Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Sitem-kâr yâr ile ben geçinemem
Felek başḳa ḳuluň çıraḳ edindi
Ya bir hû çek oda yansun ben gibi
Ya sevdâsın başdan ıraḳ edindi

In English

1. I cannot get along with a reproachful beloved; fate has taken another servant as its apprentice (fortune has turned its face to someone else). Either let the beloved too cry out a "hû" and burn in the fire as I do, or (it seems) the beloved has put this passion far from the mind.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a koşma. The koşma is the most common verse form of minstrel poetry; it is built of quatrains and usually sung in an eleven-syllable metre. The lines have a caesura after 6+5 or 4+4+3 syllables; the syllable count is ours. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the first quatrain of this poem. The second and fourth lines rhyme in "çırak / ırak", with "edindi" as the refrain; the first and third lines are free. The article gives the poem's place as "Cönk, 52-53"; the poem runs over two pages of the cönk. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first two lines are clear: the lover says he cannot get along with a reproachful beloved and complains that fortune has favoured someone else. The phrase "felek başka kulun çırak edindi" applies the master-apprentice relationship to fate; fate, like a master, has chosen its favourite, and the one chosen is not the lover. The last two lines can be read in two ways. "Hû çek" is the call naming God in Sufi remembrance (zikr); the lover either asks the beloved to fall into this fire as he has, or, through the "either ... or ..." construction, lists two possibilities: the beloved will either burn or has already put the passion out of mind. The verb "edindi" in the refrain closes the quatrain with a statement of result; something has happened and the lover must accept it.

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 52-53 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