Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ)
Mevcūd iżāfi ki esāsā maʿdūm
Yoḳ sāḥa-i ıṭlāḳda ẓālim, maẓlūm
Yek-dīger ile itse teṣādüm emvāc
Ẓālim diye deryāyı kim eyler maḥkūm
In English
1. What exists relatively is in its foundation non-existent; in the field of the absolute there is neither oppressor nor oppressed.
2. If the waves strike one another, who condemns the sea as "oppressor"?
Literary and Historical Commentary
This quatrain and the one that follows it, the last two poems of Tok Yıldız's thesis, build a chain of thought together and take up the answer the idea of the unity of being gives to the problem of evil. The first line begins with the concept of "mevcûd-ı izâfî", relative existence: the being of created things is not their own; in its foundation it is non-existence. In the field of absolute being there is neither oppressor nor oppressed; these distinctions have meaning only among relative beings.
The abstract thought takes concrete form in the image of sea and wave that follows. The waves strike one another, one breaks the other; but no one therefore accuses the sea of being an oppressor. The waves are passing shapes on the sea; their collisions lay no fault on the sea itself. This answer is one of the well-known answers the Sufi tradition gives to the question of how the pain and injustice of the world are to be related to God; the next quatrain continues by explaining this image.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 128 (poem no. 181; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
