Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ne müdeddir Nigâr Nigâr dimekden
Kalmayubdur cânda ihtiyâr yeri
Kanlar udup bagrım başın yemekden
Hasta gönlüm olmuş âh u zâr yer

In English

1. For how long now, from saying "Nigâr, Nigâr", there has been no room left in my soul for my own will. From swallowing blood and gnawing at the core of my breast, my sick heart has become the place of sighs and laments. (The end of the fourth line reads "yer" in the source; the rhyme suggests the reading "yeri".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

It is a four-line piece written in syllabic metre (hece); the lines have eleven syllables. The first and third lines rhyme on "dimekden / yemekden", the second and fourth on "yeri"; this cross-rhymed arrangement resembles the quatrains of folk poetry. The end of the fourth line reads "yer" in the printed edition; in Hüsameddin's text a page number follows immediately after this word, and the last letter may have dropped out. The text is kept here as printed. Forms such as "müdeddir" (for müddettir, "it has been a while") and "udup" (for yutup, "swallowing") carry traces of Azerbaijani Turkish and of spoken language.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

At the centre of the piece is the name "Nigâr". Nigâr is a Persian word meaning beloved, beauty, picture; it is also the source of the poet's pen name. According to Hüsameddin, Nigârî fell in love in his youth with Nigâr Hanım, one of the beautiful ladies of Bergüşad, and took his pen name for this reason; the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi connects the pen name with a debt of gratitude to a lady named Nigâr who helped him during his studies, and the Encyclopaedia Iranica with an ideal beloved seen in a dream. The repetition "Nigâr Nigâr" in the line calls up at once a woman's name, the idea of the beloved and the poet's own name.

"İhtiyâr" in the second line means the power of choice, will: from calling on the beloved's name no room is left for the poet's own will. "Swallowing blood" and "gnawing at the core of one's breast" are idioms for keeping pain inside. The plain, idiom-based language of the quatrain is clearly different from the ghazals Nigârî wrote in aruz (quantitative metre), and it explains why his syllabic poems were chanted to melodies among his followers.

Historical Context

Hüsameddin writes that Nigârî had a way of his own and a lover's manner in poetry and literature, and that he also composed sound poems "by finger-counting", that is, in syllabic metre; he adds that among poems of this kind he finds these lines "very poignant". In the same entry he also records that Nigâr Hanım later married Seyyid Ahmed Efendi, a relative of Nigârî, and remained his wife until his martyrdom. For the poet's literary personality see Nigârî: Poet and Works.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

Online sources