Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Zülfini ruḫları üstinde çü pür-çīn eyler
Ol büt-i Çīn ü Ḫaṭā Rum İlini Çīn eyler
Sūzum artar bu ne ḥikmet göricek ‘ārıżını
Āb ḫod ḳanda ise āteşi teskīn eyler
Zülf-i şebdīzi ġamı yaşumı gül-gūn idüben
Beni Ferhād-dil ol ḫüsrev-i şīrīn eyler
Ḫvān-ı ḥüsnini müheyyā görüben ol ṣanemüñ
Sebze-i ḫaṭṭı ile la‘lini tezyīn eyler
Yazıcaḳ gül-yañaġuñ vaṣfını ey lāle-‘ıẕār
Ca‘ferüñ ḳanlu yaşı kāġıdı rengīn eyler

In English

1. When that beauty of China and Cathay makes her tresses curl upon her cheeks, she turns the land of Rum into China.

2. My burning grows when I see her cheek; what wisdom is this? For water, wherever it is, calms fire.

3. That sweet Khusraw, dyeing my tears rose-red with grief for tresses night-black like Shabdiz, makes me Ferhad-hearted.

4. That idol, seeing the table of her beauty laid, adorns her lips with the greenery of her down.

5. O tulip-cheeked one, when Ca'fer writes in praise of your rose-red cheek, his bloody tears colour the paper.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Turning Rum into China

A perfect pun (tam cinas) holds the opening couplet together, and Erünsal cites it as an example of the figure. "Pür-çīn" means full of curls, twisting; the "Çīn" at the end of the second line is the land of China. Two meanings of the same spelling stand side by side at the ends of the two lines. The image of the couplet rests on this play as well: the beloved is one of the beauties of China and Cathay, that is, a musk-scented, black-haired idol; her white face is the land of Rum. When she lets her black, curling tresses fall over her white cheek, she turns the land of Rum into China. In divan poetry Rum is named as the land of whiteness, and China and Cathay as the lands of musk and black hair. Before the refrain "eyler" (makes) stands the rhyme "-īn": pür-çīn, Çīn, teskīn, şīrīn, tezyīn, rengīn.

In the second couplet Erünsal sees an example of Câfer Çelebi's habit of bringing statements accepted as true by everyone into his poetry: water puts out fire. The beloved's cheek is bright and "watery", that is, fresh and luminous; yet the lover's burning, instead of lessening at the sight of it, grows. A truth everyone knows working in reverse gives the couplet a question of wonder: what wisdom is this?

Khusraw and Ferhad

In the third couplet the names from the story of Khusraw and Shirin, seen in another ghazal of the divan as well, are again used with two meanings. Shabdiz is the name of Khusraw's horse and means "night-coloured"; "ḫüsrev-i şīrīn" is both "sweet king" and Khusraw and Shirin. The beloved makes the lover "Ferhad-hearted": Ferhad is the lover who fell in love with Shirin, dug through mountains and died in the end. The beloved's face in the fourth couplet is a table; the lips are its sweets and the down on the cheek its greens.

The ground, in Nazmî's anthology, is Vasfî's ghazal beginning "Dili öldürmege her lahza hatuñ kîn eyler"; Revânî, Şâvûr and Nazmî also wrote on the same ground. Among the divan manuscripts, Erünsal's thesis has the Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies reading "‘ārıżuñı" for "‘ārıżını" in the second couplet and "lebleri" for "la‘lini" in the fourth; in the Paris copy this word is "leblerin".

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • İsmail E. Erünsal (ed.), Tâcî-zâde Ca‘fer Çelebi Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), pp. 357-358, ghazal no. 51. 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), pp. 59 (statements accepted by all), 65 (perfect pun). 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. 51 (variants). https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/17182

Official sources

Online sources