Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilātün Fe‘ilün

Sevin ey dil ḳoşılur saña çü cānān büyüdi
Yeñemez babası şimden gerü oġlan büyüdi
N’ola oġul idinüp yāri geçürsem yaḳadan
Pīrehen pārelenüp çāk-i girībān büyüdi

In English

1. Rejoice, O heart: since the beloved has grown up, he will now be joined to you; from now on his father cannot master him, the boy has grown up. (The beloved is now of an age to go his own way against his father's word; the lover takes this as good news for himself.)

2. What wonder if I adopt the beloved as my son and pass him through my collar? My shirt has been torn to pieces, and the rent in my collar has grown. (In an old custom of adoption the child was passed through the collar of a shirt. The collar torn by the pain of love has grown so wide that the beloved could easily pass through it.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

In the form in which it has come down to us the poem has two couplets (beyit) and is written in the metre "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün" of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The metre is not stated in the biographical anthology; it has been deduced from the scansion of the couplets. The redif (refrain word) is "büyüdi" (has grown); the rhyme is built on the sound "-ān" in cānān, oġlan and girībān. The first couplet is a matla, whose two lines rhyme; the second couplet is an inner couplet of the same ghazal. The couplets appear only in Âşık Çelebi's biographical anthology (tezkire), among the couplets given as examples of Sürûrî's poetry. The rest of the ghazal is not known; to whom and when it was written is also unknown.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplets depart from the grave language of love common in divan poetry and are written in a playful tone. The redif "büyüdi" says in each couplet that something different has grown. In the first couplet it is the beloved who has grown: he is no longer a child, and his father cannot control him as before. The lover presents this as good news to his own heart; since the beloved has grown up, the way to union with him has opened. That "cânân" (beloved) and "oğlan" (boy) meet in the same rhyme says plainly who the beloved is; in divan poetry it is a widespread convention for the beloved to be spoken of as a young man.

The second couplet carries the wit of the poem. The poet wishes to "adopt the beloved as a son and pass him through his collar". The phrase is an allusion (telmih) to an old custom of adoption in which the child was passed through the collar of a shirt. The second line gives a surprising reason for this wish: the lover's shirt has been torn to pieces by the pain of love, and the rent in his collar has grown. In divan poetry tearing one's collar is the sign that love has reached madness. The beloved who has grown in the first couplet and the rent that has grown in the second are thus tied together; the grown beloved will be able to pass through the grown rent. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among collar, shirt and rent, and the binding of the redif to a different thing in each couplet shows the skill of the lines.

The playful air of the couplets makes a curious contrast with the grave identity of scholar and dervish described in the biographical anthologies. Sürûrî himself, however, writes in the Bahrü'l-maârif that in his youth he composed five hundred ghazals out of love and longing and gathered them in a divan so that they would not be lost; these couplets may reflect the spirit of that youthful poetry.

Bibliography

  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications, 2018 (e-book), p. 419 (entry Sürūrī Çelebi, pp. 417-423), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59036,asik-celebi-mesairus-suarapdf.pdf.
  • İsmail Güleç, "Gelibolulu Musluhiddin Sürûrî, Hayatı, Kişiliği, Eserleri ve Bahrü'l-Ma'ârif İsimli Eseri", Osmanlı Araştırmaları 21 (2001), pp. 211-236 (quotation from the Bahrü'l-maârif on the youthful divan).

Online sources