Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Dünyâ diyen gişiye bir vâyedür,
Yimek içmek bu câna bir dâyedür,
Dünyâ bir geçüt durur gelen geçer,
İllâ server yigide sermâyedür.

In English

1. What is called the world is a portion allotted to man; and what we eat and drink is a nurse to this soul (it feeds and raises it).

2. The world is a passage, whoever comes passes on; but for the man foremost in valour it is capital.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a tuyugh (tuyuğ) of four lines. The first, second and fourth lines rhyme in the words "vâyedür", "dâyedür" and "sermâyedür"; the rhyme is the sound "-âye" and the redif (refrain word) is the copula "-dür". The third line stays free with "geçer". The text is taken from Nevzat Özkan's article with the reference KBD 597/9-10 and comes from the tuyugh section of the divan. The source does not give the metre. It is not known to whom or on what occasion it was spoken. The poet's divan, its editions and his other poems are discussed in Kadı Burhaneddin: Literary Persona, Divan and Poems.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The tuyugh is a saying of wisdom on the life of this world, and it offers a clear example of the wisdom manner that, as the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi says of the tuyugh, dominated the old form. The poet first defines the world as a share set aside for man; the word "vâye" means portion or lot. Eating and drinking are a "dâye", a nurse, to the soul: like a servant who feeds the body and keeps it on its feet. In the third line the world is likened to a passage; whoever comes does not stay but passes on. This comparison rests on an old and widespread idea expressing the transience of the world.

The truly new statement is in the fourth line. The poet accepts that the world is transient, but he does not draw from this the conclusion that the world must be renounced; for the man foremost in valour the world is capital, that is, a stock to be worked with, gained and spent. Özkan offers this tuyugh as an example of how Kadı Burhaneddin, a man of struggle, judged the life of this world, and at the end of his article says that the poet describes the world as a place of passage that has value only for the valiant. The binding of the words "vâye", "dâye" and "sermâye" by the same sound gives the four lines a tight harmony; the closeness in sound between "server" (foremost) and "sermâye" (capital) is also striking. These sound relations are our own observations.

Bibliography

Online sources