Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâʿilâtün fâʿilâtün fâʿilâtün fâʿilün (metre identified by us)

Gün yüzüñden zülfüñi refʿ eyle gel ey âfitâb
Bî-fitîl olur bilürsin ki çerâġ-ı âfitâb

In English

1. O sun (sun-faced beloved), lift your locks from your sunlike face and come; you know the lamp of the sun burns without a wick (the sun's light needs no wick, that is, no lock of hair).

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Lamp Without a Wick

Rûhî likens the beloved's lock of hair to the wick of a lamp. The black strand falling across the face is like the dark wick in the middle of the light. The poet tells the beloved to lift the lock from her face, for the lamp of the sun burns without a wick; a face like the sun has no need of a strand of hair. Both lines of the opening couplet end with the word "âfitâb", sun. In the first the word addresses the beloved, in the second it is the sun in the sky; the same word repeated in two senses forms a pun in place of a rhyme. Reading the word as a pun is an inference from the text.

Latîfî's Reply and Hüsameddin's Merger

Right after Rûhî's couplet Latîfî gives a reply of his own: "Şemʿ-i ruḫsâruñdan ey meh zülfüñi itme ırâg / Bî-fitîl olmaz gözüm nûrı bu rûşendür çerâġ", O moon, do not take your lock away from the candle of your cheek; light of my eye, a lamp is not without a wick, that much is clear. The anthologist argues the very opposite, and so the young poet's conceit turns into an exchange carried on by a writer of the following generation. Hüsameddin merged the two couplets: the first line of the couplet he gives to Rûhî is Rûhî's, and the second comes from Latîfî's reply. The text in Hüsameddin therefore cannot be counted as a single couplet by one person. Latîfî's long praise of Rûhî is summarised in Rûhî Fâzıl Çelebi (Zenbillizâde).

Bibliography

Online sources