Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Gördi yaraşduġın ol māh-ı dil-ārāya kemer
Baġladı reşk eyleyüp hāle daḫi aya kemer
Şol ümīde ki nigārını kenārına çeke
Der-miyān eyledi varın ḳodı ortaya kemer
Ney-şeker gibi ser-ā-ser teni şīrīndür anuñ
N’ola baġlansa ger ol serv-i dil-ārāya kemer
Āfitāb feleg-i ḥüsne muḳārīn olalı
Yirde ġālib görinür gökdeki cevzāya kemer
Ca‘ferüñ döndi kemer ḥalḳasını ḳāmeti çün
Gördi muḥkem ṣarılur ol büt-i ra‘nāya kemer

In English

1. Seeing how well the belt became that heart-adorning moon (the beloved), the halo, too, grew jealous and bound a belt round the moon.

2. In the hope of drawing the beloved into its embrace, the belt wrapped itself round her waist and staked all it had.

3. Her body is sweet from end to end like sugar cane; what wonder if a belt is bound round that heart-adorning cypress?

4. Since the sun came into conjunction with the heaven of beauty, the belt on earth looks superior to that of Gemini in the sky.

5. When Ca'fer saw the belt clasping that lovely idol so tightly, his stature turned into the ring of a belt.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Jealousy of a Belt

All the couplets of the ghazal look at one object, the belt round the beloved's waist. The refrain is "kemer" (belt), and in each couplet the belt is either envied, envious, or the thing the lover turns into. First the halo, the ring of light seen around the moon, sees how the belt becomes the beloved's waist, grows jealous and binds a belt round the moon too; the halo in the sky thus turns into an imitation of the belt on earth. The fourth carries the same comparison to the stars: the belt of Gemini, pictured in old astronomy as a belted figure, pales beside the beloved's belt on earth.

The second couplet works two idioms at once. "Kenāra çekmek" means both to embrace and to draw aside, "der-miyān eylemek" both to wrap round the waist and to put into the middle; "varını ortaya koymak", to put all one has in the middle, means to stake everything. The belt is like a lover who has staked all he has in the hope of embracing the beloved by wrapping her waist. The rhyme words are dil-ārāya, aya, ortaya, dil-ārāya, cevzāya and ra‘nāya; the repetition of the same rhyme word in the first and third couplets is an example of the repeated rhyme that Erünsal often finds in Câfer Çelebi's ghazals.

A Stature Turned into a Ring

The third couplet likens the beloved's body to sugar cane; the joints of sugar cane look as though belts were bound round it, and so a belt suits the sweet and slender body. By the pen-name couplet the lover's jealousy has entered his body: the belt clasps the beloved tightly, while the lover cannot. Ca'fer's stature bends with grief and turns into the ring of a belt; in the end the lover has come to resemble the belt, but he is wound not round the beloved's waist but round his own sorrow.

The Cairo copy has "māh-ı" (of the moon) for "serv-i" (of the cypress) in the third couplet, and Erünsal's thesis also records "çeker" for "çeke" in the second in the Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies. This ghazal of the belt is nowhere in Nazmî's anthology.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • İsmail E. Erünsal (ed.), Tâcî-zâde Ca‘fer Çelebi Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), p. 339, ghazal no. 30. https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/TR-211662/taci-zade-cafer-celebi-divani.html
  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Ca‘fer Çelebi'nin Edebî Kişiliği", introduction to Tâcî-zâde Ca‘fer Çelebi Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), p. 65 (repeated rhyme). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

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

Online sources