Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Zeytun gözleriňe ḳurbân olayım
Şehr-i Merzifonda civân Gülfadik
Maḥv u helâkiňe dermân olayım
‘Âşıḳ oldum saňa inan Gülfadik

In English

1. Let me be a sacrifice for your olive-black eyes, Gülfadik, young beauty of the town of Merzifon. I am ready to perish and be destroyed for your sake; the line may also be understood as "let me myself be the cure for the ruin I suffer because of you". Believe me, Gülfadik, I have fallen in love with you.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The quatrain is the first stanza of the koşma on page 115 of the Merzifon Cönkü and is given twice in the article, among the reasons for naming the cönk and among Fethî's poems. The rest of the koşma is unpublished. The lines have eleven syllables each. The first and third lines end in "ḳurbân olayım" and "dermân olayım": "olayım" is the refrain and "-ân" the rhyme. The second and fourth lines rhyme in "civân" and "inan" and close with the refrain "Gülfadik". That all four lines of the quatrain carry a refrain gives it a recurring, song-like pattern of sound.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The koşma presents the beloved through a single detail, her eyes. "Zeytun gözler", olive eyes, means large, dark and shining eyes, and in folk poetry it is a simile of beauty characteristic of Anatolia. The phrases "let me be a sacrifice" and "let me be a cure" express the lover's readiness to give himself up for the beloved. "Mahv u helâk" in the third line means annihilation and death; the line can be read both as daring to perish for the beloved and as becoming the cure for the wound she has opened. The most striking feature of the koşma is its second line: "Şehr-i Merzifonda civân Gülfadik". Departing from the nameless and placeless beloved of divan poetry, the poem addresses a young woman called by her name and living in a particular town. This concreteness turns the koşma into a local love poem and makes it one of the clearest traces of the cönk's link with Merzifon.

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