Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Gülşen-i ‘âlemde ey gül-i ra‘nâ
Nedir çıṭır pıṭır bu sivilcikler
Demez âyetlerin oḳursun ammâ
Lâleler ḳan aġlar âh çeker güller

In English

1. O lovely rose of the rose garden of the world, what are these little pimples, dotted here and there? The third line is unclear: it may mean that verses of the Qur'an are recited and breathed over them, yet (the pimples do not go away). At this state of yours the tulips weep blood and the roses sigh.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The quatrain is the first stanza of the second koşma recorded under the name Gedâyî on page 91 of the Merzifon Cönkü; in the cönk it stands on the same page as the previous koşma. The rest of the poem and the pen-name stanza are unpublished. The lines have eleven syllables each; the syllable count is ours. The first and third lines rhyme in "ra‘nâ" and "ammâ", and the second and fourth in "sivilcikler" and "güller"; the last rhyme is a half rhyme resting on the plural suffix "-ler", common in folk poetry. The word "Demez" at the start of the third line does not fit the context well; the article's reading is kept unchanged, and the meaning of the line can be settled only when the rest of the koşma is seen.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The koşma greets the beloved with the most ornate images of divan poetry and at once breaks that exaltation with an everyday detail. In the first line the beloved is the loveliest rose of "gülşen-i ‘âlem", the rose garden of the world; in the second line the "çıtır pıtır" pimples on her face are mentioned. The onomatopoeic doublet "çıtır pıtır" adds the playful flavour of folk speech. The reciting of verses in the third line seems to refer to the prayers that were recited and breathed over ailments such as pimples in popular practice; this interpretation is ours. In the last line nature mourns the beloved's condition: the tulips weep blood and the roses sigh. The red of the tulip is tied to bloody tears and the opening of the rose to a sigh; this is a conceit close to hüsn-i talil, the figure that assigns a fanciful cause to a natural fact. The quatrain as a whole produces a light humour by bringing the grand language of love together with a small blemish.

Historical Context

Who Gedâyî was is not certain. Since the cönk contains many poems by Erzurumlu Emrah and his apprentice Tokatlı Nûrî, it is plausible that this Gedâyî is Emrah's other famous apprentice, Tokatlı (Beşiktaşlı) Gedâî; this identification is ours and is not in the source. What is known about the poet's identity is discussed in the biography of Gedâyî.

Bibliography

Online sources