Original Persian Text

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

Yā men devāmü vaṣlike fī’l-ḳalbi mürtecā
Ez-dest-i fürḳat-i to kocā mī-revem kocā
Zülf-i siyāhuña ṭayanup bu delü göñül
Bād-ı hevāyı kend’özine ḳıldı ilticā
Mānend-i āftāb-ı ruḫ u zülf-i to buved
Der-ẓulmet-i şebī ki buved kevkeb-i dücā
Ger porsişī zi-nāvek-i dil-dūz-ı ū buved
Yā ma‘şera’l-eḥıbbeti min ẕāke men necā
Gūyā gözüm yaşıyla felek baḥr olup Münīr
Encüm ser-ā-ser aña ḫabāb oldı cā-be-cā

In English

1. O beloved, the lasting of whose union is hoped for in the heart, where am I to go from the hand of your separation, where? (The first line is Arabic, the second Persian.)

2. Relying on your black locks, this mad heart has taken the wind of hevâ as its refuge. (The couplet is in Turkish. "Hevâ", in its dictionary sense, means both "air" and "the heart's desire". Since the lock waves in the wind, the heart that clings to the lock has taken refuge in the wind. The couplet can be read in two ways: the heart has abandoned itself to the desire of love, or it has trusted in an empty and unsteady refuge, like seeking shelter in the wind.)

3. The state of your sun-like cheek and your locks is like a star that illuminates the darkness in the gloom of night. ("Kevkeb-i dücā", in its dictionary sense, is "the star of the darknesses"; Ersoy renders it as "a star that pierces the darkness". The black lock is likened to night and the shining cheek to the star glittering in that night.)

4. If anyone asks about his heart-piercing arrow, I say: "O company of friends, who has ever escaped from it?" (The second line is Arabic. Ersoy takes "nāvek", the arrow, to be the beloved's sidelong glance.)

5. O Münîr, it is as if the sky has become a sea with the tears of my eyes, and the stars have become bubbles on it everywhere from end to end. (The couplet is in Turkish; "ser-ā-ser" and "cā-be-cā" are set Persian expressions. "Ḫabāb" means a water bubble.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet ghazal (gazel), and in the edition it is the ninth of the Persian ghazals (fg 9). The ghazal is in fact a trilingual mülemma (macaronic poem): one line each of the first and fourth couplets is in Arabic and the other lines are in Persian; the third couplet is Persian, while the second and fifth couplets are Turkish. Ersoy does not give the meaning of these two couplets in his apparatus, because he explains only the Persian and Arabic couplets; a look at the text shows that both are clearly Turkish. The metre is "mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün". The ghazal has no refrain (redif); the rhyme is the sound "-ā": mürtecā, kocā, ilticā, dücā, necā, cā. The poem is found only in the Vatican manuscript (VT 98b). Since it survives in a single manuscript, no variant readings are recorded in the apparatus. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the impossibility of escaping separation. The first couplet opens with an Arabic address and continues with a Persian question: where can one go from the beloved's separation? The fourth couplet repeats the same feeling with the impossibility of escaping the beloved's glance, and the Arabic line takes the form of a question addressed to all lovers. In Ersoy's rendering this arrow is the beloved's sidelong glance; the likening of a glance to an arrow is one of the most common images of divan poetry. Although the Arabic line is framed as a question, it expects no answer; it is a way of saying that no one has escaped. The repetition "kocā ... kocā", "where ... where", in the first couplet is likewise an instance of repetition (tekrir) that stresses the lover's helplessness. These Arabic phrases give the poem the air of a general maxim voicing the common sorrows of lovers.

The Turkish second couplet rests on the relation between the lock and the wind. The lock plays with the wind; the mad heart that clings to it has thus taken refuge in the wind, in "bād-ı hevā". The fact that the word "hevâ" carries both the meaning of "air" and of "desire" gives the couplet the depth of a double entendre (tevriye). In the third couplet the lock is seen as night and the cheek as a star or a sun shining in the dark; the contrast between light and darkness brings the beloved's face to the fore.

The pen-name couplet (mahlas) is a fine example of hyperbole (mübalağa). The lover's tears are so abundant that the sky has turned into a sea, and the stars are the bubbles on the surface of this sea. The words felek (sky), bahr (sea), encüm (stars) and habâb (bubble) form a congruence of images (tenasüp). The predominantly Persian ghazal thus ends with a Turkish pen-name couplet.

Bibliography

Online sources