Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ger gözüm üzre ḳadem baṣṣa o ḫurşīd-i cemāl
Ḥalḳa-i çeşmümi sāḳiye iderdüm ḫalḫāl
Nice ‘arż eyleyeyüm ża‘fumı kim feryādum
Gūşına girmez o meh-rūnun ölürsem de ḫayāl
Rūze-dārān-ı ġama oldı ḫaṭuñ vaḳt-i ġurūb
‘Ārıż-ı nūr misāl ise ṣabāḥ şevvāl
Merkez-i vaḥdet olur dā’ire-i keṡretden
Noḳṭa-i nūn-ṣıfat ḥalḳa-i zülf içre o ḫāl
Bize göstermeye Ḥaḳ ol mehüñ eksikligini
Ayırmaya devlet-i ḫurşīd cemāline zevāl
Gözle pā-mālüñ olan dilleri ey zülf-i siyeh
Manẓarı ṣadr-nişīnānuñ olur ṣaff-ı ni‘āl
Nev-be-nev bir güzelüñ naḳş-ı ḫaṭ u ḫāli ile
Ṣāḥibā ṣafḥa-i dil oldı çü levḥ-i remmāl

In English

1. If that sun-beautiful one set foot upon my eye, I would make the ring of my eye an anklet (halhal) for her leg.

2. How shall I lay my weakness before her, when my cry does not enter that moon-faced one's ear, even if I die and become a phantom. (The closing word "hayal" may mean either remaining like a ghost after death or being seen only in a dream.)

3. For those who fast in sorrow your down has become the hour of sunset, the breaking of the fast; your cheek, like light, is the morning of Shawwal, the morning of the feast.

4. That mole within the ring of the curl, like the dot of the letter "nûn", becomes the centre of unity out of the circle of multiplicity.

5. May God not show us the waning of that moon; may He not allot decline to the fortune of her sun-like beauty.

6. O black curl, look after the hearts you have trampled underfoot; those who sit in the seat of honour have the shoe-row by the door before their eyes. The couplet does not settle into a sure meaning: it may say that the place of trampled hearts is the shoe-row, yet the eyes of those at the top are on it.

7. O Sâhib, with the pattern of down and mole of a new beauty each time, the page of the heart has become like the geomancer's board (filled with lines and dots).

Literary and Historical Commentary

The pen-name couplet ends with a likeness taken from a branch of divination. Geomancy (remil) is the art of foretelling by drawing dots and lines on sand or on a board and reading the figures they make; the remmâl is the man who uses this board. Sâhib's heart-page, too, has been filled by the "hat" and "hâl" of each new beauty. "Hat" is both the down on the cheek and a line; "hâl" is both a mole and a dot. So the traces left by the faces of beauties become the lines and dots of the geomancer's board.

The same play of dot and circle is tied a few lines earlier to a mystical idea. In Arabic script the letter "nûn" is shaped like a half-circle and its dot falls in its very middle. The ring of the curl is likened to this circle, the mole within it to the dot. The single point in the middle of the circle of multiplicity (kesret) is the centre of unity (vahdet); a small mole on the beloved's face turns into a sign that points to the oneness within the multitude of things.

Couplet three borrows the calendar of Ramadan. For lovers who keep the fast of sorrow, the down appearing on the beloved's face is the dark of evening, the hour of breaking the fast; the bright cheek is the first morning of the month of Shawwal, the feast. The coming of the down is often treated in divan poetry as the end of beauty; here it is turned into the good news that the fasting man waits for.

The halhal with which the poem opens is the ring women wore round the ankle. The lover likens the round hollow of his eye to this anklet and wishes to put it on the beloved's foot.

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. 174, ghazal 73 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 28a; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 12a; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 18a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources