Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Çün güzelim zülfi dâlım boyuna baḳmaḳ içün
Bu vücudum şehri vîrân ḥâṭırım yıḳmaḳ içün
Âteş-i hicr ile dilber baġrımı yaḳmaḳ içün
Ḳaşlarıň çifte ṭabanca sîneme çaḳmaḳ içün
Dir ki ‘Ömer medḥ ideyim ḥublarıň serdârını
Mâh cemâliň görse ‘âşıḳ terk ider her varını

In English

1. My fair one, whose locks curl like the letter dâl, in order to gaze upon your stature the city of my body has fallen to ruin, as if to wreck my heart, to burn my breast with the fire of separation, O beauty; and your brows are a double-barrelled pistol to be fired into my breast. Ömer says: let me praise the chief of the fair ones; if a lover saw your moon face he would abandon all he has.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The article gives six lines of this poem. The first four lines end in "-mak içün": "içün" (for) is the redif and "bakmak, yıkmak, yakmak, çakmak" the rhyme. The last two lines rhyme with each other in "serdârını" and "varını" and carry the pen name Ömer. This structure suggests a scheme in which a two-line tie is added to a four-line stanza. It is unusual for the pen name to appear in the first unit given; one might think that the pen name recurs in every stanza of the poem or that the article quotes lines from different places, but this cannot be told from the first unit. The lines follow the pattern "fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün"; the identification of the metre is ours. The article quotes another divan from the same page of the cönk.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The stanza describes the beloved's beauty as an assault mounted against the lover. Likening the locks to the letter "dâl" of the Arabic alphabet is a familiar image for curling, twisting hair. The lover's body is likened to a city that falls to ruin before the beloved's gaze; the fire of separation burns his breast. An unexpected image appears in the fourth line: the beloved's brows are a "çifte tabanca", a double-barrelled pistol, fired into the lover's breast. In divan poetry the brow is mostly likened to a bow or a sword; here it gives way to a firearm. This novelty agrees with assessments that Âşık Ömer served in the army and carried the life of the frontier into his poetry. In the last two lines the poet speaks his pen name and praises the beloved as "hûbların serdârı", the commander of the fair ones; the word "serdâr" also comes from the military world. The saying that a lover who saw the moon face would abandon all he owns closes the praise with a hyperbole.

Historical Context

The poem is recorded in the Merzifon Cönkü under the pen name Ömer. Metin Hakverdioğlu refers the Ömer of the cönk to Şükrü Elçin's book Âşık Ömer, published in 1987, and so identifies him with the great minstrel poet of the seventeenth century. The Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü notes that Âşık Ömer's poems have become mixed with those of other poets using the pen name Ömer; since we could not compare the poem with the editions of Ergun or Elçin, the attribution rests on the record in the cönk. The poet's life is in the article Âşık Ömer.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

  • Şükrü Elçin, Âşık Ömer, Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1987 (as cited by Hakverdioğlu 2019).

Books

Online sources