Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Yirde gökde olmasun mis̱lüñ diyü ay āftāb
Sāyeñ ile şemsi göstermez ḥicāb olur seḥāb

In English

1. O sun-faced beloved, so that you should have no equal on earth or in heaven, the cloud becomes a veil and does not show the sun where your shadow falls. (The couplet can be read in two ways: the phrase "sâyeñ ile" can mean "together with your shadow" but also "under your protection". The word "ay" in Âşık Çelebi's text appears as "ey" (O) in the Künhü'l-ahbâr.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a matla (opening couplet), a single couplet (beyit) whose two lines rhyme with each other, written in the metre "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün" of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The metre is not stated in the biographical anthologies; it has been deduced from the scansion of the couplet. The rhyme is the sound "-āb" in āftāb, ḥicāb and seḥāb. The couplet is the first couplet of a ghazal, but the rest of the ghazal is not known. Âşık Çelebi and Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî give the couplet with small differences of spelling; in Âlî the first line reads "Yirde gökde olmasun mislüñ diyu ey āfitāb".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet finds a poetic cause for an ordinary natural event, a cloud covering the sun, and in this respect it is an example of hüsn-i talil (poetic aetiology). The beloved is a sun; the sun in the sky is his likeness, his rival. Because the cloud wants the beloved to remain without equal in the world, it passes like a veil before the sun in the sky. So where the beloved's shadow falls, no second sun appears to compete with him. The wit of the couplet lies in the opposition of shadow and sun: shadow is where the sun's light is cut off, yet here the one whose shadow falls is himself the sun.

Relations of both congruence (tenasüp) and antithesis (tezat) are set up between earth and heaven, sun and cloud, shadow and light. The words "şems" and "âftâb", two different words with the same meaning, lend the couplet a richness of sound; one refers to the beloved, the other to the sun in the sky. Likening the beloved to the sun is one of the commonest similes (teşbih) of divan poetry; Sürûrî renews this familiar comparison by tying it to the scene of a cloud hiding the sun in the sky.

Historical Context

To whom and when the couplet was written is not known. Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî criticizes Sürûrî's poetry in harsh terms: in his view not even three ghazals from his teacher's three divans became famous, and having gone through one of his divans from beginning to end he could not see a single ghazal sound in all five couplets. Even so, "aṣḥāb-ı teẕākir tetebbu‘ı üzre", following the path of the biographers, he gives a few couplets he found worth quoting; this matla is the first of them. Âşık Çelebi too included the couplet among the examples he chose from his teacher's poems.

Bibliography

Online sources