Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11'li hece ölçüsü

Gevherî mahrem-i aşkındır ebed
Çektiğim hicrâna yokturur ebed
Bir garib kulundur kemter Mehemmed
Kurban ol der isen ferman senindir

In English

1. Gevherî is forever the confidant of your love. The pain of separation I suffer has no end; the line can also be read as "this pain will never cease". Mehmed is your forlorn and lowliest servant; if you say "be a sacrifice", the command is yours, and he is ready to give his life.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The text is the pen-name stanza of a koşma and very probably its last stanza; the other stanzas of the koşma are not given in the source. The lines have eleven syllables each and pause after six and five syllables; the metre is not stated in the source, and the syllable count is ours. The first three lines rhyme on the sound "-ed" in the words "ebed, ebed, Mehemmed". The fourth line ends with "ferman senindir" and is read as the ayak (refrain line) linking to the koşma's other stanzas. The repetition of the word "ebed" with the same meaning in the first two lines recalls the weak rhymes the sources often find in Gevherî; it may also be a copyist's corruption, and this assessment is ours. The quatrain appears in the introductory study of Şükrü Elçin's Gevherî Divanı, published in 1984, and Ali Berat Alptekin quotes it from there. To whom and when it was spoken is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain is a traditional pen-name stanza expressing the lover's submission before the beloved. "Mahrem-i aşk" means an intimate who has been let into the secret of love; the poet presents himself as the confidant of the beloved's love and says that this intimacy is eternal. In the second line the same eternity is applied to pain: the suffering of separation has no end. The word "yokturur" carries the trace, in folk poetry, of the old Anatolian Turkish copula "-durur" and means "there is not". "Kemter" in the third line, meaning lowest or most worthless, is a word of humility; "garib kul", the forlorn servant far from home, is a formula familiar from divan poetry as well.

The last line expresses the theme of the lover devoting his life to the beloved in the language of command: if the beloved says "be a sacrifice", the decree is hers, and the lover will not object. Picturing the beloved as a ruler issuing commands and the lover as her servant is a settled image of divan poetry; Gevherî carries this image into the plain diction of syllabic metre. In the quatrain eternity, pain and submission are bound together: the intimacy is eternal, the pain is eternal, and at the end of both the only thing left to the lover is to bow to the beloved's command.

Historical Context

The quatrain is the basis of the view that Gevherî's real name was Mehmed. Şükrü Elçin suggested on the strength of this line that the poet's name may have been Mehmed, while Saim Sakaoğlu accepted firmly that the name was Mehmed. This view conflicts with the claim of Nihad M. Çetin, who connects the poet with the town of Gümüş in the Amasya region; relying on the memory of the Gevherîzâde family of Gümüş, Çetin argues that the poet's name was definitely Mustafa. As Alptekin reminds us, Gevherî's poems were multiplied in cönks and miscellanies after his death, and copyists sometimes made additions and changes to these texts. Whether the name "Mehemmed" denotes the poet himself or entered from another hand therefore cannot be said for certain. The quatrain is given separately in this category because it represents the other side of the continuing debate on Gevherî's identity and his link with Amasya.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Şükrü Elçin, Gevherî Divanı: İnceleme-Metin-Dizin-Bibliyografya, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Millî Folklor Araştırma Dairesi Yayınları, 1984, p. 11 (as cited by Alptekin 2015).

Academic studies

Books

  • Ali Berat Alptekin, "Gevherî", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 13.04.2015 (updated 07.12.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/gevheri
  • Nihad M. Çetin, "Gevherî'ye Dâir Birkaç Not", Prof. Dr. Bekir Kütükoğlu'na Armağan, Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi, 1991, pp. 21-23 (as cited by Albayrak 1996).

Online sources