Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ṣunup göñlüm disem yâra bir elma gibi el vardı
İdüp peymâne-veş pâ-mâl ele almaya el vardı

In English

1. I meant to offer my heart to the beloved like an apple, (but) a stranger had already reached out; trampling (my heart) underfoot like a wine cup, another had gone to take it in hand. (The couplet can be read in several ways, according to the meanings of the word "el".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Three Faces of the Word "El"

The whole couplet is woven out of the meanings of a single word, "el". In older Turkish "el" means both a person's hand and a stranger, someone else; "el varmak" means to reach out, to dare to lay hands on something. The redif "el vardı" is read differently in the two lines. In the first line the lover wishes to offer his heart to the beloved like an apple; in divan poetry the apple is the symbol of the chin and of the gift offered to the beloved, and the word "elma" itself contains an "el". But a stranger has acted before him, his hand has already got there. In the second line the same stranger has trampled the lover's heart underfoot like a cup and set about taking it in hand, that is, holding it as his own. "Ele almak" (to take in hand) and "el vardı", too, lean on each other in sound and sense.

The expression "peymâne-veş pâ-mâl" (trampled like a cup) is a hard image to read: the cup passes from hand to hand, and at drunken gatherings it is knocked over and left underfoot. The heart, like a cup, both passing from hand to hand and being trodden on may describe the share left to the lover by the rivals around the beloved; but this reading is not certain. Latîfî's edition offers no comment on the couplet.

Its Source and Poet

The couplet occurs only in Latîfî's entry "Remzî Çelebi", the last of three examples given for a judge from Bursa. The tezkires themselves do not answer whether Latîfî's judge and the Müeyyedzâde Remzî of Amasya were the same man; what brings the two names together is what Kınalızâde and Hüsameddin wrote about the father of the poet İlmî.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources