Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilün

Rāh-ı pāyuñda görinen na‘lçeñ sırrı degül
Baş ḳodum yoluñda ḳaşlarum nişānıdur şehā

In English

1. O shah, the marks seen on the path your foot treads are not the secret of your heel-iron; I laid my head on your path, and they are the traces of my eyebrows. ("Na‘lçe" is the small crescent-shaped iron nailed to the heel of a boot. The lover says that the crescent-shaped marks seen on the beloved's path were left not by the heel-iron but by his own eyebrows, pressed to the ground as in prostration.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Crescent-shaped marks are left on the path where the beloved has walked, and anyone who sees them takes them for the prints of the heel-iron. The lover explains them otherwise: they were left by his own eyebrows when he laid his head on the beloved's path. The figure that sets aside the real cause of a thing and puts an imaginary and beautiful one in its place is called hüsn-i ta'lîl. Likening both the eyebrow and the heel-iron to a crescent is a familiar move in divan poetry; Sürûrî lays the two crescents over each other and lets the print and the eyebrow change places.

The idiom "baş koymak" (to lay one's head) works in the couplet with both its meanings. On the one hand it means devoting oneself wholly to someone, risking everything for them. On the other it suggests that the lover really did lay his head on the ground, on the earth where the beloved walks. The marks are presented as proof of this second meaning. "Rāh" (path), "pā" (foot), "na‘lçe" (heel-iron) and "yol" (way) form a single cluster of walking words (tenasüp). With the address "şehā" (O shah) that closes the line, the beloved becomes a ruler and the lover who lays his head on his path becomes his servant.

Where the first line has "sırrı" (its secret), the P manuscript reads "yiri" (its place). With this reading the line means "the marks seen are not the place of the heel-iron", a plainer statement. The reading "sırrı" lends the marks a touch of mystery. It is this second reading that the edition takes as its main text.

Structure of the Poem

Only this one couplet survives, and as its two lines are unrhymed it must come from inside a ghazal. To tell whether the closing "şehā" is the ghazal's redif (refrain word) or simply a form of address, one would need the other couplets. The anthology is silent on metre; scansion places the couplet in the remel pattern "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün". In Âşık Çelebi's entry it stands immediately before the closing couplet that bears the poet's pen name. Judging by Kılıç's footnotes, the F manuscript leaves it out.

Historical Context

Nothing records the occasion of the couplet. Its only witness is the anthology of Âşık Çelebi, who had studied under Sürûrî; like the other pieces he selected from his teacher's verse, this couplet draws all its force from a single conceit.

Bibliography

Online sources