Author's note: This article was presented as a paper (under a slightly different title) in the panel “Language and the Genesis of Meaning in Middle Eastern Literatures” chaired by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, at the twenty-fifth annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, November 1991. I am indebted to professors Walter Andrews (University of Washington) and Robert Dankoff (University of Chicago) for their comments and criticisms.

¹ The mid-17th century is still largely terra incognita in the study of Ottoman poetry. The relative marginality of Nâʾilî (d. 1666), sometimes referred to as “Nâʾilî-i Kadîm” (“the ancient” or “elder” Nâʾilî), within the modern understanding of the Ottoman poetical canon has occurred despite the high regard in which his work was held by 19th-century critics such as Ziyâ Paşa and Muallim Nâci, as well as by several of the leading 20th-century experts on Ottoman poetry, such as Ali Nihat Tarlan, Sadettin Nüzhet Ergun, Abdülbâkî Gölpinarli, and Ahmed Hamdi Tanpinar. In the view of E. J. W. Gibb, “with the possible exception of Yahya Efendi, Nâʾilî is the best poet between Nefʾi [d. 1634] and Nâbî [d. 1712]” (Gibb, E. J. W., A History of Ottoman Poetry, 6 vols. [London: Luzac, 1900–1909], III:305Google Scholar). It is symptomatic of the anomalous position of Nâʾilî that, although Tarlan had devoted a monograph to the poet, this book was never published in Turkey, and exists today only in an Urdu translation published in Pakistan (Lahore, n.d.). Golpinarli had published a small selection of his poems with a modern Turkish prose translation as part of the popular series “Turk Klasikleri.” In his introduction he described Nâʾilî as “one of the most powerful poets of the 17th century and one of the most distinguished representatives of Turkish divân literature” (Gölpinarli, Abdülbâkî, Nâʾilî-i Kadîm: Hayâti, Sanʾat [Istanbul: Varhk, 1953], iiiGoogle Scholar). He also states that “Nâʾilî in particular influenced Nedîm and Şeyh Gâlib” (ibid., xiv), who are today major figures in the poetical canon. Tarlan's student Halûk İpekten goes further and declares that “there is no doubt that Nâʾilî is the greatest poet of the 17th century and even of our entire Divân literature” (İpekten, Halûk, Nâʾilî-i Kadîm: Hayân ve Edebî Kişiliği [Ankara: Sevinç, 1973], 59Google Scholar). The critic Ahmed Hamdi Tanpinar casually referred to Nâʾilî and Neşâtî as the two major poetic figures of that era (Tanpinar, Ahmed Hamdi, Yaşadiğim Gibi [Istanbul: Türkiye Kültür Enstitüsü Yayinlari, 1970], 360Google Scholar).

The centrality of Bâkî to Ottoman literature has been maintained in all periods. Ziyâ Paşa, in his Harâbât (1874)Google Scholar, went so far as to place Bâkî at the beginning of his “Middle Period” of Turkish literature, relegating all Ottoman poets before him to the “Ancient Period” (Gibb, , Ottoman Poetry [1904], III: 142Google Scholar).

² The best recent definition of the gazel (ghazal) form in Persian poetry (equally applicable to Ottoman TUrkish poetry) is that of Julie Scott Meisami: “The ghazal's formal features include, in addition to the observance of a single metrical and rhyme scheme throughout (typical of both Arabic and Persian lyric), an obligatory initial rhyming distich (the maṭlaʿ); the incorporation of the poet's takhalluṣ, or pen name, in the final or penultimate line; and, eventually a normative length, in later periods generally not exceeding ten lines. Its structure is typically paratactic, reflecting its status as song, since such construction allows for the pauses and repetitions characteristic of sung lyric. The ghazal is highly conventional, employing a small body of recurrent topics and images well established by long tradition” (Meisami, Julie Scott, “Persona and Generic Conventions in Medieval Persian Lyric,” Comparative Criticism 12 [1990]: 125Google Scholar). According to indigenous Persian and Turkish terminology, the gazel is composed of units called beyt, which are subdivided internally into two misraʿs. English terminology for this varies, with the terms “hemistich” or “half-line” applied to the misraʿ, while the beyt is described as a “distich” or “line.” Other writers refer to the beyt as a “couplet” so that the misraʿ becomes a “line.” In normal beyts (i.e., after the initial maṭlaʿ) the rhyme (kafiye) occurs in the second misraʿ. Rhymes might be of various lengths. Persian and Ottoman gazels frequently employed a repeated word following the kafiye rhyme, known as a redîf, generally termed “monorhyme” in English. In Ottoman the use of the redîf varied from poet to poet and from era to era. The term kasîde (in Persian and Turkish) refers to a rather longer poem, also composed of rhymed beyts, whose strategy is primarily panegyric.

