Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün

Dimeñüz ben var iken Mecnûna şeydâ bir daḫî
Künc-i firḳât bir daḫîdür seyr-i ṣaḥrâ bir daḫî

In English

1. While I am here, do not call Mecnun "love-crazed" ever again; sitting in the corner of separation is one thing, wandering in the desert is quite another. (The refrain "bir daḫî" means "ever again" in the first line and "another, a different thing" in the second.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal; both its lines end with the phrase "bir daḫî", which is repeated as the refrain (redif). The rhyme is the "-â" sound in the words "şeydâ / ṣaḥrâ". The biographical anthology (tezkire) gives no metre; the couplet scans in the remel metre of aruz (quantitative metre) as "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". The opening couplet is given only in Latîfî's anthology, in the entry on Tâcîzâde Sa'dî Çelebi, under the heading "Velehû" (and this is his), together with another couplet on Ferhad and Mecnun. In the edition the word in the second line is spelled "firḳât"; the word is "firḳat", separation. The rest of the ghazal and the occasion of its writing are unknown.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet enters into a contest of boasting with Mecnun, the best-known lover of divan poetry. Mecnun, who lost his reason for love of Leylâ and took to the deserts, is in literature the supreme example of the "şeydâ", the lover driven mad by love. The poet wants to take this title from him: while he is here, Mecnun should no longer be called "şeydâ". The reason is given in the second line. Mecnun wanders the desert; he can scatter his sorrows across a wide wilderness, walking and crying out. The poet, however, has shut himself into the corner of separation, a narrow corner. In this comparison the antithesis of narrowness and breadth between "künc" (corner) and "ṣaḥrâ" (desert) is the real point of the couplet: to burn motionless in a corner is a heavier madness than to roam the desert.

The use of the refrain in two senses gives the couplet a further subtlety. In the first line "bir daḫî" means "ever again": "do not call Mecnun love-crazed ever again." In the second line the same phrase passes into the sense of "another, a quite different thing": "the corner of separation is one thing, the desert wandering another." The repetition of the same phrase in the same position with different meanings is counted among the skilful uses of the refrain in divan poetry; here the "bir daḫî" repeated twice in the second line also makes heard, through sound, how far apart the two states are. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) drawn from the story of Leylâ and Mecnun among the words Mecnun, şeydâ, künc-i firḳat (corner of separation) and sahra (desert).

The other couplet that Latîfî gives alongside this one carries the same thought further: what do Ferhad and Mecnun know of love's states, one is a man of the mountains, the other a madman of the desert. That both couplets come from the same poet and the same anthology entry shows that Sa'dî Çelebi liked the idea of exalting his own love by belittling the legendary lovers. This attitude is common in divan poetry; but its being worked in the same direction in two separate couplets suggests that Latîfî deliberately chose these two from the poems he had.

Historical Context

Latîfî introduces Sa'dî Çelebi as a learned professor of the Sahn colleges in the reign of Bayezid, a scholar who sat at the head of learned gatherings and knew how to tell the deficient from the complete; he counts him an eloquent poet and master of chancery prose. He ascribes the obscurity of his poems, however, to his official duties leaving him no time for poetry, and then gives these three pieces as examples. Latîfî calls Sa'dî Câfer Çelebi's "ah-i ekber", his elder brother; the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, however, names Câfer as his elder brother, and the other anthologies say only that they were brothers.

Bibliography

  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-Şuarâ ve Tabsıratü'n-Nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2018 (e-book), p. 272, entry on Sa‘dî Çelebi.
  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Tâcîzâde Sâdî Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 39, Istanbul 2010, p. 356. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr

Online sources