Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

ʿAşḳ ḥâlâtını Ferhâd ile Mecnûn ne bilür
Biri ṭâġ âdemîsidür biri ṣaḥrâ delüsi

In English

1. What do Ferhad and Mecnun know of love's states? One is a man of the mountains, the other a madman of the desert. (Ferhad is the lover who cut through a mountain to win Şirin; Mecnun went out into the deserts for love of Leylâ. "Man of the mountains" also means a coarse person with no feeling for refinement.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a single couplet of two unrhymed lines; in divan literature such independent couplets are called müfred (single couplet). It may have been taken from inside a ghazal, but since Latîfî gives it on its own, we do not know its place. The biographical anthology (tezkire) gives no metre; the couplet scans in the remel metre of aruz (quantitative metre) as "fâ‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". The long "î" of the word "âdemî" in the second line fits the metre only if read short; this may be a difference of spelling in the anthology's text or a small licence the poet allowed himself in the metre. The couplet is found only in Latîfî's anthology, in the entry on Tâcîzâde Sa'dî Çelebi, under the heading "Velehu" (and this is his). To whom and on what occasion it was spoken is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet accuses the two great legendary lovers of divan poetry, Ferhad and Mecnun, of not understanding love. These two names stand in literature as the highest examples of love: Ferhad cuts through Mount Bîsütun with his pickaxe so that he may win Şirin; Mecnun, for loving Leylâ, loses his reason and lives in the deserts among wild beasts. The poet presents these famous lovers as a pair of rustics or holy fools: one is a man of the mountains, the other a madman of the desert. To know the subtle states of love belongs, in his view, not to them but to the lover who speaks the couplet.

The wit of the couplet lies in presenting the two lovers' greatest virtues, cutting through the mountain and going out into the desert, as if they were faults. The phrase "ṭâġ âdemîsi" on the one hand describes Ferhad's life spent in the mountains, and on the other evokes, in colloquial speech, a coarse, ill-mannered person; "ṣaḥrâ delüsi" (desert madman) repeats, with light mockery, the meaning of Mecnun's own name, "the mad one". The couplet is thus built on a kind of feigned ignorance (tecâhül-i ârif): the poet pretends not to know who the two lovers are and describes them by their outward appearance. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) drawn from the stories among the words Ferhad, Mecnun, mountain and desert; the balance built by the "one ... the other" construction also sharpens the second line like a verdict.

Another opening couplet given by Latîfî in the same entry ("Dimeñüz ben var iken Mecnûna şeydâ bir daḫî") moves in the same direction: there too the poet holds his own love, shut in the corner of separation, above that of Mecnun roaming the desert. Read together, the two couplets show that Sa'dî Çelebi liked to enter into playful rivalry with the legendary lovers. This attitude is a form of boasting often met in divan poetry; what sets this couplet apart is that it seeks the measure of love less in suffering and endurance than in understanding and refinement.

Historical Context

Latîfî gives this couplet after saying that Sa'dî Çelebi's poems were very little known. The anthologist introduces him as a learned professor of the Sahn colleges in the reign of Bayezid, one who sat at the head of learned gatherings, knew the terms of every science, and was an eloquent poet and master of chancery prose; he ascribes the limited spread of his poems to his official duties leaving him no time. According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, Sa'dî Çelebi's poems, letters and chronograms are gathered in a compilation known as the Sâdî Çelebi Mecmuası; the poems in this collection are mostly in Arabic. Some of his letters were published in 1956 by Necati Lugal and Adnan Erzi.

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