Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

mini-dervish wandering barefoot in search of the ultimate
beloved. The metaphorical logic of the traditional poetics
— if the heart burns then the smoke and sparks and scars
follow — gives way to metaphors that confound logic:
how is the heart like a person, what is the neighborhood
of abstract desire (in contrast to the neighborhood of the
beloved), how can we see the heart as having a foot? A
mysterious interior world has replaced the familiar, outer,
actual world from which the metaphors of the previous
poetic fashion were drawn.
As preciously serious as some of Ottoman poetry
clearly is, I am also quite convinced that it was not all like
this. Poetry — recited and sung — was an indispensable
element of Ottoman parties, feasts, and salons. Although
melancholy was seen as fashionable and stimulating, a
merry disposition was valued, and it is diffi cult to imagine
that happy Ottoman party-goers, aroused by attractive
serving persons, their faces fl ushed with music, wine, and
delicious food, always (or often) experienced their poems
as somber and weighty. Might it not have been that some
of the rhetorical playfulness we see in the poetry had less
than serious intent and that some of the poems were meant
to be taken lightly, even as humorous, ironic comments
on traditional verse? With this in mind, I have been
experimenting also with a “lightening up” of some Ottoman
verses, such as this by Bākī:
so drunk and wasted
from having tasted
a cup of this darlingʼs love
bouncing itself from wall to wall
passes the sun above
when it saw your musky locks
the musk-sac dropped to the ground
and there in the dust
at your feet the pure musk
humbly threw itself down
afl oat on the rosy wine you see
the many eyes of destiny
donʼt suppose that bubbles appear
in the goblet there
and here
what matter if the police of fate
now and again
these two berate
both kebab and wine unblended
were caught as they say
bloody handed
in the end by lovingʼs pain
wretched lovers all are slain
and drunkenness
we know will keep
to its conclusion in a sleep
oh vile wheel of destiny
of you bākī
is fi nally free
thanks to the sultan
blessed by fate
who shelters fortune
at his gate 19
As I mentioned above, Bākī was a serious man, a
professor of canon law who rose to one of the highest
judicial positions in the Empire during the latter half of the
16th century. But he was also a conversational companion
of Sultan Süleyman, which means that he was the kind
of person with whom the most powerful of men could
relax and enjoy brief respite from the cares of ruling an
empire. That some drinking and carousing were part of this
relaxation seems obvious from many sources, and if there
were verses by great poets that sang simply of its pleasures,
it would certainly be no wonder.
For all of this, one should not imagine that I have
entirely given up couplets and rhymes and even footnotes
when I translate. For some audiences, each and all of these
things are appropriate. Victoria Holbrook has an English
rendition of Şeyh Gālipʼs 18th-century mystical allegory in
rhyming couplets, Beauty and Love (Hüsn u ʻAşk), which
she translates beautifully in an Ottoman-like rhythm with
all manner of rhymes, from the most simple to complex
chimes and assonances. For example, in the following
passage, Rivalry and Love are traveling through the Land
of the Heart when they are captured by a demon:
That ill-fated demon, curséd and damned
Had them thrown in prison by his command
So that their fat and their fl esh might increase
To later be victual for that fi endʼs feast
And there Rivalry and Love did both stay
As prisoners of pain for many a day
30 Translation Review