Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Bir iki gün ẕevḳ içün ‘uḳbâyı taḥrîb eyleyüp
Ol ‘adûnuň teşviḳiyle râh-ı şeyṭân istemem

In English

1. I do not want, for the pleasure of a day or two, to lay waste the hereafter and, at the instigation of that enemy, to take the path of Satan.

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 lines end in "eyleyüp / istemem" and do not rhyme; in the following couplets the refrain is presumably "istemem". 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 compares the brevity of worldly pleasure with the permanence of the hereafter. "Bir iki gün", a day or two, expresses the shortness of worldly life; "ukbâ", the hereafter, the life that has no end. The poet says he does not want to "tahrîb", lay waste, the hereafter for the sake of a passing pleasure. "Ol adû", that enemy, in the second line is Satan, or may be thought of as the self (nefs) that draws man to evil. These two lines do not rhyme ("eyleyüp / istemem"), whereas the article gives the first two lines of each ghazal. This suggests that the lines taken into the article from this ghazal are not its opening couplet, or that the opening couplet is written differently in the cönk.

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 71 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