Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Sorma sebeb-i derdim ey ‘âlic-i pür-fen kim
Izhârına yok tâkat kim bâ‘is-i kanımdır

In English

1. O physician of many skills, do not ask the cause of my pain; for I have no strength to disclose it, (that pain) is the cause of my blood (being shed).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

It is quoted as a single couplet; the two lines are linked by "kim" ("for") and the second ends with "kanımdır" ("is my blood"). From which part of a ghazal it was taken is not known. Hüsameddin does not state the metre.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is built on the familiar opposition of lover and physician in divan poetry. The lover's pain is an illness, yet the physician's question cannot be answered: if the cause of the pain is told, the secret comes out, and the secret coming out costs the lover his blood. "Bâ‘is-i kanım" can be understood as "the cause of my blood being shed", but also as "the source of my blood", that is, the essence of my being; this second reading is ours. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) around illness and cure among the words "derd" (pain), "‘âlic" (healer) and "kan" (blood). The conjunction "kim", repeated in both lines, gives the utterance a certain heaviness; whether Hüsameddin had this repetition in mind when he spoke of expressions not conforming to the rules of the language cannot be known.

Historical Context

Hüsameddin writes that Nigârî's divan contains fine naats (poems in praise of the Prophet), lofty ghazals and kıt‘as voicing burning, inward griefs, but that among them there are also poetic flaws and literary oddities that do not conform to the rules of the language, which should be counted as expressions peculiar to the poet; he then lists nine pieces in a row, introducing them with "for example". He does not distinguish which couplet is given as an example of beauty and which of a flaw. For the poet's literary personality see Nigârî: Poet and Works.

Bibliography

Online sources