Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilūn

Çün ḫayāl-i ṭalʾatıñ göñlümde nūr-efşān olur
Ṣanki nūr-ı ḥüsn-i Yūsuf şemʿa-i zindān olur
Zehr-i hicriñle yüzüm zerd ü siri-şekim ḳan olur
Aġladıkca dīde-i ḥüznüm gül-i ḫandān olur
Peykerimde bitmiş istiʿdād enẓār-ı ḳabūl
Ṣūretim ʿarż eylesem āyīne rū-gerdān olur
ʿAşḳıñ efzāyīş bulur cānım dem-ā-dem eksilir
ʿAksi söyler kim ki dir: ʿAşḳın ġıdā-yı cān olur
Öyle ṣalmış ṭabʿıma teʾsīr-i ẕevḳ-i derdi kim
Eylesem bir naġmeye āġāz bir efġān olur
Tīġ çek ṣad-pāre ḳıl ḳurtar beni hem kendiñi
Ten baña bir yük, saña ḫas pāre-i dāmān olur
Yād olunsa ḫāk-i ḳabri üzre naẓmım Cūdīyā
Rūḥ-ı ġam-nākı Fużūlīniñ hemān şādān olur

In English

1. When the image of your face sheds light in my heart, it is as if the light of Joseph's beauty became the candle of the prison.

2. With the poison of your absence my face turns pale and my tears turn to blood; as I weep my sorrowing eye becomes a laughing rose.

3. The power to draw glances has run out in my body; were I to show my face, the mirror would turn away.

4. Your love increases, my soul diminishes moment by moment; whoever says "love becomes the food of the soul" says the opposite of the truth.

5. The taste for pain has so worked into my nature that if I begin a melody it turns into a cry.

6. Draw your sword, cut me into a hundred pieces, set free both me and yourself; the body is a burden to me, and to you a straw caught on your skirt.

7. O Cûdî, were my verse recited over the earth of his grave, Fuzûlî's sorrowful spirit would rejoice at once.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The pen-name couplet states plainly after whose manner this ghazal was written: Cûdî claims that if his verse were recited over Fuzûlî's grave, Fuzûlî's sorrowful spirit would rejoice. The ghazal bears no nazire title, but it deliberately carries on Fuzûlî's suffering lover, his bloody tears and his "taste for pain". The rhymes before the redif (refrain) "olur" (becomes) carry the same inheritance: efşân, zindân, kan, handân, rû-gerdân, cân, efgân, dâmân, şâdân.

The opening couplet chooses a scene from the story of Joseph. The beauty of Joseph, drawn from the well and thrown into prison in Egypt, had lit up the prison; the image of the beloved likewise becomes such a candle in the lover's dark heart. The second couplet brings the pale face and the bloody tear together, and the weeping eye, by its redness, turns into a laughing rose; weeping and laughing meet in one colour. By the third couplet the lover has wasted away so far that even the mirror turns its face from him.

The fourth couplet turns a common saying on its head. "Love is the food of the soul", people say; the poet holds that as love grows the soul diminishes, and that this saying states the opposite of the truth. The fifth couplet shows that the taste for pain has seeped into the poet's art as well: every melody he begins turns into a cry. This is the echo in Cûdî of Fuzûlî's poetry of "pain" and "lament", and it prepares the claim of the pen-name couplet.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 33 (poem no. 22; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources