Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâ’îlün Mefâ’îlün Fe’ûlün

Gözüm giryân u dil biryân ciger hûn
Terahhum kıl bana hâlüm diger-gûn

In English

1. My eye weeping, my heart roasted, my liver blood; have mercy on me, my state has changed (for the worse).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The seventeenth single couplet is written in the "mefâ'îlün mefâ'îlün fe'ûlün" pattern. The couplet is musarra' (both lines rhyme): "hûn" and "diger-gûn" rhyme. The first line also has an internal rhyme: "giryân" and "biryân" end in the same sound and divide the line into two equal halves. This inner balance of sound, resembling the rhymed prose called seci', gives the couplet the rhythm of a lament. There is no folio mark in the edition.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first line consists of three short nominal sentences without verbs: the eye weeps, the heart has been roasted, the liver is blood. These three organs are, in classical poetry, the three seats in which the pain of love settles. The eye sheds tears, the heart burns in the fire of love, and the liver fills with blood. Dropping the predicates quickens the speech and lets it read like the broken complaint of a sick man. The second line ties this picture to a supplication: "Terahhum kıl" (have mercy, take pity) and "hâlüm diger-gûn" (my state has changed, has been ruined). "Diger-gûn" means "of another colour" in Persian and is used for a state changed for the worse, a wretched condition. A tenasüp (congruence of images) is formed among the words "giryân" (weeping), "biryân" (roasted) and "hûn" (blood) through water, fire and blood; weeping and burning also form a tezat (antithesis). The couplet addresses someone without saying who it is.

Historical Context

The rhyme pattern and wording of this single couplet overlap strikingly with two other couplets of Şâhî. The opening couplet that Kılıç quotes from Hasan Çelebi's tezkire (biographical anthology of poets), not found in the divan, runs: "Derd-i hecrünle şehâ hâl diger-gûn olıyor / Dil perîşân u gözüm kâsesi pür-hûn olıyor". There too "diger-gûn" rhymes with "hûn", and "dil" (heart) and "göz" (eye) are named together. Şâhî's thirteenth Persian ghazal also opens with "Derd ü belâ vü gam şod hâsıl merâ zi-gerdûn / Yâ Rab çi çâre sâzem şod hâl-i men diger-gûn" and uses the rhyme "ciger-hûn" in its third couplet; Kılıç records that this ghazal was made into a tahmis by Çeşmî. That the three texts are written on the same rhyme ground suggests that this single couplet may be one of the attempts made on that ground; this is our conjecture. The presence of the address "şehâ" (O shah) in the opening couplet of the tezkire suggests that the same plea may have been directed to a ruler; but in the single couplet itself there is no sign of the addressee.

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. 17 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Efendi, Manzum Eserler 225); also p. 26 (the opening couplet in Hasan Çelebi's tezkire), pp. 42-43 (Çeşmî's tahmis on Persian ghazal no. 13), p. 161 (Persian ghazal no. 13), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59394,sahi-divanipdf.pdf.

Online sources