Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün fe‘ûlün (hezec-i mahzûf)

Aduñ olmaya dirseñ şâh-ı bî-dâd
Kul olmakdan beni kıl gayra âzâd
Güler miydi yüzi bâg-ı cihânuñ
Gamuñdan olmasa ‘aşıklaruñ şâd
Reh-i ‘ışk içre kat‘ olmaz menâzil
Cigerden olmayınca tûşe vü zâd
Harîm-i vasla olmaz kimse mahrem
Belâ-yı hecre olmayınca mu‘tâd
Virilmiş Husrev-i şîrîn-makale
Sunılmış nitekim Ferhâd’a feryâd
Kiminüñ mülki ser-tâ-ser harâbe
Kiminüñ kasrı ucdan uca âbâd
Refîkî kîl u kâli ko sen âhir
Çün evvel böyle dirmiş bunı üstâd

In English

1. If you do not want your name to be “the unjust king”, set me free from being slave to another.

2. Would the face of the world’s garden smile, if lovers were not glad of your grief?

3. On the road of love the stages are not crossed unless the provisions and the food for the way come from one’s own liver.

4. No one becomes an intimate of the sanctuary of union unless he grows used to the calamity of separation.

5. Sweet speech (and Shirin) was given to Khusraw, just as lament was put into Farhad’s hand.

6. One man’s realm is ruined from end to end, another’s palace flourishes from one end to the other.

7. Refîkî, leave off idle talk at last; for the master said this first, and said it thus.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Deference to the Master

The last line of the ghazal reads like a sentence about the nazire tradition itself: “Çün evvel böyle dirmiş bunı üstâd.” The poet tells himself to stop talking, because the same thing has already been said by “the master”. In a nazire the word “üstâd” most likely points to the author of the model poem; the reading of the Pervâne Bey Mecmuası (“Çün evvel [böyle] düzmiş bunı üstād”, the master composed this first) makes this sense still clearer. Since the opening line of Kâdirî Çelebi’s ghazal, named as the model in the Pervâne, begins “Benem ‘ışḳ ehline ‘ālemde üstād” (I am the master of the people of love in the world), one may think that Refîkî chose the word deliberately; but the Mecma‘u’n-Nezâ’ir ties the model to Ahmedî, and there is no information that would reconcile the two records.

The short metre turns the middle couplets into so many verdicts. The stages of the road of love can be crossed only with provisions drawn from the liver; to enter the sanctuary of union one must first grow used to the calamity of separation. The fifth couplet fits the story of Khusraw and Farhad into the single word “şîrîn”: Khusraw was given sweet speech, that is Shirin, while only lament was left to Farhad. The following couplet generalises the same injustice; one man’s realm is ruined, another’s palace flourishes. The epithet “bî-dâd” (unjust) in the first couplet links up with the “harf-i bî-dâd” (letter of injustice) in the second couplet of Refîkî’s companion piece (Ghazal 10); the two poems work two faces of the same rhyme.

The Copies

Nazmî’s collection gives the ghazal under the heading “Velehû eyzen” (this too is his), after Refîkî’s first nazire on Ahmedî’s model “Meger zülfüñe irdi subh-dem bâd”. Pervâne Bey keeps the same order, heads the poem “Ve lehu keẕā” and gives all seven couplets. The differences are small: in the third couplet the Pervâne reads “ḳaṭ‘ ola menāzil” and “tūşe-i zād”, in the fifth “Ḫusrev’e şīrīn maḳāle”, and in the last “ḳosun”.

Bibliography

Online sources