Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ’ilâtün Fâ’ilâtün Fâ’ilâtün Fâ’ilün

Hasret-i rûyunla cânâ ger kılursam âh (u) vâh
Çarh urup pervâne-veş odlara yana mihr ü mâh
Senden ayru olmaga cânâ rıza virmez gönül
Ger olursa sensüzin mülk-i cihâna pâdişâh
Pâyuna başın komak ‘ayn-ı sa’âdetdür begüm
Bu sa’âdet konmamış gibi benüm başumda âh
Kimse bilmezdi cihânda derdini bu gönülün
Rûy-ı zerdüm eşk-i çeşmüm olmasa ana güvâh
Hasret-i zülfi hevâsında ölürsem Şâhiyâ
Lâyık oldur kim diyesin “tayyeba’llâhü şerâh”

In English

1. O beloved, if I sighed and lamented with longing for your face, the sun and the moon would spin and burn in the fires like moths.

2. O beloved, even if I became padishah of the realm of the world without you, the heart would not consent to be parted from you.

3. My lord, to lay one's head at your feet is the very essence of bliss; ah, it is as if this bliss had never alighted upon my head.

4. No one in the world would know the pain of this heart, had my yellowed face and my tears not borne witness to it.

5. Şâhî, if I die of passion and longing for her locks, what is fitting is that it be said after me, "May God make his earth wide."

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The five-couplet ghazal is written in the "fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilün" pattern. It has no redif; the rhyme is the "-âh" sound in "vâh, mâh, pâdişâh, âh, güvâh, şerâh". In the phrase "âh (u) vâh" in the opening couplet, the conjunction "u" in parentheses is a completion added to the text by Kılıç for the sake of the sense. In the edition the folio mark [50b] stands at the beginning of the ghazal.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet begins with a great hyperbole: if the lover sighs, the sun and the moon will burn like moths that circle and burn around the fire. The moth and the candle are the familiar image in divan poetry of the lover who throws himself into the fire of love; here the heavenly bodies take the place of the moth. The idiom "çarh urmak" (to spin) also recalls the turning of the sky.

In the third couplet the words head, foot and "'ayn" are used together. "'Ayn-ı sa'âdet" means the very essence of bliss; "'ayn" also means eye. There is also a play between laying the head at the foot and bliss alighting upon the head: the lover counts it bliss to lay his head at the beloved's feet, but bliss has never alighted on his head. The verb "konmak" (to alight) also suggests the notion of the bird of fortune alighting on the head. The fourth couplet builds a language of the court. The lover's yellowed face and his tears are presented as "güvâh" (witnesses) to the heart's pain.

The closing couplet ends with a prayer. Kılıç explains in a footnote the Arabic expression "tayyeba'llâhü şerâh" in the last line as "may God make his earth wide". This prayer, said after the dead, shows that the lover has imagined his own death in advance; the poet accepts dying of longing for the beloved's locks and also states the prayer that will befit him.

The second couplet carries a weight of its own within the ghazal. The words "even if I became padishah of the realm of the world without you, the heart would not consent to be parted from you" are a familiar expression in divan poetry of scorning worldly sovereignty for the beloved. As Kılıç relates, Bayezid was a prince who spent his life in a struggle for the throne. The sense this couplet carries in his mouth is of particular interest to the reader; but there is no ground for tying the couplet to a particular event, and this interpretation is ours.

Bibliography

  • Filiz Kılıç (ed.), Şâhî Dîvânı (Şehzâde Bâyezîd), Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Kütüphaneler ve Yayımlar Genel Müdürlüğü, 2018, e-book pp. 112-113, ghazal no. 137 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Efendi, Manzum Eserler 225, fol. 50b); footnote 112; also pp. 10-12 (the struggle for the throne), p. 43 (completions in parentheses), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59394,sahi-divanipdf.pdf.

Online sources