Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Ey güzeller şāhı yār-ı dil-rübā
Yiñile ‘āşıḳuña yoḳ mı devā
Der-be-der der-yūze idüp ‘ālemi
Ḳapuña şey’ lillāha geldüm şehā

In English

1. O king of beauties, heart-ravishing beloved, is there no remedy anew for your lover? (We understand "yiñile" as "anew"; see the commentary.)

2. O king, I have gone door to door begging through the world; (at last) I have come to your door saying "something for God's sake".

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The eighth müfred of the edition is a piece of two couplets in the metre "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün". The edition prints these two couplets under the heading "Müfredler", with a space between them. Since the Kubbealtı Lugatı defines the müfred as a single couplet not bound to other couplets, the piece here has two couplets despite its name; the genre name is kept as in the edition. Ersoy writes in his introduction that the nine müfreds of the divan are found only in the Vatican manuscript (VT) and that all of them are in Turkish; they stand on folios 180b-181b of that manuscript.

The rhyme is formed with the words "dil-rübā", "devā" and "şehā". Both lines of the first couplet rhyme; the Kubbealtı Lugatı calls a couplet with rhyming lines musarra and notes that the opening couplets (matla) of poems are almost always musarra. In this respect the piece resembles the opening of a poem, a matla followed by one couplet (our observation). For whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The piece is built on the familiar contrast between king and beggar. The beloved is called "king of beauties" in the first line and "şehā" (O king) in the last; the lover is one who begs from door to door. The Kubbealtı Lugatı explains "dilrübâ" as heart-ravishing, "deryûze" as begging and "der" as door. The closeness in sound and sense among "der-be-der" (door to door), "der-yūze" (begging) and "ḳapu" (door) gives the second couplet its harmony; "şey’ lillāh" is the beggar's cry at the door, "something for God's sake".

The word "yiñile" occurs in two other places in the divan: in Kaside 11 as grass "yiñile bitmiş" (newly grown), and in Kaside 26 in the form "yiñiler". On this basis we have read the word in the sense "new, anew" (our reading). Having gone round all the doors of the world, the lover has come as a last resort to the beloved's door; the remedy for his pain is to be found only there.

Bibliography

Online sources