Original Persian Text

Metre: Mefâ’îlün Mefâ’îlün Fe’ûlün

Kemend-endâz-ı ülfet gerd-i nahcîr
Zi müjgân nîst hâcet ber dilem tîr

In English

1. The lasso-thrower of familiarity (has cast his noose) around the prey; there is no need to shoot an arrow of eyelashes at my heart. (Kılıç renders the couplet as "Her hair has thrown a lasso round the prey's neck and wound it. There is no need for the arrow (shot) from her eyebrows into my heart".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The fourth Persian single couplet is written in the "mefâ'îlün mefâ'îlün fe'ûlün" pattern. The couplet is musarra' (both lines rhyme): "nahcîr" and "tîr" rhyme. In the edition the folio mark [64b] stands beside the number; this mark falls among the leaves that hold the Turkish single couplets. In his note to the section Kılıç states that one of the Persian single couplets stands among the Turkish poems in the manuscript; in the introduction, describing the arrangement of the divan, he also says that "one couplet among the single couplets is in Persian". This couplet is that one: Kılıç has taken it from its place in the manuscript and set it among the Persian single couplets. In a footnote he also records that this single couplet is not found in the Persian divançe.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is built on a hunting scene. "Kemend-endâz" means a lasso-thrower, "nahcîr" a quarry and "tîr" an arrow. There is a clear tenasüp (congruence of images) among lasso, arrow and quarry. The first line has no verb; the reader completes the scene in which the lasso-thrower catches the prey. In the second line the lover admits that he has been caught: there is no longer any need to aim at his heart with the arrow of eyelashes. In classical poetry the beloved's eyelashes are likened to arrows, the eyebrows to a bow and the hair to a lasso. Kılıç explains the lasso as the hair and understands the couplet as "Her hair has thrown a lasso round the prey's neck"; the word for hair does not occur in the text, and the lasso is tied to the word "ülfet" (familiarity). We have therefore read the line as "the lasso-thrower of familiarity": what catches the lover is less the beloved's hair than the intimacy and attachment he feels for her. Both readings leave the general sense of the couplet unchanged. Kılıç also renders the word "müjgân" as "eyebrows"; in Persian "müjgân" means eyelashes, the word for eyebrow being "ebrû". We have taken the sense of eyelashes. The fine conceit of the couplet is that the prey announces its own surrender: shooting an arrow at one already caught in the lasso is needless.

Historical Context

Five of the seven Persian single couplets are on pardon and repentance and stand on leaves near the end of the manuscript (90b, 96a, 96b). This couplet, the only Persian single couplet on love, stands in the manuscript among the Turkish single couplets on the beloved, on leaf 64b. This agreement between subject and place in the manuscript suggests that the single couplets may have been recorded in clusters, by subject or by the period in which they were written. This is our conjecture; the edition gives no information on the matter.

Bibliography

  • Filiz Kılıç (ed.), Şâhî Dîvânı (Şehzâde Bâyezîd), Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Kütüphaneler ve Yayımlar Genel Müdürlüğü, 2018, e-book pp. 164-165, Persian single couplet no. 4 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Efendi, Manzum Eserler 225, fol. 64b), note 228 (the couplet's place in the manuscript), 232 (its absence from the Persian divançe and Turkish meaning); also p. 27 (arrangement of the divan), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59394,sahi-divanipdf.pdf.

Online sources