Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Ṣanmañuz kim terk-i cān itmek baña āsān degül
Hīç anuñçün ġam yiyem mi cān durur cānān degül
Ḳatı düşvār oldı ḥālüm bilmezem kim n’eyleyem
Görmemek müşkil seni görmek daḫi āsān degül
Sūz-ı dilden ṣu olan şol ḳanlu peykānlar durur
Bu dökilenler gözümden ḳaṭre ḳaṭre ḳan degül
Zāhidā ḳorḳutma sen nār-ı cehennemle beni
Hey cehennemden ne ġam çün āteş-i hicrān degül
N’eyler aġzında meh-i nevden taḥayyür barmaġı
Ca‘ferā ḥüsnine yāruñ ger felek ḥayrān degül

In English

1. Do not think that giving up my soul is not easy for me; shall I grieve over it at all? It is the soul, not the beloved.

2. My state has grown very hard, I do not know what to do; not to see you is difficult, and to see you is not easy either.

3. What pours from my eye drop by drop is not blood; it is those bloody arrowheads turned to water by the burning of the heart.

4. O ascetic, do not frighten me with the fire of hell; what is hell to grieve over? It is not the fire of separation.

5. O Ca'fer, if the sky is not amazed at the beloved's beauty, why does it hold the new moon in its mouth like a finger of astonishment?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Not to See Is Hard, to See Is Not Easy

The second couplet states, in two short judgements, the situation from which the lover cannot escape: not to see the beloved is hard, and to see her is not easy either. Not seeing brings the pain of separation, seeing the burning of nearness. The line is an unadorned sentence of speech, with two opposed verbs side by side. The refrain is "degül" (is not); "-ān" carries the rhyme: āsān, cānān, āsān, ḳan, hicrān, ḥayrān. The word "āsān" (easy) is the rhyme twice, in the opening and second couplets.

The opening couplet draws a judgement from the closeness in sound between "cān" (soul) and "cānān" (beloved). Giving up the soul is not hard for the lover; for the soul that goes is not the beloved. For the lover the real loss is losing the beloved; his own soul is of no account beside her.

A Finger in the Mouth

The pen-name couplet carries a gesture of astonishment to the sky. Putting one's finger to one's mouth, "biting the finger", is a known sign of amazement. The thin new moon seen in the sky is likened to a finger the sky has put to its mouth; the couplet asks what this "taḥayyür barmaġı", finger of astonishment, would be doing in the sky's mouth had it not been amazed at the beloved's beauty. The fourth couplet is an answer to the ascetic: hell does not frighten the lover, for to one who has tasted the fire of separation the fire of hell is small.

In the third couplet the KTB printing reads "Sūz-ı dilden ṣu olan ḳanlu peykānlar durur"; in this form the line falls out of the metre. Erünsal's thesis has "ṣu olan şol ḳanlu", and the text has been completed with this reading. In the thesis this ghazal rests only on the Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies. Nazmî gives the ghazal within a long series attached to Ahmed Paşa's ghazal with the opening "Sebzede sünbül mi var bu zülfe ser-gerdân degül"; it comes after Mahmûd Paşa and Nizâmî and is followed by Zâtî, Muhibbî, Celîlî, Kıvâmî, Müftî-zâde, Gedâyî and Nazmî.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, The Life and Works of Tâcî-zâde Ca‘fer Çelebi, with a Critical Edition of His Dîvân, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1977, vol. 2, ghazal no. 125 (first line of couplet 3; manuscript information). https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/17182

Official sources

Online sources