Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefʿûlü fâʿilâtü mefâʿîlü fâʿilün (metre identified by us)

Gamzen hadengi deldi dili ey kaşı kemân
Bir nâvek ile şîşe deler sanki pehlevân

In English

1. O beloved with bow-shaped brows, the arrow of your glance has pierced my heart; it is as if a champion were piercing glass with a single arrow.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A simile from the archery ground carries the whole couplet. The brow is a bow and the sidelong glance, the gamze, an arrow; "ḫadeng" and "nâvek" are two names for the arrow. The second half of the comparison rests on a feat archers performed to show their skill: piercing glass with a single arrow. Glass cannot be pierced without shattering; only a "pehlevân", a master archer, can do it. The lover's heart is as fragile as glass, but the beloved's glance has gone straight through it at one shot. Likening the heart to glass is common in divan poetry, and the broken glass of the heart is a frequent motif; by tying the image to a display of mastery Sülûkî makes the beloved's glance both merciless and skilled.

Beyânî and Kınalızâde give the couplet in almost the same form; the only difference is that Kınalızâde's text lacks the word "dili", the heart, in the first line. Without it the line does not scan and what the arrow pierced is left unsaid; Beyânî's text has therefore been followed here. In both anthologies the couplet stands alone among the other examples, introduced with "Diger" or "Velehû". The entries of Beyânî and Kınalızâde on Sülûkî are summarised in Sülûkî Mehmed Çelebi (Memî Çelebizâde).

Bibliography

Online sources