Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Zencir-i zülfüňden bî-nevâ göňül
Ne yüz buldı ne ḳurtuldı ne çâre
Bir seniň yoluňda gülşen-i ‘ömrü
Geçdi ġazellendi ṣoldı ne çâre

In English

1. The poor heart caught in the chain of your locks has found neither favour nor release; what can be done. On your path the rose garden of life has passed (in vain), shed its leaves and faded; what can be done.

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, "göňül / ömrü", are free; the second and fourth rhyme in "kurtuldı / soldı", with "ne çâre" as the refrain. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first image of the quatrain is the lock of hair as a chain: in divan poetry the beloved's curling hair is likened to a chain binding the lover's heart. The heart is "bî-nevâ", poor and helpless; it has found no favour from the beloved and no release from the chain. In the second half life is likened to a rose garden, and this garden has passed away on the beloved's path. The verb "gazellendi" describes the shedding of leaves in autumn and also chimes with the poetic form "gazel". The refrain "ne çâre" (what can be done) expresses resignation. The strings of verbs (found, escaped; passed, shed its leaves, faded) give the lines a flow characteristic of folk poetry.

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. Eyüp Akman's entry on Tokatlı Nûrî in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature), drawing on İbrahim Seçkin Aydın's thesis, reports that a poem with the refrain "ne çare" is recorded in the sources under the names of both Erzurumlu Emrah and Tokatlı Nûrî; the response poems (nazire) Nûrî wrote to the poems of his master Emrah have mixed up the two poets' work. The cönk records this poem under Nûrî's name; whether the text in the cönk is the same as the poem Aydın mentions cannot be settled without the full text. The poem is on page 36 of the cönk and page 548 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources