Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün
Sen māha ḳarşu mihrüñ çoḳ itmesün felek ‘arż
Farḳı senüñle anuñ "beyne’s-semāi ve’l-‘arż"
In English
1. O moon-faced one, let the heavens not present their sun too often before you; the difference between you and it is "as between heaven and earth".
Literary and Historical Commentary
An Arabic phrase is set, unchanged, inside a Turkish line. "Beyne's-semâi ve'l-arz" (between heaven and earth) is used to express a great difference between two things; it answers to the Turkish idiom "yerle gök arası", as different as earth and sky. The poet says the difference between the beloved and the sun is that great, and counsels the heavens not to set the sun too often before the beloved, since the comparison will go against the sun.
A pun is hidden in the rhyme. The "‘arz" at the end of the first line means to present, to show; the "arz" at the end of the second is the Arabic word for earth, ground. The two lines, ending in the same sound, are bound together, one speaking of display, the other of the ground. One copy reads the phrase as "ve's-semek" (and the fish); this reading comes close to sayings that recall the fish believed in old cosmology to carry the earth, sayings of the type "from the Pleiades down to the fish", which express a distance from the highest to the lowest. The couplet is found in three copies.
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. 228, matla 17 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 37b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 18b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 4a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014
Online sources
