Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Germ olup meh yüzüñe iñende hemtālanmasın
Bilsin eksükligini iñende ra‘nālanmasın
Biz de ḳullarındanuz ol şāhuñ eydüñ kim raḳīb
Ululanup dil-bere iñende paşalanmasın

In English

1. Let the moon not grow eager and count itself too much the equal of your face; let it know its deficiency and not make so much show of its beauty. ("İñende" is understood as the old Turkish word "iñen" (very, much) joined with "de", meaning "so very, all that much". "Hemtâlanmak" means to claim to be someone's equal, "ra‘nâlanmak" to pride oneself on one's beauty. The moon's "deficiency" is both its flaw and its waning into a crescent.)

2. We too are among the servants of that shah; tell the rival not to puff himself up and play the pasha so much before the beloved. (The "rival" (raḳīb) is the other lover who has set his eyes on the same beloved. "Paşalanmak" means to behave like a pasha, to be overbearing and proud.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Historical Context

These two couplets come from the earliest record in which Sürûrî is named as a poet. The Heşt-Bihişt of Sehî Bey, completed in 945 (1538), gives him a short entry headed "Mevlânâ Sürûrî". Sehî writes that his name was Muslihuddin, that he had made the pilgrimage and that he came from Gelibolu. He presents him as unrivalled in the sciences of meaning, figures of speech and eloquence (meânî, bedî', beyân), as the author of commentaries on the riddle (muamma) treatises of Câmî and Seyyid Hüseyin-i Ahlâtî, and as a man able in many branches of learning. According to Sehî, Sürûrî was then teaching at the college (medrese) of Güzelce Kasım Paşa on the Galata side of the Golden Horn. He closes the entry by quoting these two couplets with the words "Ve bu ebyāt anuñdur" (And these couplets are his).

That date fixes the couplets at a definite point in Sürûrî's life: they were composed almost ten years before he left for Amasya to teach Prince Mustafa. The man who wrote them down, Sehî, was himself a contemporary of the poet.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet sets against each other the two terms of one of divan poetry's oldest comparisons, the beloved's face and the moon; but it scolds the moon like a rival. Let the moon not grow eager, thinking itself equal to the beloved's face; let it know its own deficiency. The word "eksüklik" carries a double meaning (tevriye) here: its near sense is a flaw, a lack; its far sense is the moon shrinking through its phases into a crescent. Because the moon wanes every month, it cannot compete with the face. There is also an implied contrast between "germ olmak" (to grow warm, eager) and the moon's cold light.

The rival is the second target of the same reproach. If the beloved is a shah, the lovers are his servants, yet the rival fancies himself a pasha beside the beloved and puts on airs. Shah, servant and pasha are all terms of the court hierarchy and make up a single cluster (tenasüp): by reminding the rival that he is a servant, the lover puts him in his place. Verbs with the suffix "-lan-", such as "hemtâlanmak", "ra‘nâlanmak", "ululanmak" and "paşalanmak", derive from a noun the sense of "behaving as if one were so", and they carry the main idea of the couplets: let no one act as if he were what he is not.

Structure of the Poem

The redif (refrain) of the ghazal is "-lanmasın", and the rhyme lies in the closing sounds of "hemtâ", "ra‘nâ" and "paşa". The word "iñende", which occurs in three lines, stands just before the rhyme and forms an inner repetition. Although Sehî does not name the metre, the lines scan as remel, "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün". The first couplet is the matla' (opening couplet). Sehî's words "these couplets" do not make clear whether the two were chosen from a longer ghazal; nothing more of the ghazal is known.

Bibliography

Online sources