Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün
Ser-nigūn u sīne-çāk-ı girye-rīz-i tīre-ḥāl
Yaraşur anun ki başa çün ḳalem Ṣāḥib-maḳāl
In English
1. Head bowed, breast split, shedding tears and dark of state: this befits the master of words (Sâhib) who goes on his head like the pen. The arrangement of the second line is not entirely clear; the sense has been built on the likeness of the pen.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Four epithets in the first line draw a portrait of the reed pen: "ser-nigûn" (head bowed), "sîne-çâk" (breast split), "girye-rîz" (shedding tears) and "tîre-hâl" (of darkened state). As it writes, the pen's head is down, its nib is split down the middle, it drips ink and it is blackened with ink. The same epithets belong in divan poetry to the lover who suffers the pain of love: head bowed, breast torn, eyes wet, his state in ruins. Pen and lover are thus joined in a single portrait.
In the second line the pen name is hidden inside a compound. "Sâhib-makâl" means master of words, one whose speech is apt; it can also be read as "Sâhib's words". Saying that this state befits the master of words who walks on his head like a pen, the poet names himself both lover and pen. The pen walking on its head is an image also worked in Sâhib's first rubai. No copy but Istanbul University's T. 738 gives this couplet.
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 21 (Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 4a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014
Online sources
