Original Persian Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Dil ki şod mest-i ḫarāb-ı sāḳī-i bezm-i elest
Şīşe-i nāmūs-ı mā-rā ‘āḳıbet z’ān mī-şikest
Gül-şen-i rıḍvān berā-yı ‘āşıḳān ser-sebz şod
Çün konīm ey dil çü seg der-kūşe-i külḫan nişest
Lāübālī ‘āşıḳīm ü bī-ḳarār ammā velī
Her zamān bā-‘ışḳ-ı to ‘ahd-i diger ḫᵛāhīm best
Yūsuf-ı Mıṣrī-i ḫod-rā yābem āḫir ey ‘azīz
To me-gū güm-kerde-i kes ‘āḳıbet n’āyed be-dest
Naḫl bend ān ḳadr der gülşen-i ‘ālem Münīr
Hemçü mis̱l-i ḳāmet-i şimşād-ı ū naḫlī ne-best

In English

1. Because the heart fell drunk and ruined from the cupbearer of the feast of elest, in the end it shattered the glass of our good name. ("Bezm-i elest", in its dictionary sense, is the gathering in pre-eternity at which the souls were asked, "Am I not your Lord?"; in divan poetry it is used to say that love and intoxication go back to the beginning of time. Ersoy, too, reads the couplet as the heart, ruined by the wine of the cupbearer of elest, breaking the cup of honour.)

2. The rose garden of Rıdvan has turned green for lovers; O heart, what are we to do, sitting like a dog in the corner of the stokehole. ("Rıdvan" is the name of the keeper of Paradise, and "gülşen-i Rıdvan" means the garden of Paradise; the "külhan" is the furnace of a bathhouse, a place of ash and soot. The couplet can be read in two ways: Ersoy takes the second line as a clause of cause, "that is why we too sit like a dog in the corner of the stokehole"; it can also be read as a lament, "what are we to do".)

3. We are careless lovers who never keep to one resolve; and yet at every moment we wish to bind a new covenant with your love.

4. O dear one (‘azīz), in the end I shall find my own Joseph of Egypt; do not say, "What a man has lost never comes back into his hand." (The couplet alludes to the story of Joseph: thrown into a well by his brothers, Joseph is found years later in Egypt. "‘Azīz" is both a respectful form of address, "dear one", and, in the story, the title of the Egyptian dignitary who bought Joseph.)

5. Münîr made so many wax trees in the garden of the world, yet he could not make one tree like his boxwood stature. ("Naḫl-bend", in its dictionary sense, is a craftsman who makes trees and flowers out of wax. Ersoy reads the couplet as "Münîr made so many trees of beeswax in the garden of the world, yet he did not see the like of his boxwood stature"; that is, none of the likenesses the poet has fashioned with his art matches the beloved's stature.)

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 twenty-second of the Persian ghazals (fg 22). The metre is "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". The ghazal has no refrain (redif), and it does not appear in Ersoy's list of refrains. The rhyme is the sound "-est": elest, şikest, nişest, best, dest, best. This "-est" is not the Persian copula ("is") here; it is part of the words' own stems. The verb "best" serves as the rhyme twice, in the third and fifth couplets: in one it means to bind a covenant, in the other to bind, that is, to make, a wax tree. The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 66b) and Vienna (VY 50b) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens by tracing the lover's drunkenness back to pre-eternity. Before ever coming into the world, the heart drank from the cupbearer's hand at the feast of elest and was ruined; the breaking of the glass of good name is the inevitable result of this primordial intoxication. The words glass, cupbearer, feast and drunkenness form a congruence of images (tenasüp); "the glass of good name" is a metaphor (istiare) in which something fragile, one's reputation, is likened to glass. The same image appears in a Turkish couplet that Ersoy quotes in his introduction among the lines in which the poet describes himself: there Münîrî presents himself as "drunk from the wine cup of the feast of elest". The opening couplet of this Persian ghazal shows the same image living in the poet's language in both tongues.

The second couplet sets Paradise against the stokehole. While the garden of Paradise grows green for lovers, this lover sits like a dog in the corner of the furnace, amid ash and soot. The contrast (tezat) between Paradise and stokehole, greenery and ash, lends the couplet a sharp melancholy. In the third couplet the lover openly admits his own inconstancy; yet this inconstancy does not undo his attachment to the beloved, for a new covenant is bound at every moment. The contradiction between "careless" and "covenant" is the wit of the couplet.

In the fourth couplet the story of Joseph is the ground of hope. Just as the lost Joseph was found years later, the lover says he will find his own Joseph, that is, the beloved. Within this story the address "O ‘azīz" has two meanings: it can be read as an ordinary word of respect and as the title of the Egyptian dignitary who bought Joseph. Münîrî's fondness for paronomasia (cinas) and double meaning gives a small but apt example here. In the pen-name couplet (mahlas) the poet likens himself to a craftsman who makes trees of wax. Even if he fills the whole garden with artificial trees, he cannot make a sapling equal to the beloved's boxwood stature. The boxwood, like the cypress, is in divan poetry the likeness of a straight, tall stature; the words naḫl (tree), gülşen (rose garden) and şimşād (boxwood) form a garden congruence of images.

Bibliography

Online sources