Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Lebin öpdükce şeker-beste-i ḫoş-fem yarılur
Piste dursun bu ġam-engīz işe ādem yarılur
Lez̤z̤et-i sīb-i zeneḫdānını vaṣf eyler isem
İdemez hażm-ı enāruñ ḳabı ol dem yarılur
Vaṣf-ı ḫaṭṭ-ı ruḫ-ı dil-dārı disem taḥrīr it
Ḳorḫusundan leb-i ḫāme olup ebkem yarılur
Deste-çūb olalı ‘iẕārda ṭābi‘-i tīre
Cinsinüñ naḳḳāḳına ciger-ġam yarılur
Başını ḳorımaz seng-i ḳażādur Ṣāḥib
Ki doḳundukca ser-i ġoncaya şeb-nem yarılur

In English

1. As it kisses your lip, the sweet-mouthed thing made of sugar splits; let alone the pistachio, at this grief-raising matter even a man splits.

2. If I were to describe the taste of the apple of your chin, the pomegranate could not digest it, and its skin would split at that moment.

3. If I said to the pen "write a description of the down on the beloved's cheek", from fear the pen's lip would fall mute and split.

4. Since the dark-natured one (the down) appeared on the cheek like the handle of a stick, the grieving heart splits at the cracking of its kind. (The meaning of the couplet is not certain; the metre of the second line is faulty.)

5. Sâhib, the stone of fate spares no one's head; whenever it touches the head of the rosebud, the dewdrop splits.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Things that split of their own accord in nature or daily life are each given a cause in love. The pistachio opens its shell when ripe, the pomegranate's skin splits, the nib of a pen is already slit, the dewdrop parts in two on the bud. For each of these known events the poet finds a hüsn-i ta'lil (poetic aetiology): the pomegranate cracks because it cannot bear the described taste of the beloved's apple-like chin; the pen's lip splits because it fears the order to describe the down.

The third couplet carries the structure of the pen nib into poetry. When a reed pen is cut, a slit is opened in the middle of its tip, and the ink flows through this slit. Sâhib likens this slit to the state of a person struck dumb with fear, his lip cracked. "Ebkem" means mute; so the pen becomes a witness who falls silent before the beauty it is asked to describe.

The pen-name couplet ties the subject of the ghazal to fate. The stone of fate falls on heads without distinguishing anyone; the splitting of the dewdrop that touches the head of the bud is a small instance of this stone. This delicate scene of bud and dew is built around the same verb as the pipe stem split by envy in the previous ghazal; both ghazals appear only in the same 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. 139, ghazal 41 (Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 10a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources