Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün

Zülfüñ beni sebeb ne eyler şikeste-ḫāṭır
Yā Rab şikestelikden ḳurtılmasun o kāfir
Göñlüm gözüm ṭolubdur ḫaṭṭuñ ḫayāli ile
Ṣan Ḫıżrdur k’olubdur yaşda ḳuruda ḥāżır
Māh-ı tamāmı mihrüñ bir şekle ḳoydı k’anuñ
Beş on gün içre ġālib ‘ömri olısar āḫir
Bilmez kimesne ḳadrüm ta gitmeyem cihāndan
Bulmaya nāfe ḳıymet ger olmaya misāfir
Meclisler içre Ca‘fer añılsa vaṣf-ı ḥālüm
Cāmuñ gözi ṭolar yaş raḥm eyleyüp mey acır

In English

1. For what reason do your tresses break my heart? O Lord, may that infidel never be freed of its brokenness.

2. My heart and my eye are both full of the image of your down; it is like Khidr, who is present on wet and on dry.

3. Your love (the sun) has put the full moon into such a shape that its life will most likely end within five or ten days.

4. No one knows my worth until I leave the world; the musk pod, too, finds no value unless it goes on a journey.

5. O Ca'fer, if the account of my state is told at gatherings, the cup's eye fills with tears and the wine turns bitter with pity.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Model Poem

This ghazal, too, stands in Nazmî's anthology as a model poem, under the heading "Ez-ân-ı Tâcî-zâde". İshak Çelebi of Skopje, Zâtî, Helâkî, Hâfız-ı Konevî, Kâbilî, Gubârî and two poems by Nazmî are the responses written to it. The metre of the ghazal is the pattern "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün" of the muzari metre of aruz; each line divides in the middle into two equal halves, and this pause gives the speech a halt, a room to breathe. There is no refrain; the rhyme is built on the sounds "-ır, -ir": ḫāṭır, kāfir, ḥāżır, āḫir, misāfir, acır.

The opening couplet is a prayer in the guise of a curse. The tresses have broken the lover's heart, and the lover curses them: "may it never be freed of its brokenness". But the "brokenness" of the tresses, their being curled ring upon ring, is their beauty; the curse is in fact a wish that the tresses stay curled for ever. Calling the beloved "kāfir" (infidel) also rests on the familiar likeness in divan poetry between the blackness of the tresses and the darkness of unbelief.

Khidr, Musk and Wine That Pities

The second couplet rests on the belief that Khidr comes to the aid of everyone in distress, on sea and on land. "On wet and on dry" means both sea and land and the lover's wet eye and dried-up heart; the image of the green down, like Khidr in his green garment, is present in both. The fourth couplet is built like a proverb: the musk pod (nāfe) gains no value until it leaves Cathay and goes on the road; the lover, too, is a musk whose worth will be known only when he departs this world.

The word "acır" in the pen-name couplet has two meanings: the wine both turns bitter and takes pity on the lover. The cup's eye fills with tears; the wine filling the cup to the brim resembles the tears of a weeping eye. In the Paris copy the words of this line change places, and Erünsal's thesis gives it there as "Cāmuñ ṭolar gözi yaş raḥm eyleyüben āḫir"; the Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies read "olmaya tā" and "olmaya ger" for "ger olmaya" in the fourth couplet.

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

Official sources

Online sources