Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün
Naḫl-i vücūdı tīşe-i ġam erre gider
Neccār-ı rūzgāruñ elinde keser biçer
In English
1. The axe of grief and the saw go into the tree of existence; in the hands of time's carpenter the adze cuts and saws.
Literary and Historical Commentary
A whole carpenter's workshop is set up in the couplet, with all its tools: "tîşe" is an axe or adze, "erre" a saw, "neccâr" a carpenter, and "keser" both an adze and the verb "to cut". Man's existence is a tree; grief goes into this tree with axe and saw, and time, like a carpenter, cuts it and saws it up. The phrase "keser biçer" in the last line joins in a single word the name of a tool and the name of a task; the same sound calls up both the tool called keser and the work it does.
The couplet also works with the sense of "rûzgâr" as time. In Sâhib's ghazal 90 the wind of time burned and scattered noble hearths; here time is a craftsman who saws up a human life like timber. Likening the human body to a tree and life to its felling is common in divan poetry; what sets this matla apart is the detailed use of the carpenter's vocabulary. Neither of the other two copies includes the carpenter's couplet; the text depends on 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. 224, matla 4 (Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 3b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014
Online sources
