Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ḳaldı gözüm yüzüñde şehâ göyinik gibi
Düşdüm ṣaçuñ duzaġına bûn ögeyik gibi

In English

1. O shah, my eye stayed fixed on your face like a göyinik; like a wretched turtle-dove I fell into the snare of your hair. (The meaning of "göyinik" is not certain. If it is linked to the old Turkish verb "göyünmek" (to burn), it can be understood as "like something scorched". "Ögeyik" is the turtle-dove, a kind of wild pigeon. "Bûn" means trouble or distress in old Turkish; here it seems to be used in the sense of "troubled, wretched"; the reading "bön" (simple, naive) is also possible.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Source and Attribution

It is not certain that this opening couplet belongs to Sürûrî. Latîfî gives it while describing Sürûrî's book on rhetoric, the Bahrü'l-maârif. According to the anthology, Sürûrî studied and brought together Arabic and Persian works on prosody and the art of poetry in this book, set out the kinds of metres in detail, and gave an example for each of the figures of speech (bedî'). Latîfî quotes one of these examples, calling it "misâl-i mümteni'u'n-nazîr" (an example whose like cannot be made), but does not say whose it is. For another opening couplet he gives immediately afterwards, by contrast, he states plainly "anuñ eş'ârındandur" (it is among his poems).

Introducing the section of the book on figures of speech, İsmail Güleç, relying on Yakup Şafak's doctoral thesis, notes that the Turkish examples there are taken from the poems of Şeybî. The same section, however, closes with a kaside (ode) that Sürûrî wrote for Prince Mustafa, each couplet of which illustrates a figure of speech. The couplet may belong to either group: an example borrowed from Şeybî, or a couplet from Sürûrî's ode to the prince. The address "şehâ" (O shah) in the first line lends weight to the second possibility, but since the beloved too is addressed as "shah" in divan poetry, this alone is no proof. As the full text of the Bahrü'l-maârif has not been published, the question remains open.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Each line carries its own simile. In the second the beloved's hair is a snare and the lover a turtle-dove caught in it; hair as a snare and the lover as the trapped bird are very common in divan poetry. What sets the couplet apart is that this familiar simile is spoken in everyday Turkish words such as "duzak" (snare), "bûn" and "ögeyik" rather than in Persian and Arabic ones. "Göyinik" in the first line belongs to the same plain Turkish vocabulary.

"Göyinik" and "ögeyik" carry the rhyme and "gibi" (like) the redif, so that both lines close alike, on a Turkish word followed by "gibi". This parallelism gives the couplet the air of a folk song. Latîfî's praise of it as "inimitable" may come from just this plain, native diction. The anthology does not explain its praise; this is a guess drawn from the text.

Structure of the Poem

With its two rhyming lines the couplet is a matla', the opening couplet of a ghazal. Latîfî does not give the metre. If a few syllables of the Turkish words are lengthened in reading, it may fit the pattern "Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātü Mefā‘īlü Fā‘ilün", but this scansion is uncertain and can be offered only as a possibility. No source other than Latîfî is known to quote the couplet.

Historical Context

Among Sürûrî's works, few are as closely bound to Amasya as the Bahrü'l-maârif. He finished it on 11 Safer 956 (11 March 1549) in Amasya, where he was serving as Prince Mustafa's teacher. Latîfî's entry, too, introduces him in its very heading as the tutor of Sultan Mustafa. Arabic blessings in the heading such as "ṭāle beḳāhu" (may his life be long) show that the entry was written while the poet was alive.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources