Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefʿûlü fâʿilâtü mefâʿîlü fâʿilün (metre identified by us)

Ḥammâma girdi nâz ile bir sîm-ten güzel
Ḥûr u perîye beñzemez âfet iñen güzel
Noḳsân yoḳ tenâsüb-i aʿżâda ber-kemâl
Pehlû vü sâḳ u sâʿid ü hep cümleten güzel
Ḥammâmı rûşen eyledi gün gibi ṭalʿatı
Yoḳdur cihânda ol büt-i meh-pâreden güzel
Bilmek dilerseñ ol ṣanemüñ nâz u şîvesin
Benden ṣor ey göñül bilürem anı ben güzel
Ey sâḳî bezm içinde beni sen diñlemesen
Bir curʿa ile mest ü ḫarâb eyleyen güzel
Bir serv-ḳad nigâra göñül virdi Rûḥî kim
Ḫaṭfitne çehre gül gibi raʿnâ dehen güzel

In English

1. A silver-bodied beauty entered the bathhouse with coquetry; she is like neither houri nor fairy, a calamity of great beauty.

2. There is no flaw in the harmony of her limbs, she is perfect; flank, calf and wrist, all of her together is beautiful.

3. Her sunlike face lit up the bathhouse; there is none in the world more beautiful than that moon-fragment idol.

4. O heart, if you would know that idol's coquetry and grace, ask me; I know it well.

5. O cupbearer, even if you do not listen to me in the gathering, (she) is a beauty who makes one drunk and ruined with a single sip. (The line is obscure; the sense is our guess.)

6. Rûhî has given his heart to such a cypress-tall beauty: her down is a temptation, her face like a rose, her mouth graceful and lovely.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Ghazal Added by One Copy

This ghazal is not in every copy of Sehî's anthology. In the manuscript the editors designate L it was added at the end of the entry on Rûhî with the note "These couplets too are among the late poet's well-known verses", and the edition prints it in a footnote. The pen name "Rûḥî" appears in the closing couplet, but other sixteenth-century poets used the same pen name; Rûhî, son of the steward of Ebussuûd Efendi, is one of them. The attribution of the ghazal to Rûhî of the Zenbillizâde family therefore rests on the note of a single copyist. The first line of the fifth couplet does not quite fit the metre and its sense is obscure; the text may be corrupt here.

A Beauty in the Bathhouse

The ghazal is a description of a beauty entering the bathhouse, close to the genres of the şehrengiz and the hamamiye. The beloved's body is praised not through metaphor but limb by limb: flank, calf, wrist. Such an enumeration is a freedom the bathhouse scene allowed divan poetry. Both lines of the opening couplet and every second line thereafter end in "güzel", which gives the refrain the sense both of an adjective, beautiful, and of an adverb, well; in the fourth couplet "bilürem anı ben güzel" means "I know it well". The sunlike face lighting up the bathhouse calls to mind the dim, steamy interior of the bath. The diction of the ghazal is plainer and closer to speech than Rûhî's other couplets; this difference too leaves the question of authorship open. The two different portraits of Rûhî drawn by Hüsameddin and by the anthologies are set side by side in Rûhî Fâzıl Çelebi (Zenbillizâde).

Bibliography

Online sources