Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef'ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün

Sevdim yine bir ḥûb-ı dilârâ pek iler mi
Elbetde göňül vaṣlını ister de dilerdi

In English

1. Once again I have loved a heart-ravishing beauty; (have I gone) too far? The heart, of course, desires and would wish for union with her.

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 rhyme expected in a kalenderî is weak in "iler mi / dilerdi"; the reading problem is explained below. 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 reading "pek iler mi" at the end of the first line follows the article, but its meaning is not certain. Taken together with "dilerdi" in the second line, the rhyme scheme would lead us to expect the first line to end in "pek ilerdi" or a similar form; since the cönk itself is not available to us, the reading has not been corrected. The rendering above marks this uncertainty with brackets. The overall sense of the couplet is clear: the lover has once again fallen for a "hûb-ı dilârâ", a heart-ravishing beauty, and finds it natural that the heart should desire union with her. The word "elbette" (of course) shows the lover speaking as if in his own defence, saying this passion is unavoidable.

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 106 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