Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilün
Ne ṣabāḥı, ne de aḳşāmı, ne vaḳti bā-ḫayr
Kāfiriñ tanı, süvārı [Arap harfli kelime, okunamadı] maṣdar-ı şerr
[Arap harfli kelime, okunamadı] nāʾil olmadıġın sen de bilirsiñ monşer
[Arap harfli mısra, okunamadı]
In English
1. Neither its morning nor its evening nor its "good time" (greeting); the unbeliever's ... (unread) ... is the source of evil.
2. (Unread) ... that you have not attained, you too know, monşer (mon cher, my dear). (The last line is given as an image in Arabic script and could not be read.)
Literary and Historical Commentary
These two couplets, bearing the title "Kıt'a-i Latîfe", a kıta of jest, can today be read only in part. The thesis could not transcribe some words and the last line, and gave them as images in Arabic script taken from the manuscript. Since the words in these images could not be read with confidence here either, they are marked in the text as unread; no invented reading has been made.
The readable part is enough to hint at the poem's joke. The first line lists the greetings of morning, evening and "good time"; in the second line the word that appears in the transcription as "süvârı" brings to mind the French "soir", evening, and the "monşer" of the last couplet the French address "mon cher", my dear. It is likely that the kıta is a jest that writes French greetings and turns of speech in Arabic script and mocks them; the irony towards the fashion of greetings and forms of address taken from the West seen in other poems of the divan also supports this guess. Until the unread words are solved, the full sense of the poem cannot be settled.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 127 (poem no. 180; manuscript fol. 43a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
