Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün

Lebüñe öykünelden ġonca-ı ter
Ṣabā ḫışm eyleyüp aġzını yırtır
Hevā-yı ḳaddüñ ile serv gibi
Delürmiş ṭaġlara düşmiş ṣanavber
Görenler ḫaṭṭuñı ḫaddüñde eydür
Benefşe bitürür berg-i gül-i ter
Lebüñüñ ḫaṭṭ-ı reyhānın muḥaḳḳaḳ
Ḫat-ı Yāḳūtdan tercīḥ iderler
Mezārında bite güllerle lāle
Ölürse ruḫlaruñ şevḳi-yle Ca‘fer

In English

1. Ever since the fresh bud tried to imitate your lips, the morning breeze has torn its mouth in anger. (The opening of the bud is likened to the tearing of its mouth.)

2. The pine, like the cypress, has fallen into longing for your stature; it has gone mad and taken to the mountains.

3. Those who see the down on your cheek say, "the fresh rose petal is growing violets".

4. The reyhânî script around your lips they rank, beyond doubt, above the writing of Yâkût.

5. If Ca'fer dies of longing for your cheeks, may roses and tulips grow on his grave.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Calligrapher's Couplet

The fourth couplet seems written with a calligrapher's pen. According to Hüsameddin, Câfer Çelebi learned calligraphy in Amasya from Şeyh Hamdullah, and Müstakimzâde's Tuhfe-i Hattâtîn also names him among calligraphers. The couplet uses three words both as terms of beauty and as terms of calligraphy. "Ḫaṭṭ-ı reyḥān" is the down around the lips, like sweet basil, and it also calls up the script known as reyhânî. The word "muḥaḳḳaḳ" is used in the sense of "beyond doubt", but it is also the name of one of the classical scripts called the six pens. "Ḫaṭ-ı Yāḳūt" is both the line of the ruby-red lips and the writing of Yâqût al-Musta'simî, the great calligrapher who set these scripts to rule. The couplet says that the "writing" on the beloved's face is ranked above that of the greatest calligrapher.

The other couplets rest on images of garden and nature. The bud of the first couplet, because it imitated the beloved's lips, meets the anger of the morning breeze and has its mouth torn; the flower's opening is turned into a punishment. In the second the pine's growing in the mountains is tied to its falling in love with the beloved's stature and taking to the mountains like Mecnûn. In the third the dark down appearing on a cheek like a rose petal is likened to the rose petal growing violets. The roses and tulips growing on the lover's grave in the last couplet are his longing for the beloved's cheeks, which goes on after death.

Its Place in Nazmî

This ground, with the rhyme "-er", fills a crowded section of Nazmî's anthology. After the ghazals of Ahmedî, Nesîmî, Celîlî and Kâsım Paşa, who wrote as Sâfî, comes Kâsım Paşa's ghazal beginning "Saçuñ sünbül yüzüñ berg-i gül-i ter", and Câfer Çelebi's poem is among the responses to it. The same group includes Refîkî, Nâmûsî, Sürûrî-i Müderris, İshak Çelebi of Skopje, Me'âlî, Revânî, Aşkî, Senâyî, Şem'î, Mesîhî, Sehî, Münîr, Süleyman the Magnificent, Nûrî, Câmî-i Emîn and Derûnî. In the anthology the first couplet reads "agzını yırtar" and the third "aydur".

The divan manuscripts differ here at the level of suffixes: Erünsal's thesis gives "reyḥānı" for "reyḥānın" in the Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies of the fourth couplet, and "biter" for "bite" in the Paris and Hâlet Efendi copies of the last.

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. 28 (variants). https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/17182

Official sources

Online sources