Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Münşī-i ‘aşḳ ki sulṭānumı ser-nāme yazar
Bende-i maḫlaṣı imżā gibi encāma yazar
Naḳş-ı yārı yazıcaḳ ġāzeger-i endīşe
Eyleyüp vesme süveydāyı aña şāma yazar
Oldı timar kurā-yı varaḳ ābād bize
Ḫāliyā ḳaydımuzuñ baş ḳalemi ḫāme yazar
Ḳaddine mıṣra‘-ı ber-ceste dimek enseb iken
Sehv idüp kimi elif kimi sehī-ḳāme yazar
Kahramān-nāme-i çeşmin oḳı bir kez yārüñ
Heft-ḫāne bedel anda nice hengāme yazar
Başḳa bir bü’l-‘aceb efsānedür efsāne-i ‘aşḳ
Ne tevārīḫ-i selef anı ne şeh-nāme yazar
Ṣāḥibā dāḫil-i germ-ābe-i ‘aşḳ olmaġla
Ṣūret-i Ḳaysı yazan ‘ārī vü bī-cāme yazar

In English

1. The secretary of love writes my sultan as the heading of the letter; he writes the pen name of his servant at the end, like a signature.

2. When the cosmetic painter of thought paints the beloved's image, he makes the black core of the heart into eyebrow dye for him and writes it as the black of evening.

3. The villages of the paper leaves have become our fief and prospered; for now the pen writes as chief clerk of our register.

4. While it would be more fitting to call his stature "a well-turned line", some mistakenly write "elif", others "cypress-statured".

5. Read once the Kahramannâme of the beloved's eye; instead of the Seven Labours, it writes many an adventure there.

6. The tale of love is quite another, a strange tale; neither the histories of the ancients write it nor the Shahnameh.

7. O Sâhib, since he has entered the bathhouse of love, whoever draws the image of Qays (Majnun) draws him naked and without clothes.

Literary and Historical Commentary

With "yazar" (writes) as its redif (refrain word), the ghazal draws most of its images from the world of writing and the pen. The first couplet uses the layout of an Ottoman letter: the secretary of love writes the beloved, the sultan, at the head of the letter as the "ser-nāme"; the poet's pen name stands at the end of the letter like a signature. This suggests that the ghazal itself is built like a letter: it opens with the beloved and closes with the pen name.

The third couplet carries the language of the bureaucracy into poetry. The villages of the paper leaves have been granted to the poet as a fief (tımar), and the chief clerkship, the "baş kalem", that keeps the register of these villages falls to the pen. The words fief, village, register and chief clerk carry the mark on the poet of a life spent among registers and patents. In the fourth couplet writing turns into a debate about comparison: it is wrong to call the beloved's upright stature "elif" or "cypress-statured"; the right thing is to call it a "ber-ceste mısra", a line that sits perfectly in place.

The fifth and sixth couplets pass to the world of epic: the beloved's eye is a Kahramannâme and tells countless adventures in place of Rustam's Seven Labours; but the tale of love can be written neither by histories nor by the Shahnameh. A witticism waits in the last couplet: whoever enters the bathhouse of love is naked, and that is why those who draw the picture of Majnun draw him naked and without clothes. The story of Majnun wandering unclothed in the desert after losing his mind gains a new reason through the image of the bathhouse. The Ali Emîrî copy lacks the sixth couplet and the T. 738 copy the fourth.

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. 109, ghazal 15 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 15b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 4b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 9b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources