Original Persian Text

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

Ḥarāretī ki zi-ḥüsn-i to āftāb keşīd
Kesī ne-dīd meger dil ki bī-ḥisāb keşīd
Çonīn ki ġonca-i ḫūnīn-ciger demīd meger
Zi-ḫūn-ı dīde-i men gül-bün-i gül-āb keşīd
Muḳābil-i meh-i rūy-ı to mihr dīd ne-şod
Zi-şerm ü ḫaclet-i ān rūy der-niḳāb keşīd
Be-tīr-i ġamze-i to mā ḥażar dil ez-cān peyeş
Revān zi-sīne-i mecrūḥ ḫūn-ı nāb keşīd
Vücūd-ı mihr ki hemçün dil-i Münīr lerzed
Meger ki ez-teb-i hicr-i ruḫ-ı to tāb keşīd

In English

1. The heat that the sun drew from your beauty no one saw; it seems the heart saw it, for it endured it beyond all reckoning. (Ersoy understands the couplet as two separate sentences: "The sun has taken its brightness from the beauty of your face. No one saw that my heart suffered countless afflictions.")

2. The bud with its bleeding liver opened in such a way that it seems the rosebush drew rosewater from the blood of my eyes. ("Gül-āb keşīden", in its dictionary sense, is to draw rosewater, that is, to distil the rose. The bud is called "bleeding-livered" because its inside is red.)

3. The sun could not show itself facing the moon of your face; from the shame and embarrassment of it, it drew a veil over its face. ("Muḳābil", in its dictionary sense, is what stands facing; in old astronomy the facing of the moon and the sun was called "opposition" (mukabele).)

4. Against the arrow of your glance our heart stands ready with its life; and after it, it drew the pure blood flowing from the wounded breast. (The couplet is obscure. Ersoy understands it as "The heart of its own will is ready for the arrows of the sidelong glance; after it, the soul too is ready to draw pure blood from the wounded breast". In the text "ḥażar", in its dictionary sense, means taking care, avoidance; Ersoy's explanation seems to take the word in the sense of "ready".)

5. If the very being of the sun trembles like Münîr's heart, it must be that it has caught fire from the fever of separation from your cheek. ("Teb", in its dictionary sense, means malarial fever, feverish illness; "tāb" means heat, radiance.)

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-seventh of the Persian ghazals (fg 47). The metre is "mefâ‘ilün fe‘ilâtün mefâ‘ilün fe‘ilün". The refrain (redif) is the verb "keşīd" (drew); in Ersoy's list of refrains fg 42 and fg 47 are shown with this refrain. The rhyme is the sound "-āb": āftāb, ḥisāb, gül-āb, niḳāb, nāb, tāb. Ersoy counts this ghazal among his examples of kafiye-i müreddefe (rhyme preceded by a long vowel). The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 72b) and Vienna (VY 56b) manuscripts. No manuscript variants are recorded for this ghazal in Ersoy's apparatus. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

At the centre of the ghazal stands the sun; it appears in the opening couplet, in the third couplet and in the pen-name couplet, and each time it is defeated by the beloved's beauty. In the opening couplet the sun takes its heat from the beloved's beauty, but only the lover's heart knows the pain of that heat. In the third couplet the sun cannot come out facing the beloved's moon face and, from shame, draws a veil over its face. To explain the sun's hiding behind the clouds by shame is to find a poetic cause for an event in nature; this is an example of the figure of fanciful aetiology (hüsn-i talil). The correspondence between moon and sun is also supported by the astronomical sense of the word "muḳābil".

The second couplet moves to the image of the rose. The bud, because of the redness of its inside, is like a lover with a bleeding liver; it has opened in such a way that it seems the rosebush has distilled the blood flowing from the lover's eyes and obtained rosewater. Here the refrain is tied to the idiom "to draw rosewater". The words blood, rosewater, bud and rosebush form a congruence of images (tenasüp); the lover's bloody tears and the red of the rose meet in the same colour. The fourth couplet is the most obscure place in the ghazal. The arrow of the glance and the blood flowing from the wounded breast are clear images, but the syntax of the first line is uncertain; Ersoy's explanation is that the heart stands willingly ready for this arrow.

The pen-name couplet (mahlas) turns the sun into an invalid. The sun's light, which seems to tremble, is explained by the fever of being parted from the beloved's cheek; the sun, like Münîr's heart, trembles with the fire of separation. This too is an example of fanciful aetiology. The closeness in sound between "teb" (fever) and "tāb" (heat) forms a paronomasia (cinas), and the rhyme word "tāb" is linked to the word "ḥarāret" (heat) in the opening couplet. The ghazal thus opens with the heat the sun takes from the beloved and closes with its trembling in the fire of her separation.

Bibliography

Online sources