Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâ’îlün Mefâ’îlün Fe’ûlün

Nice mest olmasun her lahza çeşmün
Lebün gibi öninde bâdesi var

In English

1. How could your eye not be drunk at every moment, when it has wine before it, just like your lip?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This couplet is the fourth of the nineteen Turkish single couplets that Kılıç's edition gathers under the heading "Müfredler". In classical poetry a müfred is a couplet written on its own, not as part of a longer poem; the name is given to independent couplets, rhymed or unrhymed, that are collected at the ends of divans. In the only manuscript of the Şâhî Dîvânı the single couplets follow the Turkish nazm; Kılıç notes that the divan is not arranged in the usual order and that this section includes one Persian couplet among the Turkish ones. The couplet is written in the "mefâ'îlün mefâ'îlün fe'ûlün" pattern. In Kılıç's survey of metres six Turkish single couplets are counted in this pattern. There is no rhyme between "çeşmün" and "bâdesi var"; the couplet belongs to the type of müfred whose meaning is complete in itself but whose lines do not rhyme. In the edition there is no folio mark beside this couplet; it comes after the [63a] mark placed beside number 2.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet takes up one of the commonest images of divan poetry, the beloved's "mest" eye, languid and drowsy as if drunk. The poet finds a poetic cause for this languor: since the eye sits above the lip on the face, it sees the lip "before" it, and the red, intoxicating lip is a cup of wine. An eye that always has wine before it is naturally drunk at every moment. Putting an imagined cause in place of the real one in this way is a typical example of hüsn-i talil (poetic aetiology). A clear tenasüp (congruence of images) is formed between the words "mest" (drunk), "bâde" (wine) and "leb" (lip). The comparison of the lip to wine rests on the classical habit of naming the lip together with "mey" both for its colour and for its intoxicating taste. The word "öninde" also works in two ways: in terms of position on the face it means "in front of, below", and in terms of the order of a drinking party it means a cup "set before" someone. This double sense is our own reading. "Nice" here forms a question with the Old Turkish sense of "how" and gives the couplet a tone of wonder. Neither the couplet nor the edition gives any indication of whom it 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. 147, single couplet no. 4 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Efendi, Manzum Eserler 225); also p. 27 (arrangement of the divan), p. 29 (survey of metres), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59394,sahi-divanipdf.pdf.
  • Kâzım Yetiş, "Beyit (İran ve Türk Edebiyatı)", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 6, İstanbul 1992, p. 66. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/beyit

Online sources