Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11'li hece ölçüsü

Leyle-i ẓulmetde pervâne diller
Yanar nâr-ı ‘aşḳa bir cevâp itmez
Feryâdı bülbülden şerm itdi güller
Meger itdiginden yâr ḥicâp itmez

In English

1. In the dark night hearts burn like moths in the fire of love, yet (the beloved) gives no answer. The roses were ashamed at the nightingale's cry; so it seems the beloved feels no shame at what she has done.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The quatrain is the beginning of a koşma on page 85 of the cönk; it follows Dertli's previous koşma in the cönk on the facing page. The lines have eleven syllables with a caesura after the sixth; the syllable count is ours. The second and fourth lines share the redif "itmez" (does not do), with "cevâp" and "hicâp" as the rhyme. The first and third lines rhyme in "diller" and "güller".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain brings together two classic images. The first is the candle and the moth: the moth flies toward the light and burns in the flame, and it stands for the lover destroying himself for the beloved. Here it is the hearts that are moths, and the "leyle-i zulmet", the dark night, makes their burning all the more visible. The second image is the rose and the nightingale: the nightingale loves the rose and cries out for it. The poet turns this second image in an unexpected direction: even the roses have blushed with shame at the nightingale's lament, but the beloved feels no shame for the torment she causes. The red colour of the rose is traditionally read as a blush of shame; the stanza uses this reading to show the beloved's coldness. The word "meğer" (so it seems) also reports a bitter truth realised afterwards. All the images come from divan poetry, while the fluency of the diction belongs to minstrel verse.

Historical Context

The koşma is recorded under the name Dertli in the Merzifon Cönkü. Metin Hakverdioğlu, who published the cönk, counts Dertli among the well-known minstrels who stopped in Merzifon, which shows that he identifies the Dertli of the cönk with the nineteenth-century Dertli of Bolu. Since we could not compare the poem with the editions of Dertli's divan, the attribution rests on the record in the cönk. The poet's life and his link with Amasya are in the article Dertli.

Bibliography

Online sources