Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefāʿīlün mefāʿīlün mefāʿīlün mefāʿīlün

Güneş ŝābit faḳaṭ emvāc içinde ʿaksi oynaḳdır
Meṭālib çoḳ gibi ẓāhirse de maṭlūb bir ḥaḳdır
Nigāhında meṭālib mevc uran ehl-i ṣafā olmaz
Aṣl-ı maṭlūbı temyīz eyleyen merd-i muvaffaḳdır
Ezeldir menbaʿ-ı feyyāżı bu seyl-i ḫurūşānıñ
Ebed-peyvestedir emvācı gerçi maḥve mülḥaḳdır
Ġazālī dir ki beş ḥis, ḥavż-ı rūḥa beş aḳar ırmaḳ
Ḥaḳāyıḳ ʿaks ider mi ol ṣuya maḥrūm-ı revnaḳdır

In English

1. The sun is fixed, but its reflection in the waves is restless; though aims seem many, the one sought is a single Truth.

2. He in whose gaze aims make waves is not one of the people of serenity; the successful man is he who distinguishes the true object of search.

3. The overflowing source of this roaring flood is pre-eternity; its waves join on to eternity, though they are bound to vanish.

4. Ghazâlî says: the five senses are five rivers flowing into the pool of the spirit; are truths reflected in that water? It is deprived of brightness.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Water and light serve in these four couplets to tell the relation between multiplicity and unity. The sun is one and fixed in its place, but in rippling water its reflection dances and multiplies; man's aims too seem many, but what is sought is a single Truth. The second couplet draws a moral from this: he in whose gaze aims make waves cannot reach peace; the successful man is the one who can distinguish the true object of search.

The last couplet names al-Ghazâlî. In the section of the Ihyâ' on the wonders of the heart, al-Ghazâlî likens the heart to a pool: the five senses are rivers filling the pool from outside, but at the bottom of the pool is its own spring; to reach the clear water of that spring one must cut off the rivers coming from outside and clean the pool of muddy water. Cûdî passes on this comparison in short and asks: are truths reflected in the muddy water brought by the senses? The answer is plain: that water is deprived of brightness. Defending inner knowledge against knowledge resting on the senses is a thought the divan returns to in other poems as well.

Bibliography

  • Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 109-110 (poem no. 258; manuscript fol. 77b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf

Online sources