Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

‘Arż-ı ḥâlim yâre bir bir söylesem
Bülbül gibi artar zârım Gülfadik
‘Aşḳıň deryâsını ben de boylasam
Ḥaşre dek söyünmez nârım Gülfadik

In English

1. Were I to tell my beloved of my state point by point, my lament would swell like a nightingale's, Gülfadik. Were I too to plunge to the depths of the sea of love, my fire would not die down until the Day of Judgement, Gülfadik.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The quatrain is the first stanza of the koşma on page 112 of the Merzifon Cönkü. Metin Hakverdioğlu gives it twice in his article: once when explaining his reasons for naming the manuscript the "Merzifon Cönkü", and once among Fethî's poems. The rest of the koşma is unpublished. The lines have eleven syllables each. The first and third lines rhyme in "söylesem" and "boylasam", the second and fourth in "zârım" and "nârım"; the refrain "Gülfadik" is repeated at the end of each stanza. Using a personal name as the refrain turns the koşma into a direct address.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain is built on two conditional clauses, and both express the unending pain of love. "Arz-ı hâl" means a petition or a report of one's state; were the lover to set out to tell the beloved his condition point by point, his lament would swell like a nightingale's. The rose and the nightingale are a shared image of folk and divan poetry; here the nightingale simile also forms a quiet link with the "Gül" (rose) in the beloved's name, so that the lover becomes the nightingale and Gülfadik the rose. The "sea of love" in the third line describes a great, deep love that swallows whoever falls into it; "boylamak" means to sink into water to the depth of one's height, to sound its depth. In the last line water and fire confront each other: even if the lover plunges into the sea of love, the fire within him will not go out "until the gathering", the Day of Judgement. This antithesis of sea and fire powerfully expresses that nothing can quench love.

Historical Context

The name Gülfadik occurs as the refrain in two of Fethî's koşmas. Fadik is one of the affectionate folk forms of the name Fatma in Anatolia; combined with "Gül" (rose) it can be read both as the name of a real person and as an epithet linking beauty to a flower. Hakverdioğlu calls her "a beauty of Merzifon" and bases his view that the cönk was compiled in Merzifon largely on these koşmas. Who Gülfadik was, whether a real person or a beauty of poetic convention, is not known. Nothing is known of Fethî's life. Metin Hakverdioğlu believes that he was a Merzifon poet and that it is highly likely he compiled the cönk; the main ground for this view is that in two of his koşmas the poet addresses a beauty named Gülfadik in "Şehr-i Merzifon". Since the cönk is estimated to be about a hundred years old, Fethî probably lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; this too is not a firm date but a conclusion drawn from the estimated age of the cönk. What is known of the poet and of the cönk is set out in the biography of Fethî.

Bibliography

Online sources