Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün

Çeşmüñ olursa ger n’ola mest-i ḫarāb-ı nāz
Bir ḫastadur kim aña devādur şarāb-ı nāz
Müşkīn raḳamlar itdügi ḥüsnüñ beyāżına
Bu kim yazup çizüp ḫaṭuñ eyler ḥisāb-ı nāz
Ḫalüñ megesleri arasında ‘aceb bu kim
Çeşmüñ olup durur ṣanemā ‘ayn-ı ḫvāb-ı nāz
Ḥall olmaga mesā’ili ḫaṭ yazdı ḥāşiye
Ḥüsnüñ risālesine ki oldur kitāb-ı nāz
Ay alnuñ ile gördi çü Ca‘fer güneş yüzüñ
Didi bu māh-ı fitnedür ol āfitāb-ı nāz

In English

1. What wonder if your eye is a drunkard undone by the wine of coyness? It is a patient whose remedy is the wine of coyness.

2. Your down, writing musk-coloured figures on the white page of your beauty, keeps the account of coyness.

3. O idol, how strange that among the flies of your moles your eye should be the very essence of the sleep of coyness.

4. To solve its problems the down has written a gloss on the treatise of your beauty; for that is the book of coyness.

5. When Ca'fer saw your moon-like brow and sun-like face, he said: "This is the moon of mischief, that the sun of coyness."

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Book of Coyness

Each couplet sets the word "nāz" (coyness) in another construction, and the refrain gathers these in the shared sound group "-āb-ı nāz": the ruin of coyness, the wine of coyness, the account of coyness, the sleep of coyness, the book of coyness, the sun of coyness. The rhyme lies in the first words of these constructions: ḫarāb, şarāb, ḥisāb, ḫvāb, kitāb, āfitāb. The ghazal thus defines coyness in turn as a drink, an account, a sleep and a book. In divan poetry the languor of the eye is described as drunkenness and illness; in the first couplet the beloved's eye is a drunkard undone by the wine of coyness, but also a patient whose remedy is that same wine.

The second and fourth couplets turn to the language of the scribe and the madrasa. The down writes musk-coloured figures on the white page of beauty and keeps an account; the same down writes a gloss on the "treatise" of beauty to solve its problems. Writing explanatory notes in the margins of the treatises read in the madrasa was a familiar practice; Câfer Çelebi carries it onto the beloved's face. The moles of the third couplet resemble flies settling on a sleeper's face; the eye is "‘ayn-ı ḫvāb-ı nāz", the very essence of the sleep of coyness and at the same time the eye of sleep.

On Ahmed Paşa's Ground

Ahmed Paşa's ghazal beginning "Çeksün müdâm nergis-i mestüñ şarâb-ı nâz" heads a group of responses in Nazmî's anthology. After Nizâmî's response comes Câfer Çelebi; he is followed by Necâtî, Safâyî, Sürûrî-i Müderris, Sa'dî, Atâ, Mu'îdî, Fakîrî and two poems by Nazmî. In Ahmed Paşa's model, too, the drunken narcissus, that is, the drunken eye, drinks the wine of coyness; Câfer Çelebi turns the same image into a contrast between patient and remedy. The pen-name couplet likens the brow to the moon and the face to the sun and gives each an attribute: the moon of mischief and the sun of coyness. In the Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies, Erünsal's thesis notes, the "oldur" of the fourth couplet becomes the past tense "oldı".

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. 67 (variant). https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/17182

Official sources

Online sources