Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün (identification ours)

Sevdigim aşkınla câna yâdigâr etdim seni
Hangi vâdîden bilir misin şikâr etdim seni
Bâg-ı dilde nâ-resîde gonca-i sevda idin
Gözyaşımla su virürdim gül-‘izâr etdim seni
Sünbüle te’sîr ider miydi hazân-ı iştiyâk
Neşve-i sevdâ ile ben müşk-bâr etdim seni
Servinin boynun eger miydi hayâl-i kâmetin
Yalvarub bezm-i ezelden şîve-kâr etdim seni
Da’va-i hüsn eylemezdin mihr-i âlem-tâb ile
Feyz-i aşkımla cemâli tâb-dâr etdim seni
Tâzelik bagında açıldın gül-i hoş-bû gibi
Gönlüme mecmû’a-i zevk-i bahâr etdim seni
Gözlerim Nelmî temâşâsında hûnîn olmada
Bilmedim ben mübtelâ-yı âh ü zâr etdim seni

In English

1. My beloved, through your love I have made you a keepsake for my soul. Do you know from which valley I hunted you down?

2. In the garden of the heart you were an unripe bud of passion, not yet open. I watered you with my tears and made you rose-cheeked.

3. Could the autumn of longing have touched the hyacinth (your hair)? It is I who, through the delight of passion, made you scatter musk.

4. Could the image of your stature have bent the neck of the cypress? Pleading since the banquet of pre-eternity, I made you coquettish and graceful.

5. You could not have contested beauty with the world-illuminating sun. Through the bounty of my love I made your face radiant.

6. You opened in the garden of freshness like a sweet-scented rose. I made you, for my heart, an anthology (mecmua) of the pleasure of spring.

7. O Nelmî, my eyes are weeping blood as they gaze on him. Unknowing, I made you a captive of sighs and laments. (The address of the last line can be read in two ways; see the commentary.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

It is a ghazal of seven couplets. The redif (refrain word) is "etdim seni" ("I made you"), and the rhyme is the sound "-âr" in "yâdigâr, şikâr, ‘izâr, müşk-bâr, şîve-kâr, tâb-dâr, bahâr, zâr". Both lines of the opening couplet (matla) end with the same rhyme and refrain; the pen name (mahlas) appears as "Nelmî" in the last couplet. The metre is the remel pattern "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün" of aruz (quantitative metre); Hüsameddin does not state the metre, and the identification is ours. The text is taken in the form Hüsameddin gives in his Amasya Tarihi.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

All the couplets of the ghazal turn on a single idea: the beloved's beauty is the lover's work. In divan poetry the beloved is usually beautiful in her or his own right, and the lover is helpless before that beauty; Nelmî reverses this familiar order. It is the lover's love that waters the beloved, still a bud, with tears and makes the cheeks rose-like, that makes the hair scented with musk, the stature graceful and the face bright enough to rival the sun. The refrain "etdim seni" ("I made you") restates this claim in every couplet.

The poem is built on the picture of a garden. There is congruence of images (tenasüp) among "bâg-ı dil" (the garden of the heart), bud, rose, hyacinth, cypress and spring. The hyacinth is the familiar counterpart of the hair, the cypress of the stature, the rose of the cheek. The first lines of the third and fourth couplets are questions; with questions whose answer is obvious, the poet stresses that the beloved could not have gained this beauty alone. A contrast is drawn between "hazân" (autumn) and "bahâr" (spring) in the sixth couplet. The word "mecmû‘a" in the sixth couplet means both something gathered together and an anthology or notebook of poems; one may also think that the poet writes the beloved into his heart like a collection of poems.

The last couplet changes the mood of the ghazal. The eyes are "hûnîn", bloody; the lover is weeping blood. To whom the second line is addressed is not clear. Since the refrain speaks to the beloved throughout, the line can be understood as "unknowing, I made you (the beloved) a captive of sighs and laments"; but because the pen name is named in the same couplet, the poet may also be saying to his own heart, or to himself, "I made you a captive of sighs and laments". Both readings are ours.

Historical Context

Hüsameddin relates that Nelmî wrote this ghazal extempore at the beginning of the days when he fell in love with Mehmed Ârif Efendi, the son of his teacher, and gave it to him. The date falls around 1314 (1896-97); Nelmî had by then become a müderris of the Devriyye grade in Istanbul. Hüsameddin also writes that he had once composed a tahmis (a five-line expansion) on the ghazal, but he does not give its text. For the poet's life see Nelmî (Tahsîn Hasan Efendi).

Bibliography

Online sources