³ “The poetic sign is a word or a phrase pertinent to the poem's significance. This pertinence is either an idiolectic factor or a class factor. It is idiolectic if the poetic quality of the sign is peculiar to the poem in which it is observed. The poetic sign is a classeme if its poeticity is recognized by the reader, no matter what the context (provided, of course, that the context is a poem): that is, if the selection of poeticity markers is regulated by esthetic conventions outside of and in addition to the intrinsic individual features of a word or phrase” (Riffaterre, Michael, Semiotics of Poetry [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978], 23Google Scholar).

⁴ Andrews, Walter, An Introduction to Ottoman Poetry (Minneapolis: Bibleoteca Islamica, 1976), 77–85Google Scholar.

⁵ Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Press, 1970), 17–44Google Scholar.

⁶ Andrews, Walter, Poetry's Voice, Society's Song: Ottoman Lyric Poetry (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985), 89–101Google Scholar.

⁷ Another branch of Ottoman poetry, sometimes also written in the gazel (ghazal) form, held out a different view of the world. This poetry, which was mainly the domain of the Sufi orders and written largely by sheikhs of these orders, rejected the world categorically and with it the possibility of rehabilitating the world through linguistic interpretation. This poetry also accepted the negative image of the zâhid ascetic, but he was condemned not because he rejected the world, but because he failed to comprehend the essential role of love (ʿişk) in the universe. Many court poets had personal ties with the Sufi orders (especially the Halvetîye and Mevlevîye), and at the zikr (dhikr) ceremonies they listened to, and perhaps sang, these world-rejecting poems written by the sheikh-poets. Some of them even wrote a few poems in a similar vein. However, it was not their proper professional task to devote their talents to such verse, which was appropriate to another poetic genre, known as ilâhî (divine) verse. See Feldman, Walter, “Mysticism, Didacticism and Authority in the Liturgical Poetry of the Halvett Dervishes of Istanbul,” Edebiyat, n.s. II, 1 (1993): 243–65Google Scholar.

⁸ Lewis, C. S., The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 96Google Scholar.

⁹ Scott, JulieMeisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 260Google Scholar.

¹⁰ I use the word “Turkey” in somewhat, although not exactly, the same way that Gibb did, although he was writing a generation before the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, known officially as Turkey (Türkiye). As he notes in Ottoman Poetry (III:163), with the annexation of the territory of the Ramazanoğlus of Adana in 1562–63, “the union of Turkey proper is completed.” Although he considered “the true Turkey” to be “those districts where the Turkish element forms the staple of the population … in contradistinction to the Turkish or Ottoman Empire,” I use the term to refer to the area in which this was the case or in which Ottoman Turkish was the principal literary language among the Muslims. For example, using this literary/linguistic definition, neither Baghdad nor Aleppo could ever have been part of “Turkey”; the borders within the Rumelian provinces, however, shifted considerably over time. In Macedonia Turkish was well established as a literary language by the 15th century, and by the following century it had produced several major Turkish poets. The same was true of much of Bulgaria and some parts of Serbia. For present purposes, it is sufficient to note that both Bâkî and Nâʾilî were born in Istanbul, which was of course the center of literary “Turkey.”

¹¹ “İpekten, , Nâʾilî-i Kadîm, 84Google Scholar; Gibb, , Ottoman Poetry, 111:305–6Google Scholar; Gölpinarli, Nâʾilî-i Kadîm, vii. The individuality of Nâʾilî's style was stressed by Gibb: “This freshness of phraseology, joined to a delicate subtlety of imagery and a highly artistic style, gives a distinction to the work of Nâʾilî which renders his verses delightful reading after the unvarying sarneness of so many among his contemporaries and immediate predecessors. So fascinating is this freshness, and the individuality of style resulting from it,” (Gibb, , Ottoman Poetry, III:305Google Scholar). This article is part of a larger study of Nâʾilî, some other aspects of which have appeared as papers in the Middle East Studies Association conferences of 1990, 1991, and 1992. For summaries, see the corresponding issues of the Turkish Studies Association Bulletin.

