Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Sırr-ı ‘ışḳı ṭuymaḳ isterseñ göñül üstāda gel
Ḫüsrev ü Şīrīn oḳursañ ḫidmet-i Ferhāda gel
Mevsim-i gül irdi ey dil cūşa gel bülbül gibi
Ḫvāb-ı ġafletden uyanup nāle vü feryāda gel
Dest-i ‘āşıḳdan şarāb-ı ‘ışḳı nūş it zāhidā
Var riyā vü zerḳi terk it mürşid-i irşāda gel
‘Asker-i ġam ḳılmasun cān mülkini şāhum ḫarāb
Ḳıl ḳadem rence göñül taḫtını ‘adl ü dāda gel
Ca‘ferā sen yār işigine düşüp yaṣdanıgör
Raḥm idüp şāyed diye kim derdmend üftāda gel

In English

1. O heart, if you wish to learn the secret of love, come to the master; if you read Hüsrev and Şirin, come to the service of Ferhad.

2. O heart, the season of the rose has come; surge like the nightingale; wake from the sleep of heedlessness and come to moaning and lament.

3. O ascetic, drink the wine of love from the lover's hand; go, give up hypocrisy and deceit, and come to the guide who shows the right way.

4. My king, let not the army of grief lay waste the realm of the soul; take the trouble to come to the throne of the heart, to justice and right.

5. O Ca'fer, fall at the beloved's threshold and make it your pillow; perhaps she will take pity and say, "Come, you poor fallen sufferer, come."

Literary and Historical Commentary

Invitations with the Refrain "Come"

Each couplet is an invitation made to someone, and the refrain is "gel" (come): the heart is called to the master and to Ferhad's service, to lament like the nightingale; the ascetic to the guide; the king to the throne of the heart; and in the pen-name couplet the lover hopes that the beloved will say "come" to him. The rhyme is built with "-āda": üstāda, Ferhāda, feryāda, irşāda, dāda, üftāda. The voice that invites becomes, in the last couplet, a voice waiting to be invited.

The opening couplet proposes a reading of literature. Whoever reads the story of Hüsrev and Şirin should learn the secret of love not from the ruler Hüsrev but from Ferhad, who cut through the mountain for Şirin. The true lover of the story is not the owner of the throne but poor Ferhad, who gave his labour; and the lover is called to enter his service.

Justice for the Throne of the Heart

The fourth couplet reads like a petition addressed to a ruler. The army of grief has entered the realm of the soul and is plundering it; the lover asks his king, that is, the beloved, to take the trouble to sit on the throne of the heart and dispense "‘adl ü dād", justice and right. The idea that a land is saved from plunder only by the coming of its rightful ruler is close to the language of a poet in state service. The ascetic of the third couplet is called to give up hypocrisy and deceit and come to the guide who shows the true way, that is, to the wine of love offered from the lover's hand.

The "yaṣdanıgör" of the pen-name couplet is an old Turkish imperative form: "make it your pillow, just lay your head on it". The lover must fall at the beloved's threshold and make it his pillow, so that the beloved may perhaps take pity and say to him "come, poor fallen sufferer". As Erünsal's thesis notes, the ghazal is missing from the main manuscripts of the divan; it appears in the anthologies Istanbul University Library T.Y. 752 (55b) and Süleymaniye Library Fatih 4078 (28a). Nazmî's anthology does not have it either.

Bibliography

  • İsmail E. Erünsal (ed.), Tâcî-zâde Ca‘fer Çelebi Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), pp. 419-420, ghazal no. 126. https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/TR-211662/taci-zade-cafer-celebi-divani.html
  • 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. 126 (source anthologies: Istanbul University Library T.Y. 752, 55b; Süleymaniye Library Fatih 4078, 28a). https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/17182

Online sources