Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Mey degil meyḫâneye varmaḳ merâḳımdır benim
Meclis-i mestâneyi görmek merâḳımdır benim

In English

1. My longing is not for wine but for going to the tavern; my longing is to see the gathering of the drunken.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is recorded in the cönk as a "dîvân" or "dîvânî". In minstrel literature this name is given to poems composed in aruz, in couplets like the ghazal, and sung to the saz. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the opening couplet of this poem. The refrain is "merâkımdır benim"; the rhyme is the "-mak / -mek" sound in "varmak / görmek". The identification of the metre is ours; as is usual in the aruz poems of folk poets, some syllables may not fit the pattern exactly. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet voices the rind attitude of divan poetry (the free-spirited, unconventional lover) in the language of a minstrel. The poet says he seeks not wine but the tavern and the "meclis-i mestâne", the gathering of the drunken. In the Sufi tradition the tavern is often the place of love and divine intoxication; what matters is less the wine itself than the atmosphere of that gathering and the state that being there brings. For this reason the couplet can be read both as a wish for worldly pleasure and as longing for a gathering of a Sufi order. Since Emrah is known to have joined the Nakşibendî order, the second reading cannot be ruled out; but it is not possible to say which the couplet alone intends.

Historical Context

The poem is recorded under the name of Erzurumlu Emrah in the Merzifon Cönkü, a manuscript miscellany held in Metin Hakverdioğlu's own library and introduced by him in 2019. The cönk contains eleven of Emrah's poems, three in syllabic metre and eight in aruz. In cönks and miscellanies Emrah's poems have become mixed with those of Ercişli Emrah and of his apprentice Tokatlı Nûrî; the record in the cönk is therefore not by itself conclusive proof of authorship. For the poet's connection with Merzifon and his other poems in the cönk, see the page on Erzurumlu Emrah. The poem is on page 2 of the cönk and page 547 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources