Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün

Rûşen ḳılan cihânı bugün ḥüsni mâhıdur
Meftûn iden bu göñlümi zülf-i siyâhıdur
Nâlemden eylegil ḥaẕer ey ġonce-leb gülüñ
Defterlerini yile viren bülbül âhıdur
Ebrûları ḫayâli bu ḳanlu yaşumda ṣan
Baḥr-i muḥîṭ içinde gezer iki mâhîdur
Şâdîye nice irişesin sen ki Sa‘diyâ
Dil mülkini ḫarâba viren ġam sipâhıdur

In English

1. What lights up the world today is the moon of her beauty; what has enchanted this heart of mine is her black locks.

2. Beware of my lament, O you with lips like a rosebud: it is the nightingale's sigh that scatters the rose's ledgers to the wind. (The rose's petals are likened to the pages of a ledger; "to give one's ledger to the wind" means to scatter and destroy something. As the nightingale's sigh scattered the rose, so the lover's lament may move the beloved.)

3. Think of the image of her eyebrows in these bloody tears of mine as two fish swimming in the encircling ocean. (The arched eyebrows are likened to fish, and the tears to a boundless sea.)

4. O Sa'dî, how could you ever attain joy, when what lays waste the realm of the heart is the army of grief? (The pen name "Sa'dî" derives from "sa‘d", good fortune and happiness; that the poet named for happiness cannot reach joy is the point of the couplet.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

There is a small question mark over the attribution of the ghazal. Âşık Çelebi gives these four couplets in his entry on Tâcîzâde Sa'dî Çelebi, after the opening couplet "Yâ Rab n'olaydı" and the couplets "‘Âleme ṭoldı meserret", under the heading "Ve lehu" (and this is his). Among the variant readings of the edition, however, there is this note: "Bu beyitler A'da Sa‘dî Çelebi Müftîde geçiyor", that is, in manuscript A of the anthology these couplets are placed in the entry on the Kastamonu-born mufti Sa'dî Çelebi. The pen name (mahlas) "Sa‘diyâ" fits both poets. Kınalızâde, while correcting an error Âşık Çelebi made in the Sa'dî entry, does not mention this ghazal. Since the edition on which this article rests gives the ghazal in Tâcîzâde's entry, it is placed here among his poems.

The ghazal has four couplets; this is short for a ghazal, and Âşık Çelebi may have quoted a selection rather than the whole poem. The biographical anthology (tezkire) gives no metre; the couplets scan in the muzâri‘ metre of aruz (quantitative metre) as "mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün". The refrain (redif) is "-ıdur" (it is), and the rhyme falls on "-âh": mâh, siyâh, âh, mâhî, sipâh. The word "mâhî" (fish) in the third couplet plays in sound on "mâh" (moon) in the opening couplet. According to the variant readings of the edition, the phrase "bu göñlümi" (this heart of mine) in the first couplet reads "göñülleri" (hearts) in manuscript P. The ghazal is found only in Âşık Çelebi; to whom and on what occasion it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet sets up the traditional contrast between the beloved's face and hair: the face is a moon that lights the world, the hair a darkness that enchants the heart. The antithesis between "rûşen" (bright) and "siyâh" (black) brings the moon's light and the locks' darkness together in the same couplet. In the second couplet the lover warns the beloved: the nightingale's sigh has given the rose's ledgers, that is, its petals, to the wind; the lover's lament may scatter the rosebud-lipped beloved in the same way. There is a comparison here between the rose's petals and the pages of a ledger, and the idiom "to give one's ledger to the wind", joined with the image of a rose whose petals are blown about by the wind, becomes a phrase with two meanings. The famous love story of the nightingale and the rose is reflected onto the relation between lover and beloved as a kind of threat.

The third couplet is built on a simile. The beloved's arched eyebrows resemble two fish swimming in the ocean formed by the lover's bloody tears. The turning of tears into a sea is an exaggeration (mübalağa) often met in divan poetry; the image of the eyebrows roaming this sea like fish is a discovery peculiar to this couplet. "Baḥr-i muḥîṭ" is the great ocean that the ancients believed to encircle all the land. In the final couplet the poet plays on his pen name: the name "Sa‘dî" derives from "sa‘d", meaning good fortune and happiness, yet the poet who bears this name cannot reach "şâdî", joy, because the army of grief has plundered the realm of the heart. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) from the field of war and plunder among the words realm of the heart, laying waste and army.

Historical Context

Âşık Çelebi opens his entry on Sa'dî Çelebi by praising his mastery of Arabic and keeps his Turkish verse in the background: with the words "Gâliben şi‘ri müstes̱nâdur" he implies that his Turkish poetry was scant and exceptional; by contrast, he says, his Arabic odes and treatises were many, and he also had a versified work on doctrine. The anthologist then tells how, after Câfer Çelebi's execution, Sa'dî was summoned to the palace to write the letter to be sent to Egypt, and records that he died during the Egyptian campaign. This ghazal is one of the few Turkish examples that passed from such a scholar's notebook of verse into an anthology.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2018 (e-book), pp. 424-425, entry on Sa‘dî Çelebi and variant readings (notes 4582-4583).
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2017 (e-book), pp. 430-431, entry on Sa‘dî.

Books

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 39, Istanbul 2010, p. 356. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr

Online sources