Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün

Nigârâ sûz-ı ‘aşḳıňla derûnum oda yanmışdır
Ḳalupdır bu şirin cânım ḳafesde o da yanmışdır

In English

1. O beauty, my inner self has burned in fire through the heat of your love; this sweet soul of mine has remained in its cage, and it too has burned.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is recorded in the cönk as an aruz semai. The semais minstrels composed in aruz are usually written in the pattern of four "mefâîlün" feet 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 "yanmışdır"; the rhyme is the sound "oda / o da", and the rhyming words also form a pun (cinas). 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 address "Nigârâ" names the beloved as one as beautiful as a painting. In the first line the lover's inner self, "derûn", has fallen into fire through the "sûz", the burning heat, of love. In the second line the soul is in a "kafes", a cage, like a bird imprisoned in the body. The cage-and-bird comparison expresses in Sufi poetry the soul's captivity in the body; here the bird too is burning, meaning that the fire of love has not stayed in the body but has reached the soul. The word "oda" is the directional form of the old word "od", fire; by sounding like "o da" ("it too") it adds a small play on words (cinas) to the couplet.

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 5 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