Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Taḫte-pūş-ı sinemüñ müjgānuñ ey meh mīhidür
Ya kebāb-ı nār-ı ġamdur dil anuñ ol sīhidür
İtmege tekmīl-i naḳż-ı kīmyā-yı ‘aşḳ-ı yār
Rūḥ-ı zībāḳ pūte-i dil ḫāk-i cesed-i zırnıhīdür
Ser-be-gerdūn bī-ḫazān bir servdür kim naḫl-i āh
Dil zemīni eşk cūyı şerḫalarsa bīhidür
Tīġ-i ebrūsın gören itmez mi mehden ḳaṭ‘-ı mihr
Çeşmi zīra āsumān-ı ṭal‘atüñ Mirrihidür
Ṣāḥibā ol şūḫuñ itmām-ı kitāb-ı ḥaseniñ
Ḫaṭṭ-ı püşt-i la‘li gūyā mıṣra‘-ı tārīḫidür

In English

1. O moon (faced one), your eyelashes are the nails of the plank covering of my breast; or else the heart is a kebab of the fire of grief, and (your eyelashes) are its skewer.

2. To complete the transmutation of the alchemy of love for the beloved, the soul is mercury, the heart the crucible, and the earth of the body is arsenic.

3. The sapling of sighs is a cypress that knows no autumn, its head touching the sky; the heart is its soil, and the streams of tears, if we explain it, are its root.

4. Will not whoever sees the sword of his eyebrow cut off love from the moon? For his eye is the Mars of the sky of his face.

5. O Sâhib, at the completion of the book of beauty of that coquette, the down above his ruby lip is as if it were the chronogram line.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The second couplet of the ghazal describes love in the language of alchemy. In the alchemists' effort to transform one substance into another, the soul is mercury (zībaḳ), the heart is the melting crucible (pūte), and the earth of the body is arsenic. Mercury, crucible and arsenic are known elements of the old alchemical operations; Sâhib describes love's transformation of the lover through this scene from the laboratory. The first couplet likewise offers two images from different crafts: the eyelashes are either nails driven into the plank covering of the breast or the skewers of the heart roasted as kebab in the fire of grief.

The fourth couplet is built with heavenly bodies. Topal points to the second line of this couplet as a place where a link is made between the beloved's eyes and the star Mars (Mirrîh), the beloved imagined as the moon being named in congruence with the other elements of the heavens. In the old view of the heavens Mars is the planet of war and blood; when the face is a sky and the eye that sky's bloody planet, the eyebrow's being a sword also finds its place.

The pen-name couplet makes a comparison fitting for Sâhib's divan, full of chronograms. Beauty is a book, and when the book is completed, as in old manuscripts, a chronogram line is set at its end; the down appearing above the lip is the chronogram line announcing that the book of beauty is finished. The ghazal was not included in the Istanbul University T. 1710/6 copy.

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. 116, ghazal 20 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 17b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 8b); also p. 26 (couplet 4). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources