Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūlün; additions: feʿilātün
Ey mürġ-i ḫayāliñ cevelān itdigi yerler
Şu dükānlar!
Eñ soñ modayı, süslü tuḥāfiyyeyi ḥāvī
Camekānlar!
Zerrīn per-i çeşmān siyāhī vü semāvī
Ki öperler.
Peyveste ḳonup üstüñüze şūḫ naẓarlar
Ḫalecānlar
Bir ṭatlı ḫaşiyet ki hevā üzre yazarlar
Cici perler
Bir mevceli reftār ile bir şīveli güftār
Müterāfıḳ
Yek-digere memzūc, teʿāṭīde hep enẓār
Gülüşürler
Nev ḫande çiçeklerle müzehher kelebekler
Mütelāḥıḳ
Refrefleri pür cünbüş-i nūşīn-i melekler
Leb-i esḥār
İtmiş gibi gökden öpüşür yerle etekler
Buluşurlar
Bir ḥaẓ-ı serābī ki hevesden mütereşşiḥ
Yem-i seḥḥār
Tesnīm-i emel şekline girmiş lemeʿānda
Muġfil, güler enẓāra dükānda camekānda
Zīnet ki olur ḥüsne muʿīn, ḳubḥa muṣaḥḥaḥ
Bir başḳa dükān! Haydi filān yerde açılmış
Yeñi şeyler!
Virdi ḥareket ibrine mihr-i mütemevvic
Yine peyler
Bunlar çıḳıyor! İşte diger cemʿ-i müheyyic
Giriyorlar!
Yaġmaḳda güzellik gibi bir būy ṣaçılmış
Eriyorlar
Silmekde terin būse-i nermīn ile mendīl
O gezişle
Gezmekde o vech üzre leb-i ḥār-ı hevesle
Bir riḳḳat-i nesciyye-i dil emles-i mesle
Gezmiş duyururken ne ḳadar naẓralar ezmiş
Bu ezişle
Enẓār-ı taḥassüs mütemeyyiʿ gibi taḥlīl
Olunur da
Ẕerrāt-ı necārı gibi kendin çekemezmiş
Ṭoḳunur da
Ey murġ-ı ḫayāl uçma nihānī urulursın
Bu sükūn-dār, buralarda
Sen onları ṣayd eyleyemezsin seni avlar
O perīler
Bir menbaʿ-i mechūlden aḳmaḳda bulavlar
Naẓarīler
Ḥissiñ bulanır baḳma vü aḳma ṭurulursın
Ne işiñ var buralarda
Birden çıḳıvirir per-i perrī düm-i ṭāvūs
Gibi bir ḳız
Şu dükāndan
Tüyler kelebekler ü çiçeklerle müzeyyen
In English
1. O places where the bird of fancy roams: these shops! Shop windows holding the latest fashion and ornate fancy goods!
2. Eyes with golden wings, black and sky blue, kiss (the windows). Coquettish glances settling on you without end, palpitations!
3. A sweet thrill they write upon the air: pretty fairies! With a rippling gait and flirtatious talk, companions to one another,
4. mingled together, glances ever in exchange, they laugh together! Butterflies adorned with newly smiling flowers, one after another;
5. their wings full of the sweet stirring of angels, the lip of the dawns; as if skirts from the sky kissed the earth, they meet.
6. A pleasure like a mirage seeping from desire, a bewitching sea; in its gleam it has taken the shape of Tesnîm, the spring of hope,
7. deceptive, it smiles at the glances in the shop, in the window; adornment, which helps beauty and corrects ugliness.
8. Another shop! Come on, it has opened at such and such a place: new things! The rippling sun has set the needle moving: deposits again!
9. These are coming out! Here is another excited crowd: they are going in! A scent is scattered as if beauty were raining: they melt.
10. The handkerchief wipes her sweat with a soft kiss, with that strolling; she strolls in that manner with the hot lip of desire;
11. a fineness of the heart's tissue, smoothest (as silk) (the line is not entirely clear); as she strolled and made herself felt, how many glances she crushed, with this crushing!
12. Feeling glances are analysed as if melted, and so; like a carpenter's motes of sawdust she could not hold herself back, and touches (the couplet is not entirely clear).
13. O bird of fancy, do not fly, you will be shot in secret; this is a place of stillness, here! You cannot hunt them; those fairies hunt you.
14. Torrents flowing from an unknown spring: the onlookers! Your senses grow muddied; do not look and do not flow, you will be stopped; what business have you here?
15. Suddenly out of this shop pops a girl like a winged fairy, like a peacock's tail, adorned with feathers, butterflies and flowers... (The poem breaks off here.)
Literary and Historical Commentary
Shop windows, a crowd and the latest fashion: the müstezat "Çarşı", the market street, is one of the most urban and most unexpected poems in the divan. The müstezat is a form in which short "additions" follow the long lines, and here these short additions work like glances and exclamations thrown in a crowd: "These shops!", "Shop windows!", "Pretty fairies!", "They are going in!", "They melt". The scene is the modern shopping street spreading in late Ottoman cities: the latest fashion, fancy goods, shop windows and purchases made with deposits.
The speaker of the poem addresses the "bird of fancy" and calls on it to be careful in this crowd. The young women laughing before the windows, mingling, adorned like butterflies and flowers, are seen as a procession of fairies; the market itself is "a mirage seeping from desire", a deceptive spring of Tesnîm. The description of adornment in the seventh line, "which helps beauty and corrects ugliness", tells the function of fashion with both appreciation and irony. In the thirteenth and fourteenth units the warning becomes open: the bird of fancy cannot hunt these fairies; it is hunted by them; "what business have you here?"
In the thesis the text is made of short and long lines set one under another, and some long lines have no addition; the poem breaks off in the middle with the description of a girl with a peacock's tail popping out of a shop. So the poem may be thought of as an unfinished draft. As the sense of some lines remains uncertain, their renderings in the translation are given with caution. Like the railway poems, "Çarşı" grows out of Cûdî's effort to see the new spaces of modern life through the language of divan poetry.
Bibliography
- Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 60-62 (poem no. 213; manuscript fol. 59a-59b-60a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf
Online sources
