Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün

O perīden bize ne ḫande ne düşnām oldı
Dil ne şāyeste-i kām oldı ne nā-kām oldı
Leb-i nāzik-ter-i şīrīnini aldum dehene
İki ḥarf-i mütecānis gibi idġām oldı
Cem‘ olup zülfüñe diller heves-i rūyuñ ile
Reh-i Şehbāya gider ḳāfile-i Şām oldı
Gāh mānend-i nigīn ü gehi çün seng-i mezār
Sebeb-i çākī-i sīnem heves-i nām oldı
Çeküp āġūşa o sīmīn-ten-i nāzik bedeni
Ṣāḥibā sīnemüz āyīne-i endām oldı

In English

1. From that fairy came to us neither a laugh nor a curse; the heart was neither made worthy of its desire nor left without it.

2. I took her delicate, sweet lip into my mouth; like two letters of the same kind, they were merged in assimilation (idgâm).

3. Gathering in your curl with longing for your face, the hearts became a caravan of Damascus (Şam) going on the road to Şehbâ (Aleppo).

4. Now like a seal-stone, now like a gravestone, the longing for a name has been the cause of the gashes in my breast.

5. O Sâhib, as we drew that silver-bodied, delicate form into our embrace, our breast became the mirror of her figure.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The second couplet describes a kiss with a term taken from Arabic grammar and the rules of Qur'an recitation. "İdgâm" (assimilation) is the merging of one letter into another when two identical or closely related letters meet, so that they are read as a single doubled letter. Sâhib likens the lips to two "mütecânis" letters, letters of the same kind: when the lover's lip touches the beloved's, the two merge like a single letter. That a scholar trained in the madrasa should describe the most intimate moment through a rule of grammar is the most striking find of the ghazal.

The third couplet returns to the Aleppo-Damascus contrast of the first couplet of ghazal 83. In Arabic Aleppo is given the epithet "Şehbâ" (the white, the grey); Şam, Damascus, means evening in Turkish. The hearts gathered in the black curl are a caravan of Damascus, and their destination is the whiteness of the face, Şehbâ. There the heart moved from Aleppo to Damascus; here the caravan of Damascus sets out on the road to Aleppo.

The fourth couplet, too, recalls another couplet of the divan. In the pen-name couplet of ghazal 74 the seal-stone (nigîn) and the gravestone stand side by side, both of them stones on which a name is engraved. Here the poet likens the gashes in his breast to the writing cut into these two stones: the longing for a name has carved his breast like a seal-stone and split it like a gravestone. That the same image is drawn in two directions in two different ghazals shows Sâhib reworking his finds in different settings.

The first couplet says that receiving no response at all from the beloved leaves the lover neither hopeful nor hopeless; "kâm" and "nâ-kâm" (with and without one's desire) express this suspense in opposing words.

Bibliography

  • Meral Topal, Pîrî-zâde Mehmed Sâhib Hayatı, Edebî Kişiliği, Eserleri ve Divanı'nın Tenkitli Metni, MA thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2004, p. 214, ghazal 112 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 35b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 17b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 25a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources