Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Ḫâne-i ḳalbi demâdem ḳul yıḳar Allâh yapar
Dest-i ḳudretle binâyı ḳul yıḳar Allâh yapar

In English

1. The house of the heart is ever being torn down by the servant and built by God; the servant tears down the building, God builds it (again) with the hand of His power.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is recorded in the cönk as a ghazal (gazel). The ghazal is the aruz verse form whose opening couplet (matla) rhymes within itself and whose other couplets are tied to that rhyme; folk poets also used this form. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the opening couplet of this poem. The refrain is "ḳul yıḳar Allâh yapar"; the rhyme in "ḳalbi / binâyı" is weak. The identification of the metre is ours; as is usual in the aruz poems of folk poets, some syllables may not fit the pattern exactly. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet uses the Sufi image that likens the heart to a house, a building. In Sufism the heart, the place where God manifests Himself, is called on the basis of a hadith report the "Beytullah" (House of God). The poet says that man constantly tears this house down with his own sins and attachment to the world, while God rebuilds it with the "dest-i kudret", the hand of His power. The contrast "kul yıkar Allâh yapar" (the servant tears down, God builds) in the refrain brings man's fault and God's mercy together in one sentence and resembles a folk saying used like a proverb in Anatolia. The couplet marks with the word "demâdem" (every moment) that tearing down and building are a cycle that goes on at every instant.

Historical Context

The poem is recorded under the pen name "Nazîf" in the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. The cönk contains ten of Nazîf's poems, one in syllabic metre and nine in aruz; the aruz poems are all ghazals, and most carry religious and moral admonition. The article gives no information about the poet; the poet's identity and the century in which he lived have not been determined. Since the cönk is thought to have been compiled in Merzifon within the literary circle of Eyüb Sabrî, the poet may have been one read or living in that circle. For details, see the page on Nazîf. The poem is on page 69 of the cönk and page 550 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources