Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Yüzi açılmış güzelden ḳaçmañuz kim ḫūb olur
Ḫūbdur gül lākin açılsa daḫi maḥbūb olur
Çeşm-i ‘uşşāḳ-ı cihāndur n’ola ter-dāmān ise
Çeşm-i ‘āşıḳ dāmeni ter olmasa ma‘yūb olur
İdelüm ol serve ḳo ey bāġbān peyvend-i şāḫ
Çünki bünyādında ‘ādetdür nebātuñ çūb olur
Kim esīr olmaz buña kim cilve ḳılsa ḫālinüñ
Yıḳmaġa dil ḳal‘asın her noḳṭası bir ṭop olur
Bir gül-i ra‘nādur ol kim bāġa gelse Ca‘ferā
İzine yüz sürmege her serv bir cārūb olur

In English

1. Do not run from a beauty whose face has opened; she will be lovely; the rose is lovely too, but when it opens it becomes still more beloved.

2. She is the pupil of the eye of the world's lovers; what if her skirt is wet? If the skirt of a lover's eye were not wet, that would be a fault.

3. O gardener, let us graft a branch onto that cypress; for it is the custom that a plant has a stem in its making. (The meaning of the couplet is obscure.)

4. Who does not become captive to her mole when it flirts? To tear down the fortress of the heart, every dot of it becomes a cannonball.

5. O Ca'fer, she is such a lovely rose that if she came into the garden every cypress would become a broom to rub its face on her footprints.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Opening Rose

The opening couplet plays on two senses of the verb "açılmak", to open. The rose opens, that is, blooms; the beauty, too, opens, that is, sets aside her shyness and shows her face. The rose is lovely even when closed but becomes more beloved when it opens; one should not run from a beauty whose face has opened either. The refrain is "olur" (becomes), and the rhyme words meet in "-ūb": ḫūb, maḥbūb, ma‘yūb, çūb, ṭop, cārūb. Erünsal counts the word "ṭop" in the fourth couplet among his examples of eye rhyme: in Arabic script its spelling resembles the other rhyme words, but it is pronounced "-op", not "-ūb".

The phrase "ter-dāmān" (wet of skirt) in the second couplet faces two ways. In everyday language to be wet of skirt means to be sinful; in the couplet the "skirt" of the eye, its lower lid, is wet with tears. The wetness of the lover's eye is not a fault but, on the contrary, a necessity; if it were not wet, that would be the fault. So an idiom of blame is turned into the lover's virtue.

A Mole Like a Cannonball

The fourth couplet uses an image from the military technology of its age. The beloved's mole is a dot, and when it flirts each dot becomes a cannonball to tear down the fortress of the heart. The years in which Câfer Çelebi lived were a time when cannon had become decisive in the Ottoman army's sieges; the poet himself took part in the siege of Modon in 1500. In the couplet the likeness between cannonball and mole rests on both being round and black.

The pen-name couplet likens the cypress to a broom; its pointed shape and dense branches recall a broom. When the beloved comes into the garden, every cypress becomes a broom to rub its face on her footprints. The image of grafting and stem in the third couplet is obscure, and the variants gather here too: according to Erünsal's thesis, the Paris, Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies read "dunbālinde" (behind it) for "bünyādında" (in its making) in this couplet, and the Cairo copy "binānuñ" for "nebātuñ". The ghazal has no place 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. 367, ghazal no. 61. 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. 66 and note 294 (eye 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. 61 (variants). https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/17182

Online sources