Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Māye-i sūziş-i dil ruḫda degül rūḥda degül
Bā‘iṡ-i zaḫm-ı derūn çeşmde ebrūda degül
Bülbülüñ bā‘iṡ-i feryādı ṣabā gülşende
Reng ü rūy-ı güli ẓann itdük ise bu da degül
Cism-i pākinde o meh-rūnuñ eṡer yoḳ mūdan
Vaṣf-ı bārīk-i miyānına sezā mūda degül
Añlayan Ḳaysı ḫayāl-i nigeh-i Leylīdür
Tesliyet-baḫş aña dīde-i āhūda degül
Ṣāḥibā ṣunmada rindāna felek rıṭl-ı girān
Ḥiṣṣesi ehl-i dilüñ ḫūn-ı ciger ṣuda degül

In English

1. The leaven of the heart's burning is not in the cheek, nor in the soul; the cause of the inner wound is not in the eye, nor in the eyebrow.

2. The cause of the nightingale's cry in the rose garden is the morning breeze; if we thought it was the colour and face of the rose, it is not that either.

3. On the pure body of that moon-faced one there is no trace of hair; nor is a hair fit to describe her slender waist (the waist is finer than a hair).

4. For one who understands, Kays (Majnun) is consoled by the image of Layla's glance; what gives him comfort is not the eye of the gazelle.

5. O Sâhib, fate is handing heavy cups to the libertines; the share of the people of heart is liver's blood, not what is in the water.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Majnun's friendship with the gazelles of the desert is explained by the likeness between the gazelle's eye and Layla's; in the masnavis that tell the story of Layla and Majnun, he frees a gazelle caught in a hunter's snare because of this resemblance. Here Sâhib reads the well-known scene the other way round: what comforts Kays is not the gazelle's eye but the image of Layla's glance he sees in it. The couplet states most plainly the thought spread through the whole ghazal: what burns the lover is not where it seems to be, but somewhere beyond it.

The refrain "degül" (is not) is therefore the language of a search. The opening couplet finds the leaven of the burning neither in the cheek nor in the soul; in the second, where the rose's colour was thought to make the nightingale weep, the real cause turns out to be the morning breeze. It is the saba that opens the rose and scatters its petals; the nightingale laments not the beauty but the hand that spoils it. The pairing of "ruh" and "rûh" (cheek and soul) is a play on two words written with the same letters.

"Mû" (hair) does two jobs in couplet three: there is no hair on the beloved's smooth body, and a hair is not enough to describe the thinness of the waist. In divan poetry the beloved's waist is thinner than a hair, and often counted as not there at all.

In the closing couplet two copies read "nâ-dâna" (to the ignorant) for "rindâna". With this reading the contrast hardens: fate hands full cups to the ignorant, and liver's blood is left for the people of heart.

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. 173, ghazal 72 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 27a; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 12a; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 17b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources