Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef'ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün

Yâ Rab beni ol gözleri mestâne ḳavuşdur
Bîmâr-i tenim luṭf idicek ol câna ḳavuşdur

In English

1. O Lord, unite me with those intoxicated eyes; when (that beloved) shows kindness, unite my sick body with that soul.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a kalenderî. The kalenderî is one of the forms minstrels composed in aruz and is generally written in the pattern "mef'ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün". 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 "kavuşdur"; the rhyme is the "-âne / -âna" sound in "mestâne / câna". 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 opens with a prayer: the lover asks God to unite him with the beloved whose eyes are "mestâne", intoxicated. In divan poetry the drunken eye names the languid, half-closed glance and the beloved's power to make the lover drunk. In the second line the lover sees himself as "bîmâr-ı ten", a sick body, while the beloved is "cân", the soul. The body can be united with the soul only through the beloved's "lutf", kindness and attention. The relation between the sick eye and the sick lover is a known conceit of the tradition: the beloved's eye looks "bîmâr" (languid), and the lover who sees it falls ill. "İdicek" is an old converb meaning "as soon as, the moment that".

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 40 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