Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün

Ey hüsn sana ‘âlem müştâk velî bî-pâ
Zerre-i cemâlindir hûrşîd velî ednâ
Ey hüsn meyin âteş ammâ nice âteş kim
İçdükçe virür lezzet lezzet ki velî bî-tâ
Ey hüsn melâhat mı zâtın ki gözüm zîrâ
Doymaz ki şirîn şîrîn bakdıkça diler bî-pâ
Ey hüsn virür neş’e nezzâre melâhat kim
Bakdıkça bulur lezzet gelmez ana usanma
Ey hüsn temâşâdan nezzârların geçmez
Bir lahza eger âlem her lahza olur ber-pâ
Ey hüsn sana mahsûs bu kârgeh-i ‘âlemde
Meyl eylemez agyâre müştâkların aslâ
Ey hüsn kılur cevlân çeşminde Nigârînin
Cilve-i cemâlin kim esrârı kılur inşâ

In English

1. O beauty, the world longs for you but has no feet to reach you; the sun is a mote of your beauty, and a mote that falls below it.

2. O beauty, your wine is fire; but what a fire, that gives delight the more one drinks, and a delight without equal.

3. O beauty, is your very being salty sweetness (melâhat), that my eye is never sated; the more sweetly it looks, the more it helplessly desires.

4. O beauty, melâhat gives such joy to the gaze that the one who looks finds delight the more he looks, and no weariness comes to him.

5. O beauty, those who gaze at you never give up gazing; even if doomsday broke upon the world every moment, (they would not take their eyes from you) for a single moment.

6. O beauty, in this workshop of the world those who long for you alone never incline towards others.

7. O beauty, the coquetry of your face wanders in Nigârî's eye; that coquetry which puts secrets into words.

Literary and Historical Commentary

This ghazal is the twin of the previous one: the same metre, "mef‘ûlü mefâ‘îlün mef‘ûlü mefâ‘îlün", the same address "Ey hüsn", the same seven couplets. But the subject has changed. The first ghazal described the fire that beauty kindles in the lover; this second one dwells on the gaze itself. The words "bakdıkça" (the more one looks), "nezzâre" (the gaze), "temâşâ" (contemplation) and "çeşm" (eye) are scattered all over the ghazal, and the poem turns on the question of why looking at beauty never satisfies.

The answer is given in the third couplet with the word "melâhat". In divan poetry "sabâhat" describes fair, luminous beauty, while "melâhat", from the root for salt (milh), describes a dark, sweet-and-salty attractiveness. What is salty makes one thirsty; the eye that looks at melâhat also grows thirstier as it looks and, instead of being satisfied, wants more. Nigârî does not spell out this old image, but by placing "never sated" next to "melâhat" he leads the reader to the association.

The fifth couplet carries the strongest hyperbole (mübalağa) of the ghazal. "Ber-pâ olmak" means to rise, to be set up, and in the expression "kıyamet ber-pâ olmak" it describes the breaking of doomsday. The poet says that even if the world met its doomsday anew at every moment, those who gaze at beauty would not take their eyes from it for a single moment. The gaze is thus presented as something more lasting than the end of the world.

The "kârgeh-i ‘âlem" of the sixth couplet, the workshop or loom of the world, is an old image that thinks of existence as a weaving loom. In the final couplet the coquetry of beauty wanders in the poet's eye and "esrârı kılur inşâ", has the secrets written down, puts them into words. "İnşâ" means composing, building prose and verse; poetry is presented as the beauty seen by the eye turned into writing. The word "usanma" in the fourth couplet sounds like a weak rhyme beside the ghazal's other rhymes ending in a long "â" (bî-pâ, ednâ, bî-tâ, ber-pâ, aslâ, inşâ). Hüsameddin's remark that Nigârî's poems contain "literary oddities that do not conform to the rules" may concern places of this kind; he gives no examples himself, however.

Bibliography

Online sources