Nâr-ı hicrâne

The story

“Some voices don't fade with time; they wait for the moment they will be heard again.”

Nâr-ı hicrâne is a music video built on the Nevâ gazel that Hâfız Sâdettin Kaynak recorded on a shellac disc in the 1920s. It began with an idea: to bring a voice recorded almost a century ago together with the musical and visual tools of today.

Time, sounds and the world change; the love, longing and searching people carry inside do not. The film tries to draw a line between the two.

The gazel

In classical Turkish music, a gazel is a poem sung as an improvisation within a makam, usually free of a fixed rhythm. The singer does not simply voice the words but adds their own breath and reading to them, sometimes lingering on a single word, sometimes deepening the line with a silence.

In Sâdettin Kaynak's Nevâ gazel, separation, longing and love stop being words and become sound.

The lyrics

The words are by the Ottoman divan poet Enderunlu Vâsıf (d. 1824) and appear in his Dîvân.

Nâr-ı hicrâne düşüp bağrımı yaktım bu gece…
Fallen into the fire of separation, I burned my heart tonight…

The poem describes the inner world of a lover burning in the fire of separation, who compares himself to a candle melting as it burns. In divan poetry, and especially in its Sufi readings, the beloved can also stand for a higher truth a person longs to reach. The video reads love, separation and longing within these layers, as a spiritual search.

Director's note

My aim was not just to adapt a historical work to today's music. I wanted to explore what kind of visual world a voice recorded a century ago could live in now.

Bringing an old musical expression together with electronic production and AI-assisted image generation, I tried to keep the feeling of the original. At the centre of the visuals I placed time, repetition, spiritual searching and a person's relationship with their own inner world. I used AI as a storytelling tool; the scene design, visual choices, editing and rhythm were shaped by my decisions as director.

This film was not made to replace the original, but to show that it can still create new feelings and images today. Because however much time changes, the fire that burns inside a person stays the same.

In memory of Hâfız Sâdettin Kaynak.