Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Ben ġarībe yoḳ durur meylüñ eger
K’eylemezsin dōstum hergiz naẓar
Yoluña cān virmek ise ‘āḳıbet
Ġam degül biz çoḳdan itdük terk-i ser

In English

1. My friend, if you have no inclination at all toward me, this stranger, so that you never once look at me...

2. If in the end it comes to giving my life on your path, no matter; we long ago gave up our head (long ago wrote off our life).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ninth and last 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 "eger", "naẓar" and "ser". 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 two couplets proceed like a single conditional sentence: in the first the beloved's indifference is set as a condition, in the second comes the lover's answer. The first couplet is not complete on its own; its sense is completed by the second. This also shows why the piece is printed as two couplets together.

The Kubbealtı Lugatı explains "terk" as leaving, giving up, and records its Sufi sense of removing from the heart everything but God, together with compounds such as "terk-i dünyâ" (renunciation of the world). "Terk-i ser" (giving up the head) says that the lover has long since written off his life; there is a clear closeness of meaning between "cān virmek" (to give one's life) and "terk-i ser". The words "ġam degül" (no matter) express an ease that makes light even of death; while calling himself "ġarīb" (stranger, friendless), the lover addresses the beloved as "dōstum" (my friend).

Bibliography

Online sources