Cursing Through Someone Else’s Mouth: Faizi’s Lampoon of Veysi

Abstract

Kafzade Abdülhay Çelebi (1589–1621), known under the pen name Faizi is, in spite of his prolificacy, an often-ignored figure in modern literary historiography. Though his oeuvre has been studied and short biographies of him have been written more than once about the main lines of his life, a closer look at 17th-century primary sources reveal that some of his poems and correspondence, including biographical information, are unstudied and can still be found in various manuscripts. Accordingly, the aims of this paper are threefold: firstly, to give an annotated translation of an as yet unpublished poem by Faizi which parodies Veysi (1561–1628), a renowned Ottoman poet and man of letters; second, to survey through Faizi’s poem a short period of Ottoman literary culture during which a certain style of satire flourished within a narrow literary milieu; and finally, to interpret the poem within the ‘ilmiyye culture of the early 17th century.