Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Hûb sevmen diyü vâ’iz halka dün pend eyledi
Çekdi mahbûbı nezâketle ‘aceb bend eyledi

In English

1. Yesterday the preacher advised the people, "Do not love the beautiful"; (then) he drew a beloved to him with delicacy, what a strange snare he laid. (The couplet can be read in two ways: the second line can also be understood as "the preacher brought his talk round to the beloved and, strangely, bound his listeners to him".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The thirteenth single couplet is written in the "fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilâtün fâ'ilün" pattern and is the first single couplet on page 149 of the PDF. The couplet is musarra' (both lines rhyme): "pend" and "bend" form the rhyme, and "eyledi" is the redif (refrain word). The rhyme words differ only in their first letter; this small difference between "p" and "b" creates between the two words the incomplete pun known as cinas-ı lâhik. The closeness in sound between advice (pend) and bond or snare (bend) becomes an opposition that carries the whole meaning of the couplet. There is no folio mark in the edition.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet takes as its subject one of the best-loved types of divan poetry, the preacher or the ascetic. In classical poetry the preacher is mocked as a man who tells the people to keep away from beauties and wine but whose deeds do not match his words. In the first line the preacher gives advice from the pulpit: "do not love the beautiful". The second line can be read in two ways. In the first reading, right after his sermon the preacher himself has drawn a beauty to his side "with delicacy" and laid a snare for him; the couplet thus becomes a short, sharp example of the image of the hypocritical ascetic. In the second reading the word "mahbûb" (beloved) is taken as the subject of the preacher's talk: in speaking of beauties he described them so finely that he bound his listeners to them, making desirable the very thing he forbade. That the word "bend" carries the senses of bond, snare and trick makes both readings possible. We have followed the first; the second also fits the text. The word "'aceb" (strange) shows that the poet speaks with the astonishment of a witness. The adverb "dün" (yesterday) also gives the couplet the air of a story; the poem begins not with a general judgement but with a scene that took place yesterday. The pun between pend and bend lets one feel, at the level of sound too, that the advice itself is a snare. Mocking the preacher is a tradition of divan poetry, and there is no sign that this couplet is aimed at any particular person. Kılıç notes that the poems in the divan about beauties and love are few and are woven of set expressions within the general framework of divan poetry; this single couplet is a mocking example of that small group.

Bibliography

  • Filiz Kılıç (ed.), Şâhî Dîvânı (Şehzâde Bâyezîd), Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Kütüphaneler ve Yayımlar Genel Müdürlüğü, 2018, e-book p. 149, single couplet no. 13 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Efendi, Manzum Eserler 225); also p. 40 (poems on beauty and love), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59394,sahi-divanipdf.pdf.

Online sources