Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilün

Zülf ü ruḫ leb-be-leb cām-ı ṣafā gūşunda
Giceniñ gündüz ile bezm-i seḥer nūşunda
Ẓıll-ı zülfünde celī-gūş dil-āvīzini gör
Şekl-i terbīʿ-i ḳamerdir şebiñ āġūşunda
Kevkeb-i zühre ser-āvīḫte-i pāy-ı hilāl
Ṣanırım parlayan elmāsını mengūşunda
Ḳudretiñ muṣḥaf-ı icmālidir ol vech-i cemīl
Ki nihāde vasaṭ-ı raḥle beri dūşında
Ḳara sevdālarımıñ cūşişini seyr iderim
Cūdiyā mevce-i giysū-yı emel-pūşunda

In English

1. Tress and cheek, lip to lip, at the ear of the cup of delight; night with day in the drinking of the dawn gathering.

2. In the shadow of her tress, see the heart-catching pendant that shows plain; it is the shape of the moon's quarter in the embrace of night.

3. The planet Venus hangs from the foot of the crescent; I think it is the diamond shining in her earring.

4. That beautiful face is the summary copy of the Qur'an of (God's) power, set in the middle of the reading-stand of her shoulder.

5. Cûdî, I watch the surging of my black passions in the wave of her tress, clad in hope.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Right after the tahmis, Cûdî gives his own answer to Nâilî's ghazal: a nazire built with the same refrain and rhyme, the sounds "-ûşunda". As in the tahmis, the beloved's earring is at the centre of the poem here too, but the images are carried into the sky. In the second couplet the earring in the shadow of the tress becomes the quarter moon in the embrace of night; in the third the planet Venus hanging from the tip of the crescent is taken for the diamond in her earring. The appearance of the crescent and Venus side by side is a sight often seen in the sky and much loved by poets.

The fourth couplet widens a known comparison of divan poetry, the likening of the beloved's face to a page of the Qur'an, with a new detail: the face is the "mushaf-ı icmâlî", a summary copy of the Qur'an, of God's power, and the shoulder becomes the reading-stand on which this copy is placed. The closing couplet sees the poet's "black passions" as a sea surging in the beloved's wavy hair. Coming one after the other, the tahmis and the nazire show that Cûdî loved to converse in his own voice with the great masters of classical poetry.

Bibliography

  • Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 82 (poem no. 231; manuscript fol. 68a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf

Online sources