Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Öyle mahfîsin ki sen hayrân âlemdir sana
Âleme hayretle mi hüsnün eder peydâ seni
Öyle peydâsın ki mahfilin zuhûrundur senin
Bî-nişân etmişse de âlemden istignâ seni

In English

1. You are so hidden that the world is in wonder at you; or does your beauty reveal you to the world by way of wonder?

2. You are so manifest that your hiddenness is your very appearing, even though your self-sufficiency, your needing nothing from the world, has left you without trace or sign. (The word "mahfilin" is read here as "your hiddenness"; see the commentary.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

These are two couplets Hüsameddin gives with the words "some of his poems on the unity of the Creator". The second lines end with "peydâ seni" and "istignâ seni"; accordingly the fragment comes from a ghazal with the refrain "seni" ("you") and the rhyme "-â". Since the first lines do not rhyme, neither couplet is an opening couplet (matla); the rest of the ghazal is unknown. Hüsameddin does not state the metre.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The two couplets describe God as at once hidden and manifest. Among the names of God in the Qur'an, "the Manifest" (ez-Zâhir) and "the Hidden" (el-Bâtın) are mentioned together (al-Hadid 57:3). In Sufi poetry this pair is often treated through the idea that the created world both veils God and shows Him. In the first couplet Nelmî stresses hiddenness: the world is in wonder at what it cannot see; then he asks a question: does beauty reveal itself by way of wonder? The second couplet builds the same thought from the opposite side: He is so manifest that His very hiddenness is His appearing.

There is a contrast between "mahfî" (hidden) and "peydâ" (manifest, visible), and the two couplets are built symmetrically on the two faces of this contrast: "Öyle mahfîsin ki..." / "Öyle peydâsın ki..." ("You are so hidden that..." / "You are so manifest that..."). The words "hayrân" and "hayret" show the figure of iştikak (using words from the same root together). The word "mahfilin" in the second couplet is written thus in the text; since "mahfil" in the sense of "assembly" makes no sense here, it has been read, together with "mahfî" in the first couplet, as "mahfîliğin", that is, "your hiddenness". This reading is ours. "İstignâ" in the last line means needing no one, being self-sufficient; God's not needing the world makes Him a being without trace in it, "bî-nişân".

Historical Context

Hüsameddin quotes these couplets saying that in his last years Nelmî was much occupied with Sufism and wrote poems on the unity of God. After returning to Amasya in 1315 (1897), Nelmî had withdrawn to a cell in the Kapancızâde Madrasa, kept away from people and occupied himself with poetry and Sufism; the couplets probably date from this period. For the poet's life see Nelmî (Tahsîn Hasan Efendi).

Bibliography

Online sources