Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fe‘ûlün

el-Minnetü li'llâh evimiz av yeridir
Avları güzel âhûları hûrî perîdir
Ser-menzilimiz nefha-i ‘anberle melâdır
Zîrâ yerimiz âhûların reh-güzeridir
Zülfün hevesi ‘âşıka bâde-i şebâne
Mihr-i lebin ey mâh sabûhî seheridir
Erbâb-ı nazar hâline dahl eyledi vâ‘iz
Memnû‘dur anun sözi zîrâ nazarîdir
Pervânede bülbülde bu hâlât ü harâret
Mecnûn da bilür bâde-i ‘aşkın eseridir
Ol neş’e-i hâlât ü bu rütbe-i makãmât
Her şâm u seher şecre-i sabrın eseridir
‘Âkıl özin ‘aşka düşürüp âteşe yahmaz
Bu iş bana ey Mîr Nigârî kaderîdir

In English

1. Thanks be to God, our house is a hunting ground; its quarry are lovely gazelles, houris and fairies.

2. Our lodging is filled with the breath of ambergris, because our place is the path where the gazelles (that bear musk) go by.

3. O moon-faced one, desire for your tress is the lover's evening wine; love of your lip is his dawn draught.

4. The preacher meddled in the state of the people of vision; his word is void, for it is theoretical.

5. These states and this ardour in the moth and in the nightingale are the work of the wine of love; Majnun knows it too.

6. The rapture of those states and the rank of these stations are, every evening and morning, the fruit of the tree of patience.

7. A man of reason does not throw himself into love and burn in the fire; O Mîr Nigârî, this work is my destiny.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The quarrel between the preacher and the people of vision is settled in the fourth couplet by two derivatives of one root. "Nazar" is the gaze; the "erbâb-ı nazar" are those who contemplate divine beauty in a beautiful face and have made looking into a path. The preacher has interfered in their state, but his word carries no weight because it is "nazarî", theoretical, resting on reflection and on knowledge that never goes past doctrine. Two meanings drawn from the same family of words set out in a single couplet the difference between knowing by seeing and knowing by reading. Nigârî's stance against the preacher and the ascetic appears in many of his ghazals; here it is compressed into a pun.

The first two couplets open with a hunting scene, but the quarry are gazelles, houris and fairies, that is to say beauties. In the second couplet the image of the gazelle joins with scent: musk is taken from the musk deer, so the road the gazelles travel smells of ambergris and musk. Because the lover's lodging is a haunt of beauties it is fragrant through and through. The third couplet divides night and morning between the tress and the lip. Desire for the black tress is the evening's wine, love of the red lip the morning's; the lover passes both night and dawn drunk on the beloved.

The fifth and sixth couplets use the same rhyme word, "eser", in two senses. In the fifth, the ardour of the moth for the candle and of the nightingale for the rose, and the madness of Majnun, are the "eser", the effect, of the wine of love. In the sixth, the rapture of the states attained and the rank of the stations are the "eser" of the tree of patience; set beside the tree, the word comes close to fruit or yield. Rapture and drunkenness on one side, patience and waiting on the other, thus meet in a single word. The closing couplet makes the poet's fate of what a sensible man would never do: the man of reason will not hurl himself into the fire of love, but for Nigârî it is not a choice. It is what was written on his brow.

Bibliography

Online sources