Original Persian Text

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

Yā ma‘şera’l-eḥıbbeti eṣ-ṣabbü lā yemūt
Fī ṣūrati’l-fenā’i iẕā kāne lā yefūt
Yāḳūt-ı cān-fezāsı ḫayāli dirisiyem
Be’nger ḳanā‘atem ki merā būd ‘ayn-ı ḳūt
Ber-sem‘-i reh-revān-ı to her laḥẓa mī-resed
Yā sālike’l-mesāliki ṭūbā limen yemūt
Īn dil ki şod zi-būde-i zülf-i siyāh-ı to
Mānend-i Yūnusest ki şod der-dehān-ı ḥūt
Gösterdügi gibi yüzi ayını ey Münīr
Ḥüsn-i ḥasen midür bu didüm didi k’es-sükūt

In English

1. O company of friends, the ardent lover does not die; even if he takes on the form of annihilation, he does not pass away. (The couplet is Arabic throughout. Ersoy gives the meaning of the first line only, as "O company of lovers, true lovers do not die". The rendering of the second line rests on dictionary meanings: "fī ṣūrati’l-fenā’" means "in the form of annihilation", and "lā yefūt" "does not slip away, is not lost".)

2. I live by the dream of his life-increasing ruby lip; look at my contentment, for it has become the very essence of sustenance for me. (The first line is Turkish, the second Persian. Ersoy gives the meaning of the second line only, as "look at my contentment, which is like food to me". "Yāḳūt", ruby, describes the red lip, and "ḳūt" means provision and food.)

3. To the ears of those who walk your road this cry comes every moment: "O traveller on these paths, blessed is he who dies on this road." (The second line is Arabic. "Ṭūbā", in its dictionary sense, means "blessed is, happy is".)

4. This heart, left in the grip of your black locks, is like Jonah who fell into the mouth of the fish. (There is an allusion to Jonah being swallowed by the fish. The phrase "zi-būde-i" in the first line is not clear; the rendering rests on Ersoy's interpretation, "the state of this heart before your black locks".)

5. O Münîr, as soon as he showed the moon of his face, I said, "Is this the beauty of the beautiful?"; he said, "Silence." (The couplet is Turkish; the edition gives no meaning for it. "Ḥüsn" and "ḥasen" come from the same root and, in their dictionary sense, mean "beauty" and "beautiful"; the phrase can also be understood as "a beautiful beauty". "Es-sükūt" is Arabic for "silence, be silent".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet ghazal (gazel), and in the edition it is the nineteenth of the Persian ghazals (fg 19). The ghazal is a mülemma (macaronic poem) in which Arabic, Persian and Turkish lines are used together. The first couplet is wholly Arabic; the first line of the second couplet is Turkish and the second line Persian; the first line of the third couplet is Persian and the second line Arabic; the fourth couplet is Persian, and the pen-name couplet (mahlas) is Turkish. In Ersoy's apparatus only the meaning of the Persian and Arabic parts is given; the fifth couplet is left without a meaning, and only one line each of the first and second couplets is explained. The metre is "mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün". The ghazal has no refrain (redif); the rhyme is the sound "-ūt": yemūt, yefūt, ḳūt, yemūt, ḥūt, sükūt. The word "yemūt" is used twice as a rhyme, in the first and third couplets. The poem is found only in the Vatican manuscript (VT 66a). In the edition its couplets are printed without numbers; the numbers here are assigned by pairs of lines and agree with the meaning numbers in the apparatus. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is death and deathlessness in love. The first couplet opens with an Arabic maxim addressed to all lovers: the ardent lover does not die, and even if he seems annihilated, he is not lost. The third couplet says the same thing from the opposite side and proclaims that blessed is he who dies on the road of love. The repetition of the rhyme "yemūt" in two couplets binds these two maxims together: on the one hand the lover does not die, on the other, dying on this road is counted as bliss. The description of the road of love as "mesâlik", paths, and of its travellers as "sâlik", wayfarer, recalls Sufi terminology.

The second couplet tells what the lover lives on. The dream of the beloved's life-increasing ruby lip is the source of his life, and by contenting himself with this dream the lover makes it his provision. In the fourth couplet the heart, by remaining within the black locks, is likened to Jonah in the belly of the fish; the black and curling lock corresponds to the dark mouth of the fish that swallowed Jonah.

The Turkish pen-name couplet is a scene of dialogue. When the beloved shows the moon of his face, the lover asks about this beauty, and the beloved answers with a single Arabic word, "silence". Because the words "ḥüsn" and "ḥasen" come from the same root, the couplet contains a pun based on shared derivation (iştikak). This word of silence at the end of the ghazal recalls that silence is also mentioned in the pen-name couplet of Münîrî's twelfth Persian ghazal; there silence is counted as consent, while here it is the beloved silencing the lover.

Bibliography

Online sources