Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Bülbül olub düşdüm ḳazâ-yı aşḳa
Bir nev-nihal gül fidânıň ucundan
Ṣaldım ser ü cânı belâ-yı aşḳa
Melek-meşreb bir civânıň ucundan

In English

1. Because of a fresh young rose sapling I became a nightingale and fell into the misfortune of love. Because of an angel-natured youth I cast both my head and my soul into the calamity of love.

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 "kazâ-yı aşka / belâ-yı aşka", the second and fourth in "fidânıň / civânıň"; "ucundan" is the refrain. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the quatrain the phrases "kazâ-yı aşk" and "belâ-yı aşk" answer each other: love is both a kazâ, a fate that befalls one, and a belâ, a calamity. The lover first becomes a nightingale and falls into this misfortune because of a "nev-nihâl", a freshly planted rose sapling; then he "casts" his head and soul into the calamity of love, that is, he stakes them without hesitation. The word "ucundan" in the refrain means "because of, on account of" and also plays with the image of the tip of the sapling. The beloved is called "melek-meşreb bir civân", an angel-natured youth, which reflects the tradition in folk and divan poetry of often depicting the beauty as a young man.

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 10 of the cönk and page 547-548 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources