Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Âh idersin degmiş ok ey dil nevâdandır sana
Böyle bî-ârâmlıg elbet yaradandandır sana
Dâğ-ı dildendir meger feryâd-ı zârın yohsa kim
Şerha şerha sîneden yağar yaradandır sana
Kûy-ı gülzâr-ı nigârımdan güzâr itdin meger
Bülbül-âsâ bu nevâ-hânlık oradandır sana
Terk-i ‘âlem eyledin zülfün temennâsında bu
Sûd-ı sevdâ lev haşe'llâh ol karadandır sana
Sâye-i dildârıla hem-sâye düşdün kim bu kâm
Hâsıl olmazdı meger terk-i verâdandır sana
Geçdik ey Seyyid Nigârî sohbet-i agyârdan
Yâr halvet-hâne-i dilde Yaradandır sana

In English

1. O heart, you sigh; an arrow from a melody has struck you; this restlessness surely comes to you from the Creator (Yaradan).

2. Your cries and moans must come from the wound of the heart; otherwise the (blood) that rains slice by slice from your breast comes to you from the wound (yara-dan).

3. You must have passed through my beloved's street like a rose garden; your singing like a nightingale comes to you from there.

4. Longing for the curl you renounced the world; this profit of passion, God forbid, comes to you from that black one.

5. You have fallen into the shade of the beloved as a neighbour; this wish must have come to you from renouncing what lies beyond. (The phrase "terk-i verâ" in the line is not clearly understood.)

6. O Seyyid Nigârî, we have given up the company of strangers; in the retreat-cell of the heart your beloved is the Creator.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The whole game of the ghazal turns around one word: "yaradan". In the opening couplet the phrase "yaradandandır" is used and the word means the Creator, God: the heart's restlessness comes from the Creator. In couplet two "yaradandır" means "yara-dan", from the wound: the blood raining slice by slice from the breast comes from the wound. In the final couplet the Creator returns: in the retreat of the heart the beloved is the Creator. When the same sequence of sounds comes into the rhyme with different meanings, divan poetry calls it cinas (pun). Nigârî places this pun at the beginning, middle and end of the ghazal and ties wound and Creator together: the one who opens the wound is the Creator, and so is the one reached at the end of it.

The other couplets carry wordplays in the same "-dandır" (comes from) pattern. In the third "oradandır" says that the nightingale's song comes from there, from the beloved's street. In the fourth "karadandır" says that passion comes from the black curl; the exclamation "lev haşe'llâh", God forbid, turns the words half into a joke. At the root of the word sevdâ (passion) there is also the sense of blackness; black curl and black passion come from the same source.

At the outset the poet addresses his heart; in the last he shifts to the plural with "geçdik", we have given up: the company of strangers (ağyâr) has been abandoned. The "halvet-hâne" in Sufism is the small cell where a dervish withdraws from the world to worship; Nigârî too is known to have spent a period in retreat at the Gümüşlü Saraçhane madrasa in Amasya. The one beloved who remains in the heart's retreat is the Creator. The rhyme of the six-couplet ghazal ties the "-â" sound of "nevâ, yaradan, ora, kara, verâ" to the refrain "-dandır sana".

Bibliography

Online sources