Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün

Ey Amasya bana söyle nasıl füsûn ettin
Hangi hüsnünle beni kendine meftûn ettin
Öyle bir câzibe-i aşk yarattın dilde
Beni bu derd-i füsûnkâr ile dil-hûn ettin
Kilkimi hüsnünü göstermeye tahsîs ettim
Kendi ikbalin için ömrümü merhûn ettim
Seni rûhum gibi sevdim sana bir cân verdim,
Varımı uğruna koydum beni mağbûn ettin.
Sana adam gibi her yerde perestij ettim
Beni koydun geri ağyârını memnûn ettin
Bilmedim sen ne yaman dilber-i fettânmışsın
Böyle Asrî gibi üftâdeni mahzûn ettin

In English

1. O Amasya, tell me, what spell did you cast; with which of your beauties did you make me so enamoured of you?

2. You created such an attraction of love in my heart that with this spellbinding pain you left my heart steeped in blood.

3. I devoted my pen to showing your beauty; I pledged my life for your rise.

4. I loved you like my own soul, I gave you a life; I laid all I had at your feet, and you left me the loser.

5. Everywhere I gave you my heart and bowed to you in reverence; you left me behind and pleased my rivals. (According to Kaçar the word "adam" in the line is a printing error and should be "âdem"; "perestij" is most probably a misprint of "perestiş", worshipful love. This second reading is ours.)

6. I did not know what a fearsome, beguiling beauty you were; you have saddened like this one who loves you as Asrî does.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a ghazal (gazel) of six couplets. The refrain (redif) is "ettin" ("you made / you did"), and the rhyme is the "-ûn" sound in "füsûn, meftûn, dil-hûn, merhûn, mağbûn, memnûn, mahzûn"; in the third couplet the refrain turns into "ettim" ("I made / I did"). The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet as "Asrî". According to Mücahit Kaçar the ghazal is written in the aruz (quantitative metre) pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün". Kaçar points out that in the first line, in the segment "nasıl füsûn", a syllable that should be short comes out long, so that the metre breaks; reading the opening as "Ey Amâsiyye" breaks the end of the line instead. In Kaçar's view, the fact that a poet who makes no metrical errors in his other poems should slip in this simple way suggests that the first line was originally different. Only the printed text of the ghazal survives; no manuscript copy is known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The most striking feature of the ghazal is that everything divan poetry says to the beloved is here said to a city. Amasya is made to appear as a "dilber-i fettân" (beguiling beauty) who casts spells, makes her lover infatuated, and then abandons him and pleases his rivals. This is personification, attributing human qualities to the city, and it recalls the şehrengiz tradition, which praises the beauties of a city as if they were those of a beloved. But here the praise is brief; the real subject of the ghazal is a reproach.

The third couplet is an open reference to the poet's own life: the line "Kilkimi hüsnünü göstermeye tahsîs ettim" (I devoted my pen to showing your beauty) speaks of the History of Amasya to which Hüsameddin gave his life. "Merhûn" (pledged, pawned) and, in the fourth couplet, "mağbûn" (cheated in a bargain, left at a loss) belong to the language of trade and debt, and so form a congruence of images (tenasüp): the poet pawned his life, staked all he had, and in return made a loss. There is tenasüp also between "füsûn" and "füsûnkâr", "hüsn" and "dilber", "aşk" and "dil-hûn". The word "üftâde" (fallen, devoted) in the last couplet describes, in divan poetry, the lover helpless before the beloved.

Historical Context

Kaçar takes the ghazal from Hüseyin Menç's article on Hüsameddin and records that Menç told him the poem was published in an issue of the Amasya newspaper Yeşilırmak in 1938. The newspaper itself could not be seen. The poem was published about a year before Hüsameddin's death on 10 February 1939. In Kaçar's view the ghazal expresses the disappointment of an author who devoted his life to writing the History of Amasya yet did not receive the interest he expected from the people of Amasya, and who once thought of becoming the city's deputy without that wish being answered. Kaçar says this sorrow, and the grief of being unable to print the remaining volumes of the History of Amasya, can also be traced in the letters Hüsameddin wrote to his friends. According to the introduction to the 2022 edition, Hüsameddin lost his possessions in two great fires at the end of his life, and in a letter to Atatürk he explained that his pension was not enough to support his family of six children. The reproachful voice of the ghazal should be read together with the weight of these years. For the poet's other poems see Asrî (Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar): Poet and Works.

Bibliography

Online sources