Original Persian Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün

Ger be-bālā-ḳad-i to geşt belā
Ġamze’et şod be-siḥr āfet-i mā
Nā-bedīd īnçonīn ki şod dehenet
Meger ez-ġayb mī-şeved peydā
Mī-nümāyed ki ṭavf-ı kūyet-rā
Ḫāk-i men mī-resed be-bād-ı ṣabā
Şādem ey dil be-vaṣl-ı yār imrūz
Hīc ne-āyed be-men ġam-ı ferdā
Der-ḫayāl-i ruḫet çü mihr Münīr
Hem-çü ẕerre girift rāh-ı hevā

In English

1. If your tall stature has become a calamity upon our heads, your bewitching glance has become our ruin. (There is a similarity of sound between "bālā", tall stature, and "belā", calamity. The gamze is the beloved's sidelong glance.)

2. Your mouth has become so invisible that perhaps it can only appear out of the unseen world (gayb). (The beloved's mouth is imagined as so small as to be all but non-existent.)

3. It seems that my dust will reach your quarter on the morning breeze (saba) to circle around it in pilgrimage. (Ersoy explains "ḫāk-i men" as "the soil of my grave"; word for word it is "my dust", that is, the lover who has died and turned to dust.)

4. O heart, today I am happy in union with the beloved; tomorrow's sorrow does not come to me at all.

5. With the image of your cheek, shining like the sun, Münîr has taken, like a mote, the path of the air. ("Hevā", in its dictionary sense, means both "air" and "desire, love"; Ersoy understands it as "has taken the path of love". The image of the mote turning in the air in a sunbeam unites the two meanings.)

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 fourth of the Persian ghazals (fg 4). The metre is "fe‘ilâtün mefâ‘ilün fe‘ilün"; this is one of the short patterns of aruz (quantitative metre), and the couplets are correspondingly brief and dense. The ghazal has no refrain (redif); the rhyme is the sound "-ā": belā, mā, peydā, ṣabā, ferdā, hevā. As to rhyme, Ersoy counts this ghazal among the examples of rhyme built on the rhyme letter alone. The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 62a) and Vienna (VY 46b) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal treats the beloved's beauty and the lover's state through the familiar images of divan poetry. The first couplet names the stature and the glance, the second the mouth, the fifth the cheek; the third and fourth couplets are given to the lover's death and to the joy of union. The second couplet rests on the motif of the beloved's mouth being so small as to be all but non-existent: the mouth is so invisible that it can only come out of the unseen. Here there is an antithesis between "nā-bedīd", invisible, and "peydā", visible. In the third couplet the lover says that even after death his dust will be carried by the wind to the beloved's quarter and will circle it in pilgrimage; the word "ṭavf" makes the beloved's quarter appear as a place of pilgrimage.

The similarity of sound between the words "bālā" and "belā" in the first couplet is an example of the wordplay Münîrî favours. In the fourth couplet the antithesis between "imrūz", today, and "ferdā", tomorrow, expresses how the moment of union wipes out every care. In the pen-name couplet there is congruence of images (tenasüp) between "mihr", the sun, and "ẕerre", the mote: the speck of dust turning in the air in the sunlight is likened to the lover beside himself with the image of the beloved's cheek. That the word "hevā" means both air and love gives the couplet two directions. That the pen name Münîrî means, in its dictionary sense, "one who gives light" also harmonizes with the image of the sun.

Ersoy states that Münîrî was not a Sufi poet, but that under Hâfız's influence he used Sufi symbols. The image of the mote turning towards the sun is also open to a reading of this kind: the mote becomes visible in the light of the sun, and the lover exists through the image of the beloved's face. In the rest of the ghazal, however, the beloved is plainly described as a beauty; words such as stature, glance, mouth and quarter keep the ghazal within the frame of love poetry.

Bibliography

Online sources