Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün
Tirāş itdikce ḫaṭṭın ḥüsni arttırırdı dil-dāruñ
Bahārından ḫazānı ḫoş gelür baña bu gülzāruñ
In English
1. The more the beloved shaved his down, the more his beauty grew; to me the autumn of this rose garden is sweeter than its spring.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Here the down, a set theme of divan poetry, is told through the seasons. The down is thought of as grass greening on the cheek; its growth therefore resembles spring. When the down is shaved, the cheek opens again, and this answers to autumn, when trees shed their leaves. The poet likens the beloved's face to a rose garden and ranks the garden's autumn above its spring, since the beloved grows more beautiful the more he shaves. In this exchange of spring and autumn the comparison reverses the usual place of autumn, which divan poetry associates with sorrow.
The shaving of the down meets us several times in Sâhib's divan: in ghazal 75 the beloved shaves his down at the lovers' entreaty, and in ghazal 114 the shaving is likened to the end of night and the coming of dawn. This matla gives the same scene in a brief likeness of the seasons. The couplet is found in three copies; the only variant lies in the word "itdikce".
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 5 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 37b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 18b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 3b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014
Online sources
