Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Nâ’il olmaz feyż-i Ḥaḳḳa dilde ‘irfân olmadan
Gül açılmaz tâġi ḳalpde tâ ki bârân olmadan

In English

1. Without gnosis in the heart one cannot attain God's grace; without rain no rose opens in (the garden of) the heart.

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 "olmadan"; the rhyme is the "-ân" sound in "irfân / bârân". 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 gives a Sufi maxim through a comparison. In the first line "irfân", the knowledge of God, is presented as the condition for attaining "feyz", divine abundance and bounty. The second line supports this with an example from nature: no rose opens without rain. Gnosis is thus likened to rain, and grace to the opening rose. The reading "tâġi ḳalpde" in the second line follows the article and its meaning is uncertain; a reading such as "bâğ-ı kalbde" (in the garden of the heart) would better suit the image of the couplet. The rendering above marks this uncertainty with brackets.

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 73 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