Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefāʿīlün mefāʿīlün feʿūlün
Uzaḳdan cümlesi çeşmimde ḥasnā
Yaḳından seyri de pek ḫoşdı ammā
Tamāmen inkişāf itdikde gördüm
Isırġanmış çiçek lafıẓda maʿnā
In English
1. From afar they all looked beautiful to my eye; to view them close up was very pleasant too, but
2. when they opened out entirely I saw that the meaning in the word was a flower stung with nettles.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The difference between appearance and essence is told through an approach in three stages: what looks beautiful from afar is pleasant close up too, but when it opens out entirely, nettles come out of it. The expression "ısırganmış çiçek", a flower stung with nettles, places the stinging nettle, which burns when touched, inside a beautiful flower.
What the poem describes is not said openly. The expression "lafızda mana", the meaning in the word, suggests that the kıta is about a saying, a poem or a conversation: the meaning of a word adorned with fine phrases may turn out bitter and burning when fully opened. With the market and adornment scenes of the two preceding poems in mind, the same warning can also be applied to people. It comes from the same vein as the divan's other poems that counsel probing the unsound thought behind smooth words.
Bibliography
- Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 61 (poem no. 215; manuscript fol. 60a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf
Online sources
