Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâʿilâtün fâʿilâtün fâʿilâtün fâʿilün (metre identified by us)

Âl idüp ol lâle-rûḫ güller ṭaḳınmış başına
Gör ne ḫoş-bû nesneler ḳatmış güzellik âşına

In English

1. That tulip-cheeked beauty has played a trick (or put on red) and decked her head with roses; see what sweet-scented things she has stirred into the dish of beauty.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Red and the Dish

In this playful opening verse Refîkî likens the beloved's adornment to the work of a cook adding spices to a pot. Its first word pulls two ways: "âl" means both a trick, a deception, and the colour red. By putting roses on her head the tulip-cheeked beauty has heightened the redness of her cheek, and set a snare in passing for whoever looks at her. The rhyme falls between "başına" (on her head) and "âşına" (into her dish); the "dish of beauty" in the second line likens adornment to seasoning a meal, and the "sweet-scented things" join the scent of the rose to the smell of spices. Tulip, rose and scent thus become the ingredients of a single dish.

Three Texts

Latîfî gives this as the first example of Refîkî's verse, quoting it right after saying that he finds his poetry "middling". Kınalızâde has the second line as "konmış güzelün başına"; in that reading the rhyme word repeats and the image of the dish is lost. Hüsameddin's text is close to Latîfî's, except that it writes "hoş bu" for "ḫoş-bû" (sweet-scented). Of the three, Latîfî's gives the most coherent sense. The whole ghazal in which the couplet stands, five couplets in all, survives in the nazire anthologies: Ghazal 45. The other examples chosen by the anthologists are gathered, together with the poet's life, in Refîkî Ali Çelebi (İbrîzâde).

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources