THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
I couldn’t find you anywhere
– you were everywhere
I couldn’t meet you anywhere
– you were meeting me
I was trying to detach my things
neatly from everybody else’s
and late I learnt that I was living
for you and through you
I had come down from adolescence with a guilty look
I was pallidly dreaming of elopements from the Seraglio
I wasn’t meeting myself any longer
– you were meeting me!
Im Serail (In the Seraglio) -- Leo Putz
A "seraglio" (serail) was the sequestered living quarters for Osmanli wives and concubines. The word "harem" means the women themselves, but has come to be a synonym for seraglio. Men were not allowed to enter this section (the guardians and servants were eunuchs), and the women were not allowed out. The word may be derived from the Turkish word for palace,"saray" (Persian "saraʾi"); or from the Italian "serraglio" (from Late Latin "serraculum," derived from "serare," to close, which came from "sera,"a door-bar), a cage or an enclosure for wild animals, or a defensive wall; the 16th century Italian ghettoes were serraglio degli ebrei, "enclosure of the Jews." To Europeans, the word has often evoked (undesrved) lascivious images of orgies and lust; for example, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Singspiel, Die Entführung aus dem Serail"(The Abduction from the Seraglio). Each woman received a salary, but they lived in a strict hierarchic order determined by their their rank and importance. All of the sultan’s women were "haseki," but individual titles were conferred: the sultan’s mother was the "valide sultan," and his daughter was a "sultana." A woman who gave birth to a boy was "haseki sultan." Concubines were divided into three groups: acemi (unskilled), kalfa (qualified), and usta (skilled).
ReplyDelete