Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Kanda saklar hüsnüñ evsâfın dil-i nâzük-mizâc
Kim görüpdür nûr-ı şem‘i eyleye pinhân zücâc
‘Âşık-ı ser-bâza bu dünyâ serâyında hemân
Hâk-i pâyüñle işigüñ taşı besdür taht u tâc
Alma cân nakdin bu cism-i nâ-tüvânumdan şehâ
Zulmdür çün kim reh-i vîrâneden almak harâc
Kesmesün yol kârvân-ı ‘ışka zühd-i şeyh-i şehr
Kim alınmaz tâcir-i (...) den tamga vü bâc
Ey tabîb-i cân u dil sensüz Refîkî hasteñüñ
Derdi artar yañılup añılsa yanında ‘ilâc

In English

1. Where could the delicate heart hide the qualities of your beauty? Who has ever seen glass conceal the light of a candle?

2. For the lover who stakes his head, the dust of your feet and the stone of your threshold suffice as throne and crown in this palace of the world.

3. O king, do not take the coin of life from this feeble body of mine; for it is tyranny to levy tribute on a ruined road.

4. Let not the asceticism of the town’s sheikh waylay the caravan of love; for no stamp-duty or toll is taken from the merchant of (…).

5. O physician of soul and heart, if a remedy is mentioned by mistake beside your patient Refîkî, left without you, his pain only grows.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Tribute, Stamp-Duty and Toll

The middle couplets of the ghazal are written in a vocabulary not often met in Ottoman lyric: tribute (“harâc”), stamp-duty (“tamga”), road and market toll (“bâc”). The lover addresses the beloved as a ruler and calls him to justice in taxation: taking the coin of life from a feeble body is like collecting tribute from a ruined place. He then turns to the town’s sheikh, whose asceticism must not waylay the caravan of love, for no tax is levied on the merchants of this caravan. Given that Refîkî spent his life as a chancery scribe, his easy recourse to terms of finance and customs is not surprising; but the connection is an interpretation drawn from the poem, and the sources say nothing about this ghazal.

The opening couplet draws on another field, light and glass. The heart is thin and transparent like the glass of a lamp; the qualities of beauty placed in it shine out like a candle’s light and cannot be hidden. In the last couplet the talk turns to illness: for the patient far from the beloved even the name of a remedy increases the pain, since his only remedy is the beloved himself. In the second line of the fourth couplet Köksal’s edition could not read one word and left it as “tâcir-i (...) den”. Pervâne Bey’s anthology gives the same line as “Kim alınmaz tācir-i tercāndan bāc ü ḫarāc”; as it is not clear what “tercân” means here, the gap has been kept in the translation.

Two Different Models

In the Mecma‘u’n-Nezâ’ir the ghazal belongs to the answers to Ulvî’s model, whose first line runs “Zülfüñi göz gördi vü dil oldı sevdâyî mizâc”. In Pervâne Bey’s anthology the same “-âc” rhyme opens with Selmân-ı Kâdî’s ghazal “‘Ārıżuñ pālūde-i ter leblerüñ ġarrā gülāc”. The Mecma‘’s “reh-i vîrâne” (ruined road) in the third couplet appears in the Pervâne as “dih-i vīrāne” (ruined village); in a context of taxation the second reading is more consistent. Ulvî’s model drew one more answer in a shorter metre, which the Mecma‘ assigns to Refîkî and the Pervâne to Fakîrî (Ghazal 9).

Bibliography

Online sources