Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Fe‘ūlün

Sürūrī yoluña ḫarc itdi varın
Ġamın yir öldüginden ṣoñra vāris̱

In English

1. Sürûrî spent all he had on your road; after he dies his heir will eat his grief. (The couplet can be read in two ways: since grief is the only thing left to the heir, the heir who "eats up the inheritance" will eat only his grief; the idiom "gam yemek", to eat grief, also simply means to grieve.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This single couplet (beyit) is written in the metre "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün" of the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre). The metre is not stated in the biographical anthology; it has been deduced from the scansion of the couplet. The poet's pen name (mahlas) "Sürūrī" appears at the beginning of the first line; the couplet containing the pen name is usually the last couplet of a ghazal, the makta. The couplet may therefore be the last couplet of a lost ghazal. Âşık Çelebi quotes it at the end of the examples he gives from his teacher's poems, just before the ghazal with the pen name. According to the manuscript variant recorded by Filiz Kılıç, the couplet is missing in the F manuscript of the anthology.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The wit of the couplet lies in the joint use of two idioms connected with inheritance. In Turkish "to eat someone's property" means to inherit and consume it, while "gam yemek", to eat grief, means to grieve, to be sorrowful. Sürûrî has spent all he had on the beloved's road; when he dies no property will be left behind. The only thing his heir will "eat" is his grief. The verb "to eat" thus carries two meanings at once: the heir will both receive the only inheritance the poet leaves, his grief, and grieve after him. There is a double entendre (tevriye) in this expression.

A congruence of images (tenasüp) is set up among the words "spending", "all one has", "inheritance" and "heir", and the couplet tells love as a story of wealth consumed. That the lover sacrifices everything for the beloved is a familiar idea in divan poetry; Sürûrî ends this idea with a reckoning of inheritance and so gives it an ending at once bitter and playful. As in another makta of the poet, there is also a hidden contrast between the pen name, meaning "joyful", and the couplet's ending in grief.

Historical Context

When the couplet was written is not known; it is therefore not possible to link it directly with the poet's life. Even so, what the biographical anthologies relate shows a curious closeness to the couplet. Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde write that in the years when Sürûrî withdrew from the world he put all his property up for sale and had a small mosque built near his house. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records that he never married. Âşık Çelebi relates that at his teacher's death nothing was found but the two thousand silver akçes he had set aside for his shroud and burial. The couplet, which says that he spent all he had and would leave his heir nothing but grief, stands like a summary of that life read in hindsight.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources