Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Çeşm-i pür-ḫûnum yoluňda eşk-bâr itsem gerek
Ayaġın tozına gevherler nišâr itsem gerek

In English

1. I must shed tears from my blood-filled eye upon your path. I must scatter jewels (of my tears) on the dust of your feet.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal and is written in the remel pattern "Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün"; the identification of the metre is ours. The refrain (redif) is "itsem gerek" (I must do), and the rhyme is built on the sound "-âr" in the words "eşk-bâr" and "nisâr". Because Hakverdioğlu's article gives only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, only this couplet could be published here. The spelling "nišâr" in the article must be a typesetting variant in the transcription of "nisâr" (scattering); the text has been left as it stands in the article.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet describes one of the best-loved scenes of divan poetry, the scattering of offerings on the path the beloved will walk. "Nisâr" means the coins, jewels or flowers scattered before great persons at weddings and processions. The lover has no jewels in his hands; his jewels are his tears. Likening tears to pearls, and bloody tears to coral or rubies, is a classical simile, and "pür-hûn", the eye full of blood, prepares this red jewel. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) between "eşk-bâr" (shedding tears) in the first line and "gevherler nisâr" (scattering jewels) in the second: the same tears are first rain, then jewels. The "dust of the feet" of the beloved shows the lover's humility before her; the lover offers his most precious possession to the ground she treads. The refrain "itsem gerek" presents this less as a wish than as a duty incumbent on the lover.

Historical Context

The couplet is on page 78 of the Merzifon Cönkü, introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. Hakverdioğlu shows that the poem is on page 268 of Sabahattin Küçük's edition of the Bâkî Dîvânı; the full text of the poem is there. Since the article gives only the opening couplet, it is not known whether the ghazal is recorded in the cönk in full or in part. That Bâkî's ghazals entered a Merzifon collection, in the same notebook as the minstrels' koşmas, some three centuries after sixteenth-century Istanbul shows that divan poetry reached its readers in the provinces. For the poet's life and his other ghazals in the cönk, see the page on Bâkî.

Bibliography

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Merzifon Cönkü", idil, 8(57), 2019, p. 555 (Cönk, p. 78). https://www.idildergisi.com/makale/pdf/1552911669.pdf
  • Sabahattin Küçük (ed.), Bâkî Dîvânı, Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları, 1994, p. 268 (as cited by Hakverdioğlu 2019).

Online sources