Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: seven-syllable syllabic metre (third line eight syllables)

Kaşı gözü düz güzel
Elinde bâde süzer
İkrar verdin ikrar aldın
İkrarında dur güzel

In English

1. Beauty with well-shaped brow and eye, pouring wine in your hand. You gave a pledge, you took a pledge; stand by your pledge, my beauty.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

In the third line the word "ikrar" (pledge) is repeated twice and taken up again in the fourth. Of the four lines the first, second and fourth have seven syllables, the third eight. The first and fourth lines end on the word "güzel" (beauty), and the second line approaches this sound with "süzer". The source does not state the metre; the syllable count is our own. The article gives the lines joined in pairs by a slash; here they have been divided into four lines. The pen name does not appear in the quatrain; the article gives it as words Derviş Edna spoke to his wife.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The article gives this quatrain immediately after the reproach Derviş Edna directed at his mother and says that he reproached his wife too. According to the article the lines show that his wife had acted wrongly against a pledge known to Derviş Edna, and that the poet warned her to remain faithful to her pledge. Derviş Edna married twice; his first wife was his paternal aunt's daughter Satı Bacı, his second Zeynep Bacı. The article does not say to which of them the quatrain was spoken.

The quatrain joins the love poem with counsel. The first two lines praise the beloved with the familiar images of folk poetry: a beauty with well-shaped brow and eye, pouring wine in her hand. The last two lines turn this praise into a grave warning. In Alevi-Bektashi belief the ikrar is the word given on entering the path, to be kept for life; "you gave a pledge, you took a pledge" recalls that the word given is a mutual bond. These short-lined words show that Derviş Edna kept the measures of the path in the relationships of his daily life as well.

Bibliography

Online sources