Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefāʿilün feʿilātün mefāʿilün feʿilün
Marīẓ-i ʿaşḳına vaṣlındadır devā didiler
Bu remz ile ne ḥakīmāne nā-rehā didiler
Nedir bilinmedi merkūz-ı ḳaʿr-ı cānım olan
Gehī cünūn u gehī ʿaşḳ u geh hevā didiler
Girīz-gāh araridim zülf-i fitne-cūyundan
O fitnekāra yine çare ilticā didiler
Ramak-reyin-i ḥayātım henūz mehcūrum
Zemān-ı vuṣlatı ṣordum biraz daha didiler
In English
1. They told the one sick with your love, "The cure lies in union"; with this hint, how wisely they spoke, (yet) a word that brings no release. (The end of the second line cannot be understood with certainty.)
2. What lies buried at the bottom of my soul could not be made out; sometimes they called it madness, sometimes love, sometimes desire.
3. I was looking for a place to escape from your mischief-seeking locks; "The remedy," they said, "is again to take refuge with that mischief-maker."
4. I am at the last breath of my life and still parted; I asked when the time of union would be, and they said, "A little longer."
Literary and Historical Commentary
This short four-couplet ghazal belongs to the kind called "nâ-tamâm gazel" (incomplete ghazal) in Adıyahşi's thesis: a ghazal of fewer than five couplets without a pen name. The redif (refrain) "didiler", they said, turns the poem into a chorus of gossip. The lover asks about each of his pains, each time the answer comes from others' mouths, and none of it helps.
In the first couplet people speaking like physicians tell the lovesick that the cure lies in union; the word is true but brings no release, because union itself is out of reach. The second couplet lists the diagnoses put on the lover's state: madness, love, desire. The third couplet uses an old motif with a fine paradox. The lover wants to flee the beloved's mischief-making locks; the advice he is given is to take refuge, once more, with that mischief-maker. The only way to escape the locks is the locks themselves.
The last couplet is the most bitter and the plainest place in the ghazal. The lover is at his last breath, he asks when union will come, and the answer is two words: "biraz daha", a little longer. This short answer taken from everyday speech suddenly brings the poem down to the spoken language after all its ornate compounds, and ends the ghazal with this sudden drop. The unfinished state of the ghazal also suits this sense of something left incomplete.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 37-38 (poem no. 26; manuscript fol. 10a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
- Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 7. http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf
Online sources
