Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Yāra vaṣl oldum ‘aceb devletlü cānum var imiş
Gerçi pīrem dōstlar baḫt-ı civānum var imiş
Aġzınuñ sırrını keşf itdüm ser-i mūy imiş ol
Gör ne ṭab‘-ı mū-şikāf u ḫurdedānum var imiş
Sīnede buldum ḫayāl-i leblerin bildüm henüz
Kim daḫi bir ẕerrece cismümde cānum var imiş
Cān virürken menzilin kūyında görüp didi dil
Şükr li’llāh kim bihişt içre mekānum var imiş
Düşde gördüm Ca‘ferā zülfin didüm ta‘bīr idüp
Minnet Allaha kim ‘ömr-i cāvidān var imiş

In English

1. I have come to union with the beloved; what a fortunate soul I turn out to have. Friends, true, I am old, but I turn out to have a young fortune.

2. I have solved the secret of her mouth; it turns out to be the tip of a hair; see what a hair-splitting, keen-sighted nature I turn out to have.

3. I found the image of her lips in my breast; then I understood that there is still a mote of soul left in my body.

4. As I gave up my soul, seeing my own dwelling in her street, the heart said: "Thank God, it turns out I have a place in Paradise."

5. O Ca'fer, I saw her tresses in a dream and, interpreting it, said: "Thanks be to God, it turns out I have eternal life."

Literary and Historical Commentary

"It Turns Out"

Each couplet carries the surprise of a discovery, and the surprise lies in the refrain itself: "var imiş", "it turns out there is". In Turkish the suffix "-mış" expresses a situation realized afterwards, learned with astonishment; the lover, too, on reaching the beloved, on solving the secret of her mouth, on finding a place in her street as he dies, realizes that there is something in him he had not known before. The rhyme turns on "-ānum": cānum, civānum, ḫurdedānum, cānum, mekānum; the last couplet closes on "cāvidān", a sound close to this pattern. Old age and young fortune face each other in the first couplet: the lover is old, but because he has reached union he understands that his fortune is young.

The second couplet rests on the motif in divan poetry that shows the beloved's mouth as so small as to be almost non-existent. The lover has solved the secret of the mouth and found it to be the size of the tip of a hair (ser-i mūy); and because he could find it, he boasts that his own nature is "hair-splitting" (mū-şikāf) in its subtlety. This bond of sound and sense between the hair and splitting hairs is the conceit of the couplet.

A Place in Paradise and Eternal Life

As he gives up his soul in the fourth couplet, the lover sees his own place in the beloved's street and takes it as good news that he has a place in Paradise. The pen-name couplet closes with the interpretation of a dream. The lover has seen the beloved's long tresses in his dream and interprets them as the sign of an eternal life; the reading ties the length of the tresses to the length of life, a likeness often drawn in divan poetry.

The variants given in the thesis gather in the fourth couplet: the Paris copy reads "menzil-i" for "menzilin" and "gördi" for "görüp", the Hâlet Efendi copy "ol" for "dil"; the second line opens with "Şükr yine" in the Paris copy and with "Ḥamd li'llāh" in the Ayasofya and Hâlet Efendi copies. Nazmî did not take the ghazal into his anthology.

Bibliography

Online sources