Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün
Biz o naḫl-i ‘işveden şeftālū eylerdük ümīd
Bāġbān-ı baḫtı gör ṣavdı bizi eyvā ile
In English
1. We hoped for a peach (a kiss) from that sapling of coquetry; look at the gardener of fortune: he sent us off with a quince (with an "alas").
Literary and Historical Commentary
Peach and quince, Sâhib's favourite fruit game, are fitted here into a single couplet. The peach (şeftali) is in Ottoman poetry and everyday speech also the name of a kiss; "eyvâ" calls up both the quince and the cry "alas" (eyvah). The lover hoped for a peach, a kiss, from the sapling of coquetry, that is, from the beloved; but fortune, the keeper of the orchard, sent him off with a quince, that is, with an "alas". In place of the sweet fruit he hoped for came a sour fruit and a lament.
The same game is worked out at greater length in the second couplet of Sâhib's ghazal 77: there the lovers, hoping for a peach from the apple of the chin, spend their days with "eyvâ". This matla is like a short, sharp twin of that couplet; the intervention of fortune as gardener is a new detail. The short twin's only source is T. 738.
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. 229, matla 19 (Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 4a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014
Online sources
