Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Iżṭırāb-ı şevḳ ile şol günedür kim ḥālimüz
Ḫāne-i sīm-āb ider āyīneyi tims̱ālimüz
Añlaruz evṣāf-ı ḥüsn-i ḫaṭṭ-ı yāri ḫālden
Perde-dār-ı şāhid-i tafṣīldür icmālimüz
Bāl-i şevḳ açdı per-i tīr-i müjeñle murġ-ı dil
Ey perī tīr-i müjeñdür şimdi mā-fi'l-bālimüz
Şem‘veş āteş-mizāc u şu‘le-pūş olsaḳ n'ola
Mūy-ı sūzān-ı per-i pervānedendür şālımuz
Gāh olur meftūn-ı ġamzeñe esīr-i çeşm-i yār
Ḥaṣr-ı maṭlab eylemez Ṣāḥib dil-i meyyālimüz

In English

1. Our state, with the agitation of longing, is such that our image turns the mirror into a house of quicksilver.

2. We understand the qualities of the beauty of the beloved's down from the mole; our summary is the veil-keeper of the beauty of detail.

3. The bird of the heart has spread the wing of longing with the feather of the arrow of your lashes; O fairy, what is now in our mind (on our wing) is the arrow of your lashes.

4. What if we are fire-tempered and flame-clad like the candle? Our shawl is made from the burning hairs of the moth's wing.

5. Our inclining heart is sometimes enamoured of your sidelong glance, sometimes captive of the beloved's eye; Sâhib, (our heart) does not confine its desire to one thing.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The invention of the opening couplet rests on the making of mirrors. The backs of old mirrors were silvered with quicksilver, and quicksilver is known as a metal that cannot stay still, trembling and sliding. When the image of the lover quivering with longing falls on the mirror, it turns the mirror into a "house of quicksilver": the mirror's backing is already quicksilver, but the lover's trembling image turns it to quicksilver once more. Likening the impatient, restless heart to quicksilver is a known comparison in divan poetry; Sâhib joins it to the backing behind the mirror.

In the second couplet "hâl" and "hat" (mole and down) are paired with two terms of rhetoric: "icmâl" (summary) and "tafsîl" (detail). The mole is the summary of beauty fitted into a single point, and the down its detailed unfolding; the poet says that the summary is a veil-keeper that screens the detail. The third couplet plays with an Arabic phrase: "mâ fi'l-bâl" means "what is in the mind", but in Persian "bâl" also means wing. On the wing of the bird of the heart is the feather of the arrow of the lashes; so what is in its mind and what is on its wing are both the beloved's lashes.

In the fourth couplet the lover likens himself to the candle and presents his garment of flame as a shawl woven from the burnt hairs of the moth's wing. "Hasr" in the pen-name couplet is also a term used in logic and rhetoric for restricting something to a single thing; the inclining heart confines its desire neither to the glance alone nor to the eye alone.

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. 148, ghazal 50 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 21b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 9a; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 13a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources