Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Hüsnüñe magrûr olup dökmek olmış hû saña
Anuñ içün dir imiş iller delükanlu saña
Sormaduñ fikr-i miyânuñla za‘îf oldugumı
Hâlümi zülfüñ dimiş gerçi ki mû-be-mû saña
Ey perî cân nakdini yakdum kıla çeşmüm vatan
Girmege merdüm evine hod sebebdür bu saña
Bu ten-i hâkî nişân olsaydı tîr-i gamzeñe
Cân ile kurban olurdum ey kemân-ebrû saña
Gözüñe göñlüñe girdi ey Refîkî çeşm-i yâr
Gey sakın sihr itmesünler ol iki câdû saña

In English

1. Proud of your beauty, you have made the shedding of blood your habit; that is why people call you “delükanlu” (a bold youth, but also “mad and bloody”).

2. You never asked how I wasted away thinking of your slender waist, though your tress has told you my state “mû-be-mû”, hair by hair, in every detail.

3. O fairy, I burned the coin of my soul so that you might make my eye your home; this alone is reason enough for you to enter the house of the pupil (“merdüm”: both the pupil of the eye and a person).

4. Were this earthen body a target for the arrow of your glance, I would offer myself to you with my soul as a sacrifice, O you whose brow is a bow.

5. Refîkî, the beloved’s eye has entered your eye and your heart; take great care lest those two sorcerers bewitch you.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Word “Delükanlu”

The wit of the opening couplet lies in a single word, “delükanlu”. Proud of his beauty, the beloved has made the shedding of blood a habit, and that is why people call him “delükanlu”. The word is the older form of modern Turkish “delikanlı” and means a young man, a bold youth; but Refîkî splits it into “delü” (mad) and “kanlu” (bloody), placing the habit of shedding blood inside the very name. The beloved’s youth and cruelty are thus fused in a single word.

The second couplet uses the phrase “mû-be-mû” with the same skill: the tress has told the lover’s state hair by hair, that is, down to the finest detail, and the link between hair and tress pulls the idiom back towards its literal meaning. Likening a waist to a hair for its slenderness is a well-known conceit of the tradition. The third couplet is more obscure; drawing on the double sense of “merdüm”, both the pupil of the eye and a person, it invites the beloved into the house of the pupil. Burning the coin of one’s soul looks like the price paid for making the eye a home for the beloved. The final couplet calls the beloved’s two eyes “iki câdû”, two sorcerers; the “gey” (very, greatly) of the Mecma‘u’n-Nezâ’ir appears as “key” in the Pervâne copy, with the same meaning.

Two Anthologies, Two Models

In the Mecma‘u’n-Nezâ’ir the model is a poem by Kâsım Paşa whose first line is “Nice bir feryâda vara nâle vü âhum saña”. The Pervâne Bey Mecmuası, by contrast, gives it under the model opened by Hızrî of Yenihisar with the couplet “Ey ṣanem cevr ile cān almaḳ olupdur ḫū saña / Ben de geçdüm cān ü dilden dōstum yā hū saña”. In its rhyme, Refîkî’s series “hû, mû, bu, ebrû, câdû” is closer to Hızrî’s ghazal; Kâsım Paşa’s rhyme runs “âhum, mâhum”. Nazmî may have grouped the poems by their shared redif alone, but the text offers no explanation on this point.

The heading in Pervâne Bey’s anthology carries a short note that supports what the biographical anthologies say of the poet: “Sulṭān Selīm Ḫān muṣāḥiblerindendür mütevellī idi”, “he was one of the companions of Sultan Selim Khan and served as a trustee”. That Refîkî belonged to the close circle of Selim I and at the end of his life administered a pious foundation (tevliyet) agrees with the life story told in Refîkî Ali Çelebi (İbrîzâde). The Pervâne text has a hard-to-read phrase in the third couplet, “ḳovdı sızar bu saña”; this page follows the text of the Mecma‘.

Bibliography

Online sources