¹² At present, the scholarly tradition in Turkey as it has developed in the works of Ali Nihat Tarlan (1898–1978) and his students and followers rarely attempts this type of specificity. Tarlan began to extract examples of the use of imagery in the divâns of several poets, but his samples seem random, and they always serve to reinforce the commonly held imagery. We cannot be sure that this sample reflects the entire usage of a particular poet or the frequency with which a particular usage occurs in the divân of that poet.

¹³ İpekten, Halûk, Bâkî: Hayati, Edebî Kişiliǧi ve Bazi Şiirlehnin Açiklamasi (Erzurum: Ankara Universitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakultesi, 1988), 31Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Ibid., 43.

¹⁵ On the “Hâfiz Post Mecmuʾasi,” see Wright, Owen, Words without Songs (London: University of London, 1992), 147–201Google Scholar; on the şarki, see Ibid., 184–85. Nâʿilî's şarkis can be found in İpekten, Halûk, Nâʾilî-i Kadîm Divâni (Istanbul: Millî Eğitim; 1970), 486–94Google Scholar.

¹⁶ İpekten, , Nâʾilî-i Kadîm, 21Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Ibid., 17.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Alptekin, Turan, Bir KültÜr Bir İnsan: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar ve Edebiyatimiza Bakişlar (Istanbul: Nakislar, 1975), 58Google Scholar.

²⁰ İpekten, , Nâʾilî-i Kadîm, 85–89Google Scholar.

²¹ The nature of the “Indian Style” remains a matter of scholarly debate among Iranists. Pertinent Western-language treatments of the topic can be found in: Ahmad, Aziz, “The Formation of the Sabk-i Hindî,” in Iran and Islam: in Memory of V. Minorsky, ed. Bosworth, C. E. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971), 1–9Google Scholar; Bertel's, E. E. “K voprosu ob ʾindijskom stileʿ v persidskoj poezii” in Charisteria Orientalia praecipue ad Persian! pertinentia, ed. Auer, F. et al. (Prague: Ceskslovenska Akademie Ved., 1956), 56–59Google Scholar; Heinz, Wilhelm, Der Indische Stil in der Persischen Literatur (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1973)Google Scholar. İpekten presents a succinct analysis of the influence of the “Indian Style” (“Sebk-i Hindî”) on Nâʾilî's use of rhetoric and imagery in Nâʿilî-i Kadim, 72–84Google Scholar.

²² On the nazire, see Ambros, Edith G., “Nazîre, the Willow-o'-the-Wisp of Ottoman Divân Poetry,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 79 (1989): 57–83Google Scholar. On yek-ahengî, see Feldman, Walter, “A Musical Model for the Structure of the Ottoman Gazel,” Edebiyat, n.s., 1, 1 (1987): 71–89Google Scholar; idem, “We are Hidden: An Ottoman Gazel and Its Parallel Poem (Nazîre) in the Mid-Seventeenth Century,” 1–2, given under the title “The Speaking Persona in a Gazel of Nâʿilî” at the meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in 1990. See the Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, 15, 1 (1991): 137–38Google Scholar.

²³ İpekten, , Nâʾilî-i Kadîm, 62Google Scholar.

²⁴ For the divân of Cevrî, see Ayan, Hüseyin, Cevrî: Hayati, Edebî Kişiliği, Eserleri ve Divanimn Tenkidli Metni (Erzurum: Atatürk Universitesi Basimevi, 1981)Google Scholar.

²⁵ Tanpinar had adduced a historical explanation for the emergence of this “Sufi era,” namely the weakness of the Ottoman sultanate from the reign of Ibrahim (1640–48) to the deposition of Mehmed IV in 1687. See Alptekin, , Bir Kültür Bir İnsan, 58Google Scholar.

