Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Nerde ḳaldı seniň ahd ü emânıň
Cân verince cevr oduyla yaḳan yâr
Yine îmâ eder ḳaşıň kemânıň
Kirpikleriň can evime çaḳan yâr

In English

1. What has become of your pledge, your word and your promise of safety? O beloved who burns with the fire of cruelty even while giving life. Once again the bow of your brow beckons; O beloved who drives your lashes into the house of my soul.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a koşma. The koşma is the most common verse form of minstrel poetry; it is built of quatrains and usually sung in an eleven-syllable metre. The lines have a caesura after 6+5 or 4+4+3 syllables; the syllable count is ours. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the first quatrain of this poem. The first and third lines rhyme in "emânıň / kemânıň", the second and fourth in "yakan / çakan"; "yâr" is the refrain. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain opens with reproach: the beloved had given "ahd ü emân", a pledge and a promise of safety, but has not kept it. The beloved both gives life and burns with the "cevr odu", the fire of cruelty; this contradiction expresses in minstrel poetry the double-edged power of the beloved. The second half brings the familiar weapon conceit of divan poetry: the brow is likened to a bow and the eyelashes to arrows. The bow "îmâ eder", it signals, and the arrows strike the "can evi", the house of the soul, the lover's heart. In everyday Turkish "can evi" means a person's most vulnerable spot, the heart. The use of so many divan conceits in a koşma sung in syllabic metre also shows Nûrî's closeness to the aruz tradition.

Historical Context

The poem is recorded under the name of Tokatlı Nûrî in the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019; with thirty-six poems, Nûrî is the poet the cönk gives most space to. Drawing on Orhan Bilgin, Hakverdioğlu relates that Eyüb Sabrî of Merzifon often invited Nûrî to Merzifon; Nûrî's weight in the cönk can be explained by this friendship. Since other minstrels also used the pen name Nûrî, it is not certain that every Nûrî poem in the cönk belongs to Tokatlı Nûrî; the article attributes these poems to Tokatlı Nûrî. For the poet's life and his connection with Amasya, see the page on Tokatlı Nûrî. The poem is on page 4 of the cönk and page 547 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources