Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ele Ferhâd ile bir yirden alup baş ikimüz
Yapmaġa ʿışḳ sarâyın ṭaşıruz ṭaş ikimüz
Kimse farḳ eyliyemez Leylî vü Mecnûndan eger
Yâr ile bir yire taṣvîr ide naḳḳâş ikimüz

In English

1. Setting out together from one place with Ferhad, the two of us carry stones to build the palace of love. (The meaning of the word "Ele" at the beginning of the line is unclear; it is left untranslated.)

2. If the painter were to portray the beloved and me together, no one could tell (us) apart from Leylâ and Mecnun.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Lover Carrying Stones beside Ferhad

The opening couplet takes as its companion the hardest-working lover of the romances. Ferhad is the hero who bored through Mount Bîsütûn and cut stone upon stone to win Shirin. Remzî makes himself Ferhad's partner: the two have "baş alıp", set out together from the same place, and are carrying stones to build the palace of love. "Baş almak" means to set out, to take to the roads; baş (head) and taş (stone) meet in the rhyme, and the redif "ikimüz" (the two of us) repeats in every line the partnership of the two lovers. This image, which sees love as the building of a palace, is tied directly to Ferhad's stone-cutting labour.

In the second couplet the partner changes. This time it is the beloved, not Ferhad, who stands beside the lover, and the painter who portrays them together will show them as a couple indistinguishable from Leylâ and Mecnun. Mecnun's love unfolds in the Arabian deserts, Ferhad's in Shirin's mountains; Remzî places two great love stories side by side in two couplets. The rhyme word "nakkâş" (painter), with its reference to the art of painting, lets the couplet be read like a picture.

Text and Authorship

The couplets occur only in Gelibolulu Âlî's tezkire, in the entry on Kadı Remzî of Bursa. The word "Ele" at the beginning of the first line is written thus in the edition and its meaning is unclear; no other manuscript could be consulted for comparison. Âlî explicitly calls the poet a man of Bursa. His link with Amasya comes not from Âlî but from two other records: Kınalızâde's making this judge the father of İlmî, and Hüsameddin's recording İlmî's father as a Müeyyedzâde. Unless the two meet in one person, the ghazal remains that of a poet from Bursa.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources