Poetry
Leyla and Mejnun
Leylâ vü Mecnûn
Fuzûlî · 1535
Synopsis
Kays, the son of a chief, born after his father's prayers, meets Leylâ at school, and they fall in love; according to Encyclopedia.com, rumours spread, and Leylâ's mother takes her daughter out of school to keep her at home. Consumed by longing, Kays takes the name Mecnûn, the madman, and wanders in the desert singing his verses to the mountains and the beasts; his father searches for him and begs him to return. The Diyanet notes that the author, unlike his Persian model, does not make Leylâ Kays's cousin.
Context
According to the Diyanet, Ottoman poets who had come with Suleiman's army during the Baghdad campaign asked the author to treat the subject in Turkish; he saw in it a trial, quickly completed his poem in 1535 and offered it to Üveys Pasha, governor of Baghdad. The text opens with a prose preface, followed by devotional pieces, the praise of Suleiman and the statement of the work's motive, and ghazals and quatrains are inserted throughout the narrative. The meeting of the lovers in the desert forms, according to the same encyclopaedia, its lyrical high point. Sofi Huri produced the English translation in 1970.
Who it is for
A long narrative poem in Turkish, translated into English but not into French, whose action begins only after long introductory pieces.
Prizes and reception
The best known of its author's mathnawis according to the Küre, also translated into German, Spanish, Russian, Armenian and Kazakh.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.