Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün

‘Āşıḳuñ şimdi benem mātemin iden ölicek
Kim ider āh benüm mātemümi ben ölicek
Yār ḳalḳup gele mi öldügüñ işitse raḳīb
Ne olur şöyle ḳıyāmet mi ḳopar sen ölicek
Yuñ gülāb ile tenüm lāleden eyleñ kefenüm
Yüzi gül ḫaddi ‘arak-rīz ġamından ölicek
Beni ḳomaz ki yatup yār işiginde ölem
Yatacaḳ yir göreyin bulmaya düşmen ölicek
Dōstlar küşte-i ‘ışḳ olduġı şükrāneye siz
Ca‘ferüñ eylemeñüz üstine şīven ölicek

In English

1. Now, when a lover dies, it is I who mourn for him; ah, when I die, who will mourn for me?

2. The rival: "If she heard that you had died, would the beloved rise and come? What would happen, would doomsday break out when you die?"

3. When I die of grief for the rose-faced one with sweat on her cheek, wash my body with rose water and make my shroud of tulips.

4. He will not let me lie at the beloved's threshold and die; when the enemy dies, may I see him find no place to lie.

5. Friends, when Ca'fer dies, in thanks that he has become a martyr of love, do not wail over him.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Funeral Testament

The ghazal is built on a lover contemplating his own death, and its refrain is "ölicek", "when [one] dies". The opening couplet speaks of the lover's loneliness: until now it is he who has mourned the lovers who died; but when he himself dies there will be no one left to mourn him. The third couplet is a funeral testament and rebuilds the custom of washing and shrouding the dead with spring flowers. The dead are washed with water and shrouded in white cloth; the lover, however, asks to be washed with rose water and for a shroud of tulips. The red of the tulip recalls the bloody shroud of a martyr of love.

The pen-name couplet completes this thought. Ca'fer has become a martyr of love; he asks his friends not to wail over him but to give thanks. Expecting thanksgiving rather than mourning for martyrs rests on a view that counts martyrdom a happiness; the lover applies this view to the martyr of love. The rhyme words end in "-en": iden, ben, sen, ġamından, düşmen, şīven.

Would She Rise and Come?

The second couplet reports the rival's mocking question. If the lover dies, will the beloved rise and come, will doomsday break out at his death? The words "ḳalḳmak" (to rise) and "ḳıyāmet" (doomsday) share a sense of rising: doomsday is the day when the dead rise. The rival sees the beloved's "rising and coming" as just as impossible as the breaking out of doomsday. The lover curses the rival in the fourth couplet: the rival does not let him lie and die at the beloved's threshold; when he too dies, may he find no place to lie, that is, no grave.

The variants touch almost every couplet. The Cairo and Manchester copies read "Dōst" (friend) for "Yār" (beloved) in the second couplet. The second line of the third couplet takes the form "ol gülüñ ḫadd-i ‘araḳ-rīzi" in the Paris, Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies. In the fourth couplet the Paris copy has "dilber" for "yār", and the Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies "devlet". The Paris, Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies read "ide" for "ider" in the opening couplet. The ghazal was not taken into Nazmî's anthology.

Bibliography

Online sources