Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe’ilâtün Fe’ilâtün Fe’ilâtün Fe’ilün

Kâkülin barmagına her kaçan ol yâr tolar
Bûy-ı misk ile mu’attar olup âfâk tolar

In English

1. Whenever that beloved winds his forelock round his finger, the horizons are perfumed with the scent of musk and are filled.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The fourteenth single couplet is written in the "fe'ilâtün fe'ilâtün fe'ilâtün fe'ilün" pattern; in Kılıç's survey it is one of the two Turkish single couplets written in this pattern, the other being the fifth. In the edition the folio mark [64b] stands at the end of the second line. The redif (refrain word) of the couplet is "tolar". The rhyme words before the redif, "yâr" and "âfâk", meet only in the long "â" sound, and their final consonants (r and k) differ; in this respect the rhyme is weak. This observation is our own. The couplet's music is gathered in the redif: the two words "tolar" are identical in writing and different in meaning.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The "tolar" of the first line comes from the Old Turkish verb "tolamak" (to wind, to wrap): the beloved winds his forelock round his finger. The "tolar" of the second line comes from "tolmak" (to fill): the horizons fill with the scent of musk. The use of the redif in two different senses from two different verbs is a full cinas (pun), and the whole couplet is built on this cinas. In divan poetry the beloved's hair or forelock is likened to musk for its black colour and its fragrance. Musk, a precious scent obtained from the musk deer of Central Asia, is in classical poetry the symbol both of blackness and of sweet scent. From a small gesture, the beloved winding the forelock with his finger, the poet draws a result on the scale of the world: all the horizons fill with fragrance. This exaggeration is a typical example of mübalağa (hyperbole); more precisely, it is an iğrak, since it is conceivable to the mind but impossible in ordinary experience. There is a tenasüp (congruence of images) among the words "kâkül" (forelock), "misk" (musk), "bûy" (scent) and "mu'attar" (perfumed). The phrase "her kaçan" (whenever) presents the event as a repeated habit; as often as the beloved plays with his forelock, the world is perfumed anew. The light and cheerful tone of the couplet sets it apart from the sorrowful voice of the other single couplets on the same leaf. The forelock appears elsewhere in Şâhî's single couplets: in the second, each strand of the dishevelled forelock looks like a snake to the lover's eye, and in the sixth it is a curtain of night covering the cheek. In this single couplet the forelock is neither frightening nor veiling but a power that makes the world lovelier. There is no indication of whom the couplet was written for.

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. 14 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Efendi, Manzum Eserler 225, mark [64b] at the end of the second line); also p. 29 (survey of metres), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59394,sahi-divanipdf.pdf.

Online sources