Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün

Urup âteş-i lebin ey şûh-ı gül-endâm bana
Kesilüp tâb ü tüvânum ki yok ârâm bana
Tutuşup nâr-ı derûnum alışup variyetim
Ne olur ‘âkıbet ey şûh ser-encâm bana
Ayağ al kâse-i ser-şâr ile devrân eyle
Yandım Allah sever sun mey-i al-fâm bana
Yakılup ‘ömrümi virdim yile ‘âşıklık ile
Ne revâdır diyesin ey gül-i ter hâm bana
Garazım yok reh-ı mihrinde bes âyâ ne içün
Bî-sadâkat diyesin ey şeh-i esnâm bana
Eyle rüsvâ olubam kim cem‘ olur il başıma
Söylüyor her biri bin ta‘n-ıla bed-nâm bana
N'ola ey Mîr Nigârî rakîbin ragmına yâr
Söyleye adım ile eyleye düş-nâm bana

In English

1. O rose-bodied coquette, you struck me with the fire of your lips, and my strength and power were cut off; there is no peace left for me.

2. My inner fire caught, and all my being went up in flames; O coquette, what will become of me in the end?

3. Take up the cup, set the brimming bowl going round; I am burning, for God's sake pour me the red wine.

4. Burning with love I have given my life to the wind; O fresh rose, is it right that you call me "raw"?

5. On the path of your love I have no self-interest; then why, O king of idols, do you call me "faithless"?

6. I have been so disgraced that people crowd about my head; every one of them calls me "ill-famed" with a thousand taunts.

7. O Mîr Nigârî, how fine it would be if, to spite the rival, the beloved cursed me calling me by name.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Behind the fourth couplet stands the triad raw, cooked, burned. The saying attributed to Rumi, "I was raw, I was cooked, I was burned", describes the three stages of maturing with these words. Nigârî's lover has reached the third stage; he has been burned by love and has given his life to the wind. Even so, the beloved calls him "raw", counting him as never cooked, never matured. The sting of the couplet lies in this injustice: the burned one is called raw. The fifth couplet repeats a similar injustice; the lover who seeks no advantage on the path of love is called "faithless".

The last two couplets carry the disgrace elsewhere. In the sixth the lover has become so much talked about that people gather round him, each calling him by an ill name. In the closing couplet cursing turns into a favour: how fine it would be if the beloved, to spite the rival, cursed the lover calling him by name. For to speak his name, even in cursing, shows that the beloved remembers him. The rival (rakîb) is, by the conventions of the divan, the other lover who wants the same beloved; even the beloved's cursing of the lover counts as a victory over the rival.

The language of the ghazal is close to speech. "Allah sever" in the third couplet is a shortened form of today's "Allah'ını seversen", for God's sake; "il" is the Azerbaijani Turkish pronunciation of "el", people. In "ayağ al" the word ayak means cup. The words of the cursing scene are heard in the rhyme too: "bed-nâm" (of ill name) and "düş-nâm" (abuse) meet on "-âm" with "gül-endâm, ârâm, ser-encâm, al-fâm, hâm, esnâm". The refrain is "bana" (to me), the metre "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün".

Bibliography

Online sources