the second, third and fifth couplets and sets the images of the ghazal in the early hours of the morning.

In the third and fifth couplets the dawn breeze holds an important place. In divan poetry the morning breeze carries news between the beloved and the lover; here it stirs the beloved's lock and lifts from the earth the hearts caught in it. In the fifth couplet the same breeze brings the dust of the beloved's threshold to the lover's eye. This dust is a keepsake and is linked to the conventional image of the threshold dust applied to the eye like kohl. In the fourth couplet the burning of the heart sets the whole body on fire; there is a congruence of images (tenasüp) between "sūz", burning, and "āteş", fire.

Bibliography

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