Neşāṭī (?–1674) was the pen name

Pen name

A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 (Ottoman Turkish

Ottoman Turkish language

The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...

: ﻡﺨﻠﺺ maḫlas) of an Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 poet. He was a Sufi

Sufism

Sufism or ' is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a '...

, or Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic mystic

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

, of the Mevlevî

Mevlevi

The Mevlevi Order, or the Mevlevilik or Mevleviye are a Sufi order founded in Konya by the followers of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, Islamic jurist, and theologian. They are also known as the Whirling Dervishes due to their famous practice of whirling as a form...

 order

Tarika

Tarika may refer to:*Tarika , musical group from Madagascar*Tariqah, school of Sufism...

, and his poetry is often considered exemplary of the "Indian style" (سبك هندی sebk-i hindî) of Ottoman poetry, a movement which flourished beginning in the 17th century.

Life

Though one source claims that Neşâtî's real name was Süleymân (سليمان), the majority of sources give his name as Ahmed (أحمد). He was born in Edirne

Edirne

Edirne is a city in Eastern Thrace, the northwestern part of Turkey, close to the borders with Greece and Bulgaria. Edirne served as the capital city of the Ottoman Empire from 1365 to 1453, before Constantinople became the empire's new capital. At present, Edirne is the capital of the Edirne...

, in the region of Thrace

Thrace

Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

. It is not known exactly when he was born, though it is speculated that it was around the year 1600, on the evidence of a poem commemorating the winter of 1621–22, in which year the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

 was known to be covered with ice:

ن نقش كوستره آیا مشاعبيز سرما

كه همچو آيينه يغ بسته اولدى صفحه آب

Ne naḳş göstere āyā müşa`biz-i sermā

Ki hemçü āyīne yaḫ-beste oldu safḥa-yi āb

Oh what designs might the magician of cold

display?

Like a mirror, the page of the water

is bound in ice

Neşâtî first become affiliated with the Mevlevi order as a disciple

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...

 of the shaykh Ağazâde Mehmed Dede, first in Gelibolu

Gallipoli

The Gallipoli peninsula is located in Turkish Thrace , the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east. Gallipoli derives its name from the Greek "Καλλίπολις" , meaning "Beautiful City"...

 in Thrace and then in Beşiktaş

Besiktas

Beşiktaş is a municipality of Istanbul, Turkey, located on the European shore of the Bosphorus. It is bordered on the north by Sarıyer and Şişli, on the west by Kağıthane and Şişli, on the south by Beyoğlu, and on the east by the Bosphorus...

 in Istanbul. After Ağazâde Mehmed Dede's death, Neşâtî went to Konya

Konya

Konya is a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. The metropolitan area in the entire Konya Province had a population of 1,036,027 as of 2010, making the city seventh most populous in Turkey.-Etymology:...

 in central Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

, where he served for a time at the tomb of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī , also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī and popularly known as Mevlānā in Turkey and Mawlānā in Iran and Afghanistan but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi was a 13th-century Persian Muslim poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic...

—the founder of the Mevlevi order—before finally returning, around the year 1670, to Edirne as the shaykh of the Murâdiyye Mevlevîhâne

Khanqah

A Khanqah, Khaniqah , ribat, zawiya, or tekke is a building designed specifically for gatherings of a Sufi brotherhood, or tariqa, and is a place for spiritual retreat and character reformation...

 there. He died in 1674, and was buried in the courtyard of the Murâdiyye Mosque

Mosque

A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...

.

Work

Neşâtî was not as prolific as many other Ottoman poets, but is nonetheless considered to be among the masters of the gazel

Ghazal

The ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th century...

form of poetry. He was strongly influenced by, and a great admirer of, the Persian

Persian literature

Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...

 poet `Urfī of Shîraz

Shiraz, Iran

Shiraz is the sixth most populous city in Iran and is the capital of Fars Province, the city's 2009 population was 1,455,073. Shiraz is located in the southwest of Iran on the Roodkhaneye Khoshk seasonal river...

 (d. 1591), about whom he wrote a treatise, the Şerḥ-i Müşkilāt-i `Urfī (شرح مشكلات عورفى "Explanation of the Difficulties of `Urfî"). It was primarily through the influence of `Urfî, among other Persian poets, that Neşâtî's poetry took on certain aspects of the so-called "Indian style", which was characterized by extravagant conceit

Conceit

In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison...

s; a complex, Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

-derived syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

; and a high level of lexical

Ambiguity

Ambiguity of words or phrases is the ability to express more than one interpretation. It is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information.Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity...

 and syntactic ambiguity

Syntactic ambiguity

Syntactic ambiguity is a property of sentences which may be reasonably interpreted in more than one way, or reasonably interpreted to mean more than one thing...

. An example is the following beyit, or couplet

Couplet

A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...

, from one of Neşâtî's most famous gazels:

كه خامه كبی شکوه طراز غم عاشقز

كه ناله كبی خامه شکواده نهانز

Geh ḫāme gibi şekve-ṭırāz-ı ġam-ı `āşkız

Geh nāle gibi ḫāme-yi şekvāda nihānız

Sometimes we are like the reed pen that illuminates

the plaints of love

Sometimes like the lament hidden in the pen

as it writes

The image used in the second line makes use of a double meaning

Pun

The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...

—known in Ottoman Turkish as tevriyye (توريه)—of the word nāle (ناله): it can mean not only "lament" or "moan", but can also refer to a "reed pen

Reed pen

Reed pens or kalamoi are a type of writing implement with a long history. They are made by cutting and shaping a single reed straw or length of bamboo. Reed pens with regular features such as a split nib have been found in Ancient Egyptian sites dating from the 4th century BC...

", and specifically to the sound made by such a pen as it moves across the page in the act of writing.

Despite his word play

Word play

Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...

, however, Neşâtî was also a poet of high—if sometimes restrained—emotion, as present-day Turkish poet İlhan Berk

Ilhan Berk

İlhan Berk was a leading contemporary Turkish poet. He was a dominant figure in the postmodern current in Turkish poetry and was very influential among Turkish literary circles.-Biography:Berk was born in Manisa, Turkey in 1918 and received a teacher's training in Balıkesir...

 points out in a short essay:

Above all, Neşâtî was a master of expression, a man of great precision and sensitivity. Not a shouter, hidden, quiet, sparkling, genuine. In his poems, one is always struck with a great and profound sensation. More importantly, despite his being a Mevlevî poet ... he does not attempt to appear learned or to pretend to wisdom, but prefers in his poems to behave like a person, pure and simple. And like all great poets, he is humble.

The honest and undisguised expression of emotion that Berk's appreciation hints at can be seen, for example, in the opening couplets to one of Neşâtî's most often anthologized

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

gazels:

كتدك اما كه قودك حسرت ايله جانى بله

استه مم سنسز اولن صحبت يارانى بله

باغه سنسز واره مم چشممه آتش کورينور

كل خندانى دكل سرو خرامانى بله

Gitdiñ ammā ki ḳoduñ ḥasret ile cānı bile

İstemem sensiz olān ṣoḥbet-i yārānı bile

Baġa sensiz vāramam çeşmime āteş görünür

Gül-i ḫandānı degil serv-i ḫırāmānı bile

You're gone—I'm alone in the company

of longing

I no longer want sweet talk with friends

if you're not there

I dare not go to the garden without you

The laughing rose seems red as fire,

the swaying cypress a pointed flame