Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef'ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün

İncitme beni ey güzelim cevriňi az it
Gâh va‘d ü viṣâl eyle bana gâhice naz it

In English

1. Do not hurt me, my beauty; lessen your cruelty. Sometimes promise me union, and sometimes be coy.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening of a kalenderî and fits the pattern "mef'ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün"; the identification of the metre is ours. The redif is "it" ("do", "make"), and the rhyme words are "az" and "naz". In the cönk it is recorded on the same page as the preceding kalenderî; in Bilgin's edition it shares a page with Sabrî's kalenderî beginning "Yâ Rab bu ḳuluň".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Here the lover asks the beloved for neither full union nor full separation, but for a balance between the two. "Cevr" is the beloved's cruelty towards the lover; the poet wishes not that it should end entirely but that it should lessen. The repetition "gâh ... gâhice" ("sometimes ... sometimes") in the second line builds a relationship swinging between promise and coyness; coyness itself is counted part of the beloved's beauty in divan poetry. The diction, close to speech and built on imperatives, lends the couplet an intimate and somewhat playful air.

Historical Context

The couplet is taken from the Merzifon Cönkü published by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. Hakverdioğlu acquired this manuscript miscellany from Merzifon for his own library and found that a separate ghazal section of the cönk is devoted to Sabrî's poems. Since the article gives only the first stanza of each poem in the cönk, we cannot see the poem beyond this couplet. Hakverdioğlu notes that the poem appears on page 46 of Orhan Bilgin's 1992 edition of the divan; its place in the cönk is page 74. Because Bilgin's book could not be consulted, the full text cannot be given here. The cönk is thought to have been compiled by a Merzifon poet from Sabrî's circle, most probably Fethî; the inclusion of the poem in this compilation shows that Sabrî's verses were still read in Merzifon after his death. For the poet's life and his other poems see the article Eyüb Sabrî.

Bibliography

Online sources