Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilün

Ser-fürū bürde-i taʿẓīm olurum ḥüsnüñüze
Size ḳarşı bu meẕellet baña bir leẕẕet olur
Ḥüsnüñüz oldıġıñız mevḳiʿi eyler seyerān
Sizi her nerde görürsem orası cennet olur
Naẓarım sizde gözüm ġarḳa-i nūr-ı didār
Yine göñlümde nev-ā-nev ṭaleb-i rüʾyet olur
Naẓar itdikçe size yükselirim ʿarşa ḳadar
Ḥüsnüñüz rūḥuma gūyā perr-i ʿulviyyet olur
Rūḥumı dīdelerimden çekiyor cāẕibeñiz
Gösteriñ münkere kim māddesiz ḳuvvet olur
Giceki soḥbet-i nūşīneyi nūş eyler iken
Didiñiz bu giceye gündüzüñüz ḥasret olur
Şafaḳı, şemsi, nehārı, nideyim sizle geçen
O münevver giceye perde-i ḥaylūlet olur
Zülfin örter bizi aġyārdan eyler pinhān
Āh evvel şeb ki bize ḥāris-i emniyyet olur
O leyāl-i ṭürabıñ her biri bir bint-i ʿArab
Gibi esmer güzeliydi ki siḥir ṭalʿat olur
Seni sevdim diseñiz farṭ-ı sürūr neşʾe olur
Diye ketm eylemeñiz raḥmet ise zaḥmet olur
Söyleyiñ söyleyiñ ol nuṭḳ-ı revān-baḫşıñıza
Terk-i cān eyler isem cānıma bir minnet olur
Emeli üç yaşda iken gencelivirdi ṭabʿım
Cūdiyā Ḫıżır mısıñ bu nice ḫāŝiyyet olur

In English

1. I bow my head in reverence before your beauty; this abasement before you becomes a delight to me.

2. Your beauty makes the place where you are a pleasure ground; wherever I see you, that place becomes Paradise.

3. My gaze is on you, my eye drowned in the light of your face; yet ever new the wish to see you is born in my heart.

4. As I look at you I rise up to the Throne; your beauty becomes, as it were, a wing of loftiness for my soul.

5. Your attraction draws my soul out through my eyes; show yourself to the denier, (let him see that) there is such a thing as force without matter.

6. While we savoured the sweet conversation of the night you said: "Your days will long for this night."

7. What shall I do with dawn, the sun, the day? They become a curtain coming between me and that bright night spent with you.

8. Your locks cover us and hide us from rivals; ah, that night which becomes a watchman of safety for us.

9. Each of those nights was a dark beauty like an Arab girl whose face is enchantment.

10. If you said "I loved you", joy would overflow from sheer gladness; your hiding it (lest the joy be too much), even if a mercy, becomes a trouble to me.

11. Speak, speak; if I give up my life for your life-giving words, that will be a favour to my soul.

12. My nature has rejuvenated my hope as if it were three years old; Cûdî, are you Khidr, what kind of virtue is this? ("Three years" is the reading of the thesis; it is not certain.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Ghazal that Says "You" in the Plural

Your beauty, to you, your attraction, if you said: the ghazal speaks to the beloved like this throughout, in the polite plural "siz". In divan poetry the beloved is mostly addressed with the familiar "sen"; Cûdî's choice of "siz" adds through its courtesy a warmth close to the spoken language of the late nineteenth century. Before the redif (refrain) "olur" (becomes), lezzet, cennet, rü'yet, ulviyyet, kuvvet, hasret, haylûlet, emniyyet, tal'at, zahmet, minnet and hâsiyyet make up the "-et" rhyme. Beside the first couplet the copyist recorded an Arabic couplet by Ibn al-Fârid saying that in love submission and abasement before the beloved taste sweet; Cûdî's opening is like a Turkish counterpart of that couplet.

The fifth couplet is the most interesting place in the ghazal. The beloved's attraction is drawing the soul out through the eyes; the poet says "show yourself to the denier, there is such a thing as force without matter". The materialist view that "there is no force without matter", made widespread by Ludwig Büchner's book Kraft und Stoff (Force and Matter), was debated among Ottoman intellectuals too; the couplet can be read as a playful answer to this debate in the language of love. The poem does not make this link explicitly.

After the sixth couplet the ghazal turns to telling of a night: sweet conversation, the beloved's words "your days will long for this night", locks that hide the lovers from rivals. The ninth couplet likens each of those nights to a dark Arab girl; the sentence is built running over two lines, a freedom seldom seen in the ghazal. The reading "üç yaşda" (at three years old) in the last couplet sits oddly in its context; the age of "seventy-three" that the poet mentions in another poem also comes to mind, but the text does not support this.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 30-31 (poem no. 19; manuscript fol. 7b-8a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources