Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilātün fāʿilün

Dostum Allāh bilir benden yaḳınsın sen baña
Sen baña yar ol ẓafer bulmaḳ ḳolaydır ben baña
Cān bu ẓulmet-ḫānede laḥża-ārām eylemez
Olmasa meftūḥ eger senden yaña rūzun baña
Almışım dehriñ semūmundan nesīm-i lüṭfuñı
Bir ḥaḳīḳat ʿarż ider külḫan baña gülşen baña
Ben ḥayātı bir ḥarāretden ʿibāret dir idim
Olmadan evvel hümā-yı ʿaşḳ ẓıll efgen baña
ʿAḳla uydum yetmedi ser-menzil-i maḳŝūda yol
Çıḳdı nev-vādīde rehber ŝandıġım reh-zen bana
Ey girībān pençe-i sevdādasın ḳaldıñ henüz
Senden aʿlā çıḳdı sīrāyet çāk-i dāmen baña
İntiḫāb-ı maḳŝad itseydim bulurdum maḳŝadım
Āh Cūdī maḳŝadı seçmek degil ehven baña

In English

1. My friend, God knows, you are nearer to me than I am; be my friend, and then victory over myself is easy.

2. The soul would not rest a moment in this house of darkness, were there not a window open for me towards you.

3. From the poisoned wind of the age I have taken the breeze of your kindness; both the furnace and the rose garden show me a truth.

4. Before the huma bird of love cast its shadow over me, I used to say that life was nothing but a kind of heat.

5. I followed reason, and its road fell short of the goal's last stage; the one I took for a guide in the new valley turned out to be a highwayman.

6. O collar, you are still caught in the claw of passion; the torn skirt has proved superior to you for me in the spreading of the tear.

7. Had I chosen my goal myself I would have found my goal; ah Cûdî, choosing the goal is no easy thing for me.

Literary and Historical Commentary

This ghazal begins with a friend "nearer than myself" and ends with a sigh at being unable to choose the goal. "Sen" and "ben", you and I, stand side by side as the first two rhymes in the opening couplet; rûzen, gülşen, efgen, reh-zen, dâmen and ehven carry the same "-en" before the redif (refrain) "baña", to me. The first line recalls the verse declaring that God is nearer to man than his jugular vein (Qâf 50:16); the friend's nearness surpasses a man's nearness to himself, and this nearness becomes the condition of victory over the self.

The second couplet likens the body to a dark house and the way that opens to God to the window of this house. The huma appears in the fourth couplet; this legendary bird, believed to make fortunate anyone on whom its shadow falls, is here love itself. Before love cast its shadow, life seemed to the poet nothing but a warmth, a bodily heat. The fifth couplet is an example of the criticism of reason often found in Cûdî's divan: the traveller who follows reason does not reach the stage, and what he took for a guide robs him on the road.

The collar and skirt of the sixth couplet are the torn garments that show the lover's madness in divan poetry. The poet sees his collar still in the claw of passion and says that the tear in his skirt has gone further. The "intihâb" of the last couplet means choosing; in the hands of a poet who served as a deputy, the word's connotation of election may also come to mind, though the poem gives no hint in that direction.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 26-27 (poem no. 15; manuscript fol. 6b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources