Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Şekkeristândur bu meclis âl ṭûṭîdür şarâb
Âşiyândur ṭut ki sâġar beyżâdur gûyâ ḥabâb

In English

1. This gathering is a land of sugar, and the red wine is a parrot; take the cup to be a nest, and the bubble on the wine is, as it were, (the) egg (in that nest).

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Opening Couplet Latîfî Praised

Latîfî calls this couplet a "maṭlaʿ-ı maṭbûʿ", a pleasing opening couplet, and says "anuñ ḫayâl-i ḫâṣṣıdur": the image was not borrowed from anyone, it is the poet's own. Few compliments a tezkire writer could pay a poet were worth more. The couplet appears in all four tezkires that describe Kadı Remzî of Bursa: Latîfî, Kınalızâde, Beyânî and Gelibolulu Âlî.

A Chain of Images from Sugar to Egg

Every word of the couplet is tied to a single scene. In divan poetry the parrot (ṭûṭî) is the bird that feeds on sugar; once the gathering becomes a şekeristan, a field of sugar cane, the wine moving through it turns into a parrot. But this parrot is red rather than green, for "âl" means red and carries the colour of the wine. Then comes the bird's nest: the cup is a nest, and the bubble on the surface of the wine is the egg in that nest. The small round whiteness of the bubble makes the egg comparison visible. Words that call one another up in this way form what is called tenasüp (congruence of images); in Remzî's couplet the tenasüp becomes a picture that builds the gathering itself into a garden and a bird's nest.

The manuscripts show small differences. Latîfî and Âlî read the second line "ṭut ki sâġar", "suppose the cup to be"; Kınalızâde and Beyânî read "ana sâgar", "the cup (is a nest) for it". The text here is given from Âlî's edition.

The Question of the Poet's Identity

All four tezkire writers give the couplet to one of the judges of Bursa. What carries it to Amasya is the poet's son: according to Kınalızâde the poet İlmî was this judge's son, and the Amasya historian Hüsameddin presents İlmî's father as a Remzî of the Müeyyedzâde family. The son is shared, the father described under two different identities; the couplet's place in the literature of Amasya depends on how far that shared son can be trusted.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources