Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Sen bugün bir ‘âdil ‘âlî-himemsiň
Bir avuç ḳanımdan geç efendim geç
Mürüvvet baḥrisin ṣâḥib-keremsiň
Baḳma noḳṣânından geç efendim geç

In English

1. Today you are just and of lofty generosity; spare a handful of my blood, my lord, spare it. You are a sea of magnanimity, a lord of grace; do not look at my faults, forgive them, my lord, pass them by.

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 "himemsiň / keremsiň", the second and fourth in "ḳanımdan / noḳṣânından"; "geç efendim geç" is the refrain. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain takes the form of a plea for pardon addressed to a superior or to a beloved. The person addressed is praised as "âdil" (just), "âlî-himem" (of lofty generosity), "mürüvvet bahri" (sea of magnanimity) and "sâhib-kerem" (lord of grace); in divan poetry these epithets are used both for the beloved and for men of state. It is therefore hard to say for certain whether the quatrain is addressed to a beloved or to a patron. The phrase "bir avuç kanımdan geç" (spare a handful of my blood) rests on the conceit that the beloved has the right to kill the lover; the lover asks that his life be spared. The repeated refrain "geç efendim geç" carries both senses, "give it up" and "forgive", and strengthens the plea when sung with the saz.

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 "geç efendim geç" 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 53 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