Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilün
Yitdi bī-çāre çocuḳlar abaza çekmekden
Ḳıymetin bilmedigi toḫmı yere ekmekden
Ava ṭoġrultsa nişān almadan evvel boşanır
İkide birde tüfengiñ tetigin tegmekden
In English
1. The poor boys have wasted away from self-abuse, from sowing on the ground the seed whose worth they do not know.
2. If one takes aim at the game, it goes off before he has aimed; from touching the gun's trigger every now and then.
Literary and Historical Commentary
One of the divan's most unexpected texts is a frank counsel on morals and health addressed to young men. "Abaza çekmek" is an Ottoman Turkish slang expression for masturbation. The health and conduct books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century claimed that this habit wasted the body and strength of the young and often made it a subject of warning; this view does not agree with present medical knowledge, but it was widespread in the educational outlook of the period.
Cûdî, a teacher, carries the same warning into poetry through a hunting simile: a gun whose trigger is touched every now and then goes off before aim is taken when it is pointed at the game. The comparison is both playful and didactic, and makes the subject understood without naming it openly. Beside the philosophical and religious poems that fill most of the divan, this kıta shows that the poet, as a teacher occupied with the upbringing of the young, also carried his everyday concerns into his poetry.
Bibliography
- Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 87 (poem no. 238; manuscript fol. 69b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf
Online sources
