Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Feyż-i āġūş ile ol dil-ber-i sīmīn-bedeni
Rişte-ber-rişte olur ṣırma teli pīreheni
Leẕẕet-i vaṣlı ile oldı kettān ḥelvāsı
Pīrehen sīneye çekdikde o pākīze-teni
Būy-ı zülfiyle olup ṣaḥn-ı gülistāna vezān
Mareż-ı ra‘şeye uġratdı ṣabā nārveni
Vaṣf-ı ḫaṭṭ u leb-i şīrīnini taḥrīr itsem
Leẕẕetinden ṣulanur kilk ü devātuñ deheni
Şöyle nāzik o büt-i ġonca-leb ü gül-rū kim
Döndi bir būsede durrāḳına sīb-i zeḳanı
Nāfe-i müşg-ṣıfat küşte-i çeşm-i yāre
Perde-i dīde-i āhūdan iderler kefeni
Ṣāḥibā Ka‘be-i āmāline olmaḳda ḳarīn
İdeli ḥāline taḳlīd Süheyl-i Yemenī

In English

1. Through the bounty of embracing that silver-bodied beloved, his shirt turns thread by thread into gold wire.

2. When the shirt drew that pure body to its breast, with the delight of union the linen became linen halva (keten helvası).

3. Blowing into the courtyard of the rose garden with the scent of her curls, the morning breeze brought a trembling sickness on the elm.

4. If I were to write the praise of her down and sweet lip, the mouths of pen and inkwell would water with its sweetness.

5. That rosebud-lipped, rose-faced idol is so tender that in a single kiss the apple of her chin turned into a peach.

6. For the one slain by the beloved's eye, as for the musk-pod, they make a shroud from the veil of the gazelle's eye.

7. O Sâhib, since the star Süheyl of Yemen began to imitate your state, it has stood near the Kaaba of its hopes. The couplet does not fully open; a link between Süheyl's rising on the horizon of Yemen and Yemen's nearness to Mecca can be sensed.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The second couplet turns a well-known sweet of the Ottoman kitchen into a scene of love. Keten helvası (linen halva) is a halva drawn out into fine threads, fibrous like cotton. Sâhib says that the beloved's linen shirt, when it drew that pure body to its breast, turned with the delight of union into "keten helvası". The name of the cloth and the name of the sweet meet in one word, and the shirt becomes something sweet. Divan poetry tells of linen rotting in moonlight; here linen is sweetened by the beloved's skin.

The first couplet is another face of the same image of the shirt. As the silver-bodied beloved is embraced, the threads of his shirt turn into sırma, gold and silver thread. In couplet four the writing set is once more at work: as the pen writes of the down and the sweet lip, the "mouth waters" of pen and inkwell alike. The mouth of the inkwell and the wetness of the ink make the literal sense of the idiom visible.

In the fifth couplet the fruits speak once more. Because of the beloved's tender skin, the apple of the chin turns in a single kiss into a "dürrâk", a peach; the peach is in Ottoman verse also the name of a kiss. One copy uses the word "eyvâ" (quince) in this couplet and changes the fruit game. In couplet six the musk-pod's origin in the deer is turned into the shroud of a lover slain by the eye: just as musk is wrapped in the deer's membrane, the lover killed by the beloved's eye is wrapped in the veil of the gazelle's eye.

The elm (nârven) of the third couplet is a tree whose leaves tremble in the faintest wind; when the morning breeze brings the scent of the curls, the tree is seized by a trembling sickness.

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. 219, ghazal 116 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 36b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 18b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 24b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources