Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Her gören ol dilberi taġyîr-i aḥvâl eylemiş
Farṭ-ı ḥayretden zebânın şöyle kim lâl eylemiş

In English

1. Everyone who saw that beauty was changed in state; from the excess of amazement each one's tongue was struck so that it fell mute.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening of a ghazal and is written in the pattern "fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün"; the identification of the metre is ours. The redif is "eylemiş" ("has made"), and the rhyme is the sound "-âl" in the words "aḥvâl" and "lâl".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Instead of describing the beloved's beauty directly, the couplet conveys it through its effect on those who see it. Beauty produces amazement, "ḥayret"; in divan poetry and in Sufism, amazement is the state in which a person loses reason and speech before the greatness of what stands before him. The word "lâl" here means mute, but it is also the name of the red precious stone, that is, of the beloved's lip; since we cannot see the rest of the poem, it cannot be said whether this second sense was intended, and the possible double entendre is our observation. "Taġyîr-i aḥvâl", the changing of states, expresses the power of beauty to shake a person's inner world.

Historical Context

The couplet is taken from the Merzifon Cönkü published by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. Hakverdioğlu acquired this manuscript miscellany from Merzifon for his own library and found that a separate ghazal section of the cönk is devoted to Sabrî's poems. Since the article gives only the first stanza of each poem in the cönk, we cannot see the poem beyond this couplet. Hakverdioğlu notes that the poem appears on page 33 of Orhan Bilgin's 1992 edition of the divan; its place in the cönk is page 77. Because Bilgin's book could not be consulted, the full text cannot be given here. The cönk is thought to have been compiled by a Merzifon poet from Sabrî's circle, most probably Fethî; the inclusion of the poem in this compilation shows that Sabrî's verses were still read in Merzifon after his death. For the poet's life and his other poems see the article Eyüb Sabrî.

Bibliography

Online sources