Original Arabic Text
Metre: Tawîl (no metre is given in the thesis)
وما ادم بالخلق والفعل واحدا
ولکن اذا جرتبه فهو اثنان
کریم جمیل کامل العقل و النهی
لیئم بحیث انه غیر انسان
Reading in Latin letters made for this page:
Ve mâ Âdemun bi'l-halki ve'l-fiʿli vâhiden
Ve lâkin izâ carrabtehû fe-huve'snâni
Kerîmun cemîlun kâmilu'l-ʿakli ve'n-nuhâ
Leʾîmun bi-haysu ennehû gayru insâni
In English
1. Adam is not one in his making and his deeds; but when you put him to the test, he is two:
2. (One) generous, handsome, perfect in reason and understanding; (the other) base to the point of not being human.
Literary and Historical Commentary
In the divan, just before these two couplets, there is a couplet headed "Abu'l-'Alâ''s" by the Arab poet and thinker Abu'l-'Alâ' al-Ma'arrî (d. 1057): "In the doctrine of reason Adam is not one; by analogy there are Adams." This saying of al-Ma'arrî points to his controversial idea that mankind came not from a single Adam but from many Adams following one another. Under the heading "Tanzîri", his nazire, Cûdî writes an answer to it in the same metre and the same turn of phrase.
The nazire turns al-Ma'arrî's cosmological claim into a moral observation. Adam is not one, but the reason is not Adams succeeding one another in time: when you test a man you see that he is two. One is generous, handsome and perfect in reason; the other is base enough to fall below the bound of humanity. So the poet ties a philosophical debate to a judgement that anyone can test in everyday experience. The Turkish kıta that follows directly in the divan turns the same thought into a story with the play on words "Ebu'l-beşer" and "Ebu'ş-şer". In the thesis the two couplets are given only in Arabic script; the reading in Latin letters is ours.
Bibliography
- Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 32 (poem no. 188; manuscript fol. 47b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf
Online sources
