Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün

Bize leymunıle turunc gerek
Ne ṭaşaġum durur aġac ḳavunı

In English

1. What we need is lemon and bitter orange; what is the citron, my testicle? (The citron, "ağaç kavunu", is a citrus fruit resembling the lemon but much larger, with a thick, wrinkled rind. The poet asks why this fruit should be needed when there are lemons and bitter oranges, and makes a bawdy joke on its shape. The syntax of the second line is somewhat obscure; the word "ne" can be read both as a question and as a dismissive "what of it".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Since its two lines do not rhyme, the couplet is a müfred (single couplet). The metre is the hafif family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "fā‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün"; the edition does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion. It is number LIV in Ahmet Kartal's edition and stands among the single couplets at the end of the divan manuscript. No quotation of it in the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) has been found. To whom and on what occasion it was said is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is among the pieces that show most plainly Basîrî's side of hezl, joking and ribald wit. The first line states an ordinary preference at table or in the garden: lemon and bitter orange are needed. These two fruits are citrus used for their sour juice, added to dishes and sherbets. The second line belittles the citron and makes it ridiculous with a coarse comparison. The large, heavy, wrinkled look of the citron gives the poet the ground for this comparison. The joke arises from polite table talk suddenly turning into a slang remark. The voice of the first line, which begins with "bize" (to us) and speaks for a company, shifts in the second line to the first person singular of "ṭaşaġum" (my testicle); this shift makes the turn of a measured preference into a personal and coarse objection all the more marked.

The use of the names lemon, bitter orange and citron together forms a congruence of images (tenasüp); all three belong to the same family of fruit. The two food ghazals in Basîrî's divan manuscript make a similar joke by carrying the patterns of love poetry to the table. Kartal notes that a striking feature of Basîrî's Turkish poems is these ghazals, which contain the names of dishes of the period and tell which dishes the poet liked and which he did not. This couplet is a short example of the same taste, this time expressed through fruit.

The tezkires describe Basîrî above all as a witty man of the gathering. Âşık Çelebi writes that his poems were "gāh cidd ü gāh hezl", sometimes serious and sometimes jesting, some worthy of praise and some deserving reproach. Kınalızâde too says that most of his poems and sayings inclined to jest, and that his satires and jesting pieces were abundant. This couplet is an example, carried into the divan manuscript, of the kind of wit the tezkire writers called "deserving reproach". That the poet entered such pieces into his divan in his own hand suggests that they were welcome in the circle of the gathering.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), p. 180, entry on Basîrî. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2017 (e-book), p. 235, entry on Basîrî. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

Books

Online sources