Münîrî, Tuyugh 2: Mad, a Tale, a Moth

Tuyugh 2 — Senüñ ‘ışḳuñ beni dīvāne ḳıldı

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 07 October 2026 • 3 min reading

In Münîrî's only tuyugh in a different metre, love makes the lover mad, turns his state into a tale and, with light from the candle of beauty, makes his heart a moth.

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün

Senüñ ‘ışḳuñ beni dīvāne ḳıldı
Cihāna ḥālümi efsāne ḳıldı
İrüp şem‘-i cemālüñden tecellī
Dil-i pür-sūzumı pervāne ḳıldı

In English

1. Your love has made me mad (divane); it has made my state a tale (efsane) for the world, a story on every tongue. When a light appeared and reached me from the candle of your beauty, it turned my heart, full of burning, into a moth (pervane), the moth that flies into the candle and burns.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a four-line tuyugh; in the edition it is the second of the tuyughs (tyğ 2). It is the only one of Münîrî's tuyughs written in a different metre: while the other twenty are in the pattern "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün", the metre of this tuyugh is "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün". Ersoy notes this difference twice in his introduction and counts both patterns as tuyugh metres; the TDV likewise says that the tuyugh is generally written in "fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün". The rhyme is the sound "-āne" and the redif (refrain word) is the verb "ḳıldı" (made): dīvāne ḳıldı, efsāne ḳıldı, pervāne ḳıldı. The third line ("tecellī") is unrhymed. The quatrain is found in all three manuscripts (VT 177a, VY 148a, Ü 61a) and appears in them under the heading "rubâî". It is not known for whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The tuyugh describes a transformation in three steps: love first makes the lover mad, then turns his state into a tale for the world, and finally changes his heart into a moth. The three rhyme words carry these steps. The Kubbealtı explains "efsâne" as an unfounded, imaginary story, a fable; here the lover's state has become a story that everyone tells.

The last two lines rest on the well-known divan image of the candle and the moth: the beloved's beauty is a candle, and the lover's heart is the moth that flies into it and burns. The Kubbealtı gives "tecellî" the sense of appearing, becoming manifest, and also records that in Sufism it means the shining of the lights of God in the heart of the gnostic. Here the word describes the light of beauty reaching the lover; that it also recalls the Sufi sense adds a deeper resonance to the language of love (our reading). "Dil-i pür-sūz", the heart full of burning, is already burning before it becomes a moth; the coming of the light turns this burning into a flight toward the candle.