Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ser-i kûyundan ayrılmam felek bir yane salmazsa
Yolunda ölmedür kasdum eger Hak cânum almazsa

In English

1. Unless the wheel of heaven casts me aside, I will not leave the head of her street; unless God takes my life, my intent is to die on her path.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The matla ties the lover's resolve not to leave the beloved's quarter to two conditions, and these conditions carry the couplet's real meaning. The first condition is "felek": unless the wheel of fortune casts him aside, he will not leave the "ser-i kûy", the head of the beloved's street. The second condition is God: unless God takes his life, he will still wish to die on the beloved's path. The second line has a subtle logic: the lover accepts that death will come only by God's decree, yet he dedicates his own intent, his own will, to the beloved's path.

"Salmazsa" and "almazsa" form both a rhyme and a likeness of sound; both are the doings of two powers not in the lover's hands, fortune and God. The couplet appears in Kınalızâde, Beyânî and Hüsameddin. Beyânî gives the second line as "Kapunda ölmedür kasdum"; in this reading the lover wishes to die not on the beloved's path but at her door, and the scene draws even closer to the head of the street in the first line. Hüsameddin's text, with the forms "bir yana" and "Hakk cânım", is close to Kınalızâde's; the second line, which sets up the relation between dying and intent, is preserved in all three sources.

Bibliography

Primary sources

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