Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

İrmedi vasluna her kim cân u tenden geçmedi
Görmedi râhat yüzin ol kim geçenden geçmedi
Meyl-i dünyâyı denî sanma ki benden geçmedi
Geçdi dil her nesneden illâ ki senden geçmedi
Bülbül-i dil gül yüzün vasfın okur gûyendedür
Rûz u şeb hâr-ı belâda vuslatun cûyendedür
Geçdi ‘ömri derd ile gurbetde sohbet bulmadı
Geçdi dil her nesneden illâ ki senden geçmedi

In English

1. No one who did not give up soul and body attained union with you; one who did not give up what passes away did not see the face of rest. Do not think love of the base world did not pass from me; the heart has given up everything, but it has not given up you.

2. The nightingale of the heart recites the praise of your rose face and keeps on telling it; night and day on the thorn of affliction it seeks union with you. Its life passed in pain; in exile it found no companionship. The heart has given up everything, but it has not given up you.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a murabba of only two stanzas, written in the "fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilün" pattern of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre) (fol. 80a). Murabbas are usually written in five to seven stanzas, and the shortest are known to have three; in this respect a text of two stanzas is unusual. It appears in two stanzas in the edition as well, and the pen name (mahlas) does not occur in the poem. In the first stanza the four lines end with the redif (refrain word) "geçmedi" and rhyme on "-enden": tenden, geçenden, benden, senden. The refrain is the line "Geçdi dil her nesneden illâ ki senden geçmedi".

In the second stanza the first two lines rhyme on "-endedür" (gûyendedür, cûyendedür), while the third ends in "bulmadı" and does not join the rhyme. When the absence of the pen name, the small number of stanzas and this missing rhyme are considered together, the possibility arises that the poem was copied incomplete or was left unfinished; this is our own reading, and the text has not been altered.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first stanza is built from beginning to end on the verb "geçmek" (to pass, to give up), and the verb takes on a different meaning in each line. In the first line "cân u tenden geçmek" means giving up one's life, in the second "geçenden geçmek" means giving up the transient world, in the third "benden geçmedi" concerns whether love of the world has left the heart, and in the fourth "senden geçmedi" means not giving up the beloved. The repetition of the same word with different meanings carries both the harmony and the thought of the stanza; the refrain binds this play with a judgement: the heart has given up everything, only not the beloved.

In the second stanza the heart is likened to a nightingale: it recites the praise of the rose face and seeks union on the thorn of affliction. The words "gurbetde sohbet bulmadı" (in exile it found no companionship) in the third line are a complaint that leaves the image of the nightingale and turns to the poet's own state. Kılıç writes that Şâhî regarded the places he went to as exile; in this murabba there is no sign of which place the exile refers to. The words "gûyende" (one who speaks) and "cûyende" (one who seeks) are very close in sound and set side by side the nightingale's state of both singing and seeking.

Bibliography

  • Filiz Kılıç (ed.), Şâhî Dîvânı (Şehzâde Bâyezîd), Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Kütüphaneler ve Yayımlar Genel Müdürlüğü, 2018, e-book p. 145, murabba no. 20 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Efendi, Manzum Eserler 225, fol. 80a); also p. 30 (on the murabbas), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59394,sahi-divanipdf.pdf.
  • İskender Pala - Filiz Kılıç, "Musammat", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 31, Ankara 2020, pp. 233-235, https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/musammat.

Online sources