Original Persian Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün

İmşeb ez-ṣoḥbet-i dūşīne merā yād āmed
Ney fiġān kerden-i men dīd be-feryād āmed
Baḫt-ı bīdār-ı merā bīn ki be-ser-vaḳtem dūş
Nīm-mest ez-derem ān ḥūr-ı perī-zād āmed
Her ki der kūh-ı ġam-ı ‘ışḳ belāyī ne-keşīd
Ū çi dāned ki çihā ber-ser-i Ferhād āmed
Āteş-i ‘āşıḳ-ı dil-ḫaste ber-ān kār-gerest
Dil-i saḫt-ı to eger āhen ü pūlād āmed
Ger giriftār-ı ġam-ı ‘ışḳ-ı to mī-būd Münīr
Ez-ġam-ı her dü cihān fāriġ u āzād āmed

In English

1. Tonight the conversation of last night came back to my mind; the reed flute, seeing me cry out, broke into a cry as well.

2. See my wakeful fortune: last night that houri of fairy lineage, half drunk, came in at my door and to my side. ("Baḫt-ı bīdār", in its dictionary sense, is wakeful fortune, that is, good luck; Ersoy says "the openness of my fortune".)

3. Whoever has not suffered affliction on the mountain of love's grief, how should he know what befell Farhad. (Farhad is the legendary lover who cut through a mountain to win Shirin.)

4. Though your hard heart be iron or be steel, the fire of the heart-wounded lover works upon it.

5. If Münîr has become a captive of the grief of your love, he has been freed and released from the grief of both worlds.

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 forty-third of the Persian ghazals (fg 43). The metre is "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". The refrain (redif) is the verb "āmed" (came); in Ersoy's list of refrains this ghazal stands alone with the refrain "āmed". The rhyme is the sound "-ād": yād, feryād, perī-zād, Ferhād, pūlād, āzād. Ersoy counts this ghazal among his examples of the kind of rhyme in which a long vowel precedes the rhyme letter (kafiye-i müreddefe). The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 71b) and Vienna (VY 55b) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Ersoy counts this ghazal among the seventeen Persian ghazals that are response poems (nazire) to Hâfız of Shiraz and gives its counterpart by page number in the 1290 (1873-74) Istanbul printing of Hâfız's Divan; the TDV article also records that seventeen Persian ghazals are response poems to Hâfız. The ghazal of Hâfız in the same metre, rhyme and refrain begins with the opening couplet "Der-namāzem ḫam-ı ebrū-yı to bā-yād āmed / Ḥāletī reft ki miḥrāb be-feryād āmed" (In prayer the curve of your brow came to my mind; such a state came over me that the prayer niche broke into a cry).

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Münîrî's opening couplet follows Hâfız's closely. In Hâfız the beloved's brow comes to mind during prayer and the prayer niche begins to cry out; in Münîrî the conversation of the night before comes to mind and the reed flute cries out. In both poets the first line ends with an act of remembering, and in the second line an inanimate thing cries out like a human being; this is personification (teşhis), which attributes human behaviour to lifeless things. By turning Hâfız's prayer niche into the reed flute, the instrument of the gathering, Münîrî carries the couplet into the gathering of the libertines (rind). The lament of the reed flute is in any case a known image in divan poetry, so the comparison falls naturally into place.

The second couplet describes the beloved who comes at night. That the half-drunk, fairy-faced beloved enters at the door is the work of wakeful fortune; the word "bīdār" (wakeful) also forms a link with night and sleep. In the third couplet Farhad is named. Love's grief is a mountain; whoever has not suffered affliction on that mountain cannot understand what Farhad endured. The link between the mountain and Farhad is an allusion (telmih) resting on the story of Farhad cutting through the mountain for Shirin. In the fourth couplet the beloved's heart is likened to iron and steel; yet the lover's fire works even iron. In this couplet, which rests on the observation that fire softens iron, the words iron, steel and fire form a congruence of images (tenasüp).

In the pen-name couplet (mahlas) there is a contrast: to be captive to love's grief is to be freed from the grief of both worlds. Captivity and freedom are thought of together. In Hâfız's ghazal, too, the rhyme "āzād āmed" occurs; there Hâfız envies the cypress that has been freed from the burden of grief. Münîrî takes the same rhyme word into his pen-name couplet and binds freedom to the captivity of love. The ghazal thus follows Hâfız's metre, rhyme and refrain while adapting the images to its own language of gathering and love.

Bibliography

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