²⁶ This is essentially the view of Nedîm expressed by the 19th-century Ottoman critics, by Gibb, and by most 20th-century Turkish critics. It has been repeated most recently, with several interesting new arguments, by Silay, Kemal, Nedîm and the Poetics of the Ottoman Court: Medieval Inheritance and the Need for Change (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1994), 70–89Google Scholar. The title implies that Nedîm inherited only a “medieval” poetic tradition, thus ignoring the developments of the previous century. The phrase “this-worldly perspective” appears on p. 71.

²⁷ Dvorak, Rudolf, Bâkî's Dîwân, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1908), 1:23Google Scholar; Ergun, Sadeddin Nüzhet, Bâkî Divani (Istanbul: Semih Lûtfi, 1935), no. 87, 137Google Scholar. Ergun gives the first misraʿ as Mevc-i deryâ-yi eşkime nisbet (When compared to the wave of the sea of my tear).

²⁸ Dvorak, , Bâkî's Dîwân, 65;Google ScholarErgun, , Bâkî Divani, no. 415, 353Google Scholar.

²⁹ Dvorak, Rudolf, Bâkî's Dîwân (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1911), 2:377Google Scholar; Ergun, , Bâkî Divani, no. 315, 284Google Scholar.

³⁰ Dvorak, , Bâkî's Dîwân, 1:85;Google ScholarErgun, , Bâkî Divani, no. 381, p. 329Google Scholar.

³¹ The use of this rather “sensuous” imagery is apparently part of the world-accepting and optimistic poetic character of Bâkî as he was seen by earlier generations of Ottoman critics, for example, in Tahir, Bursah Mehmed, Osmanli Müellifleri (Istanbul: Meral, 1972; 1st ed., 1915), 52Google Scholar.

³² Dvorak, , Bâkî's Dîwîn, 1:238Google Scholar; Ergun, , Bâkî Divani, no. 535, 434Google Scholar.

³³ Qazvinî, Mohammed, Dîvân-e Khoja Shamseddin Mohammed Hafez-e Shirâzî (Teheran: Zavar, n.d.), 121Google Scholar.

³⁴ Bayath, Yahya Kemal, Kendi Gök Kubbemiz (Istanbul: Kubbealti, 1974), 9Google Scholar.

³⁵ Dvorak, , Bâkî's Dîwân, 2:586Google Scholar; Ergun, , Bâkî Divani, no. 185, 198Google Scholar.

³⁶ Dvorak, Bâkî's Dîwân, 1:25Google Scholar; Ergun, , Bâkî Divani, no. 86, 136Google Scholar.

³⁷ Dvorak, , Bâkî's Dîvân, 1:5Google Scholar; Ergun, , Bâkî Divani, no. 50, 113Google Scholar.

³⁸ Andrews, Walter, personal communication, 1993Google Scholar.

³⁹ Dvorak, , Bâkî's Dîwân; 1:25Google Scholar; Ergun, , Bâkî Divani, no. 50, 114Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Çavuşoğlu, Mehmed, Necatî Bey Divani Seçmeler (Istanbul: Tercuman, n.d.), 159Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Dvorak, , Bâkî's Dîwân, 1:37Google Scholar; Ergun, , Bâkî Divani, no. 98, 143Google Scholar.

⁴² İpekten, , Nâʾilî-i Kadîm Divâni, 252Google Scholar.

⁴³ The phrase kuvet-i hata was part of a proverbial expression, which has been translated by Robert Dankoff as “opposing the commonality is from the force of error.” See Dankoff, , The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman (Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1991), 95–96Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ İpekten, , Nâʾilî-i Kadîm Divâni, 435Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 256.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 261.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 294.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 249.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 269.

⁵⁰ Izutsu, Toshihiko, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 68–88Google Scholar.

⁵¹ İpekten, , Nâʾilî Kadîm Divâni, 300Google Scholar.

⁵² Text in Ibid., 235.

⁵³ Ibid., 292.

⁵⁴ İpekten, , Nâʾilî-i Kadîm, 73–84Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Andrews, Walter, personal communication, 1993Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ İpekten tends to accept Nâʾilî as a truly Sufi poet, although he was apparently unsuccessful as a Sufi (İpekten, , Nâʾilî-i Kadîm, 85–86Google Scholar). In a paper I gave at the twenty-sixth meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in 1992, titled “Sufism and Nihilism in the Poetry of Nâʾilî,” I discussed the problematic nature of Nâʾilî's Sufi poetic expressionGoogle Scholar.