Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâ'îlün mefâ'îlün mefâ'îlün mefâ'îlün (hezec; not stated in the source, the pattern that fits the lines has been identified by us)

Kelâmî söylenir ammâ Sükûtî bahş eder altun
Sakın boş sanma Bezmî tınmanın da serveti vardır

In English

1. Speech (Kelâmî) is spoken, but it is silence (Sükûtî) that bestows gold; Bezmî, do not think that giving a sound is an empty thing, ringing too has its wealth.

The couplet can be read in two ways. If the pen names are read in their dictionary sense, it is a variation on the proverb "if speech is silver, silence is gold": the spoken word is spent and gone, while silence brings gain. If the pen names are read as the names of persons, Kelâmî talks, Sükûtî hands out gold, and Bezmî, between the two, merely gives a "ting" and says that even this slight sound has its value.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The author of the couplet is not certain. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar quotes it as a couplet "attributed to Bezmî", in the form he had seen in the now lost anthology of Abdî Efendi and kept in his memory; he did not copy it from a manuscript. It is highly probable that "Merzifônî Bezmî Çelebi", named in the gathering he describes on the same page, is the Lame Judge of Merzifon, Bezmî Abdullah Efendi, who has an entry in the seventh volume: his home town and the years in which he lived fit. Hüsameddin, however, does not connect the two records.

The whole subtlety of the couplet lies in the dictionary meaning of the three pen names. "Kelâm" means speech, "sükût" silence, and "bezm" a convivial gathering with wine and conversation. The first line sets the two poets against each other by the meaning of their names and measures the difference between them in gold. In the second line the poet names his own pen name and proposes a third way: "tınmak" is to give a sound, to make a faint noise. If one considers that an empty vessel rings and that gold too gives a sound when struck, an allusion may have been built between "do not think it empty" and "wealth": what rings is not empty, it is as precious as gold. This reading is a possibility drawn from the text. The meaning "gathering" of "bezm", the poet's pen name, also brings into the couplet the place where speech and silence meet. Hüsameddin's added remark "Her hâlde ma'nîdârdır" (it is certainly meaningful) shows that he found the couplet meaningful but did not undertake to explain it.

The source does not state the metre or verse form of the couplet. The lines fit the hezec pattern made up of four "mefâ'îlün"; in the second line "da" and the last syllable of the word "serveti" are read lengthened as the pattern requires. That the pen name appears in the second line suggests that the couplet may be the last couplet of a ghazal or a qit'a, but it may also have circulated as a witticism spoken on its own; Hüsameddin calls it a "beyt-i latîf", that is, a witty couplet.

Hüsameddin gives the couplet immediately after the lines describing the gathering of the poet Şâmî Mustafa Bey, who came to Amasya as sanjak governor in 993 (1585). Mustafa Bey had admitted the Amasya poets Kelâmî, Turâbî and Sükûtî Çelebi to his gathering, and Bezmî Çelebi of Merzifon is said to have "added sweetness" to "the jesting between Kelâmî and Sükûtî". The couplet is the exact counterpart of this scene: a third poet, playing on the names of the two rivals and including himself in the joke, brings the dispute to a pleasant end. The Sükûtî here is not Sükûtî Ahmed Efendi of Merzifon, who died in 1102 (1691), but an Amasya poet who lived a century before him. For the Merzifon judge's life and his place in the gathering see Bezmî Abdullah Efendi; for the lost anthology that preserved the couplet, Abdî Efendi: The Lost Tezkire of Amasya's Poets and Its Poems.

Bibliography

Online sources