Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü fāʿilātü mefāʿīlü fāʿilün
Vaḳtāki ḥükm kevkebe-i kevkeb-i nehār
Pāyān bulur ḥükūmeti mehtāba terk ider
Bir nāzenīñ edā ile leylā-yı leyl-pūş
Ḳaysıñ siyāh baḫtını tebyīż ider gider
Zülüf leyāli sīm ṭaraḳla ṭarar gibi
Deryā-yı lāciverde düşüp yıḳanan ḳamer
Çarḫ-ı kebūdı orta yerinden yarar gibi
Bir ḍarbe-i nihān ile ṣapsız gümüş teber
Ol ḍarbe-i nihāndan uçan şīşe pāredir
Manẓūr olan ufaḳ tefek ecrām-ı şuʿle-ver
Mehtāb açar perīler içün saṭḥ-ı baḥrda
Ḫūr-tācdan olimpe ḳadar nūrdan memer
Āheste-rev ayaḳ sesi mübhem fıṣıltılar
Oynar deñizde bir süri perī-i sīm-ber
Bir māhi-i sefīd ṣanup māhı māhiyān
Eyler hevāda uçmaḳ içün misbaḥātı per
Süt ḳardaş oldıġın bu gice aydan añladım
Deryā hevā ikisi de bir māhdan emer
Sāḥilleriñ ḳaranlıġı egmiş başın ṣuya
Geldikçe nevr ṭalġaları iġtirāf ider
Ġarba irişdi gördi ḳarı ṭaġ başında ay
Sīmin düşürdi ṣandı ṣarardı miŝāl-i zer
İtdim olimpe bu ġazeli ẕeyl-i muḫtaṣar
Maḥbūb-ı zer külāha ḳuşatdım gümüş kemer:
In English
1. When the rule of the star of day (the sun) comes to an end, it leaves the government to the moonlight.
2. Night-clad Leylâ of the night, with a delicate air, whitens the black fortune of Kays and goes her way.
3. As if combing the tresses of the nights with a silver comb, the moon falls into the lapis sea and bathes.
4. As if it split the blue sky down the middle with a hidden blow, a silver axe without a handle.
5. The small shining bodies of the sky that we see are the shards of glass flying from that hidden blow.
6. On the face of the sea the moonlight opens for the fairies a passage of light from Hortaç to Olympus.
7. Slow footsteps, vague whispers; on the sea a flock of silver-bodied fairies play.
8. The fish, taking the moon for a white fish, make their fins wings to fly in the air.
9. Tonight I learned from the moon that they are foster siblings: both sea and air suckle from one moon.
10. The darkness of the shores has bowed its head to the water; as the waves of light come it confesses.
11. The moon reached the west and saw the snow on the mountain top; thinking it had dropped its silver, it turned pale like gold.
12. I have made this ghazal a short appendix to Olympus; I have girded the gold-capped beloved with a silver belt:
Literary and Historical Commentary
After sunset, rule passes to the moonlight. The fourth poem of the Olympus series, the most luminous and playful part of the series, tells this handover in its first couplet as a change of sovereignty: the sun's rule ends and it leaves the government to the moonlight. The second couplet joins the word "leyl", night, with the name Leylâ: night's Leylâ comes with a delicate air and whitens the black fortune of Kays, that is, Mecnûn, for the moonlight brightens the night.
Between the third and fifth couplets the moon is seen in two images: a silver comb combing the night's hair and a handleless silver axe splitting the sky down the middle. The stars are the shards of glass flying from this blow. In the sixth couplet the road of light the moonlight draws on the sea becomes a passage along which the fairies walk from Hortaç to Olympus; this is a real night view joining the two shores of the Gulf of Salonica. The eighth and ninth couplets build a playful logic: the fish take the moon for a white fish and try to fly; sea and air are foster siblings because they suckle from the same moon.
The last couplet names the four-couplet ghazal that follows the poem: the poet wrote it as a "zeyl", an appendix, to Olympus and likens this to girding a gold-capped beloved with a silver belt. The gold cap recalls the snowy summit that the sun crowns, the silver belt the moonlight winding round the foot of the mountain. In the series as a whole, Olympus is like a beloved watched from morning to night.
Bibliography
- Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 91-92 (poem no. 242; manuscript fol. 71a-71b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf
Online sources
