Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün (remel)

Gam degül dûd-ı siyâhumdan eger tolsa cihân
Yâr tek agyâr çeşminden nihân olsun nihân
Hâl idindüm şol kadar fikr-i miyân-ı yârı kim
Kanda olursam hayâl alur beni ey dil hemân
Zevrak-ı dîdem olurdı gark mevc-i dîdeden
Dökmeseydi merdüm-i çeşmüm anı taşra revân
Kaddüñe beñzer sanavber râst cânân gerçi kim
Kametüñ servi gibi lâkin degüldür ol revân
Güft u gû itmezse tañ mıdur Refîkî ile yâr
Söylemege bende dil yok nitekim anda dehân

In English

1. It matters little if the world fills with the black smoke of my sighs; only let the beloved be hidden, hidden from the rivals’ eyes.

2. I have so made the thought of the beloved’s waist my state that, O heart, wherever I may be, fancy carries me off at once.

3. The boat of my eye would sink in the waves of tears, had the pupil (the “man” of the eye) not bailed them out swiftly.

4. Beloved, the pine does indeed resemble your stature; but it does not walk (“revân”) like the cypress of your stature.

5. Is it any wonder if the beloved does not talk with Refîkî? I have no tongue (“dil”, also heart) to speak, just as he has no mouth.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Curtain of Smoke

The thought of the opening couplet turns in an unexpected direction. The lover’s sigh is black and can fill the world with its smoke; in Ottoman poetry this is usually told as a calamity. Refîkî, however, uses the smoke as a curtain: it is no grief if the world grows dark, so long as the beloved is hidden from the rivals’ eyes in that darkness. The repetition “nihân olsun nihân” at the end of the line carries the insistence of the wish. The second couplet builds a sound-link between “hâl” (state) and “hayâl” (fancy): thinking of the beloved’s waist has become the lover’s state, and the waist, by convention, exists only in fancy; so wherever the lover is, fancy carries him away.

The third couplet is a small sea scene. The eye is a boat, tears are the waves; the pupil, literally “the man of the eye” (merdüm-i çeşm), works like a sailor bailing out the water that floods the boat. The shedding of tears is thus told as the work that saves the boat from sinking. The fourth couplet compares the pine with the cypress: the pine may resemble the beloved in height, but it does not stir from its place, whereas the beloved is the “serv-i revân”, the walking cypress. In the last couplet the word “dil” means both heart and tongue; since the lover’s heart is lost, he has no tongue to speak with, while the beloved’s mouth is so small as to be nothing. The beloved’s silence is thus put down to this shared lack on both sides.

Ulvî and Nizâmî

Edirneli Nazmî’s compilation treats the ghazal as a reply to Ulvî; the model’s first couplet runs “Tutdı çün dil murgı zülfüñüñ hamında âşiyân / Bu hümâ-yı devlete ‘arş olsa tañ mı âşiyân”. The Pervâne Bey Mecmuası opens the same rhyme with Nizâmî Çelebi’s ghazal “Ger idersem ḳadd ü ruḫsāruñ yolında cān revān”. Between the five couplets of the two copies the differences go no further than a few words; in the fourth couplet the Pervâne reads “cānā” and “līkin”.

Bibliography

Online sources