Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Rūḥuñ emeli ḫayr u ṣalāḥ-ı muṭlaḳ
ʿAḳlıñ hedef-i maḳṣūdı taḥḳīḳ-i eḥaḳ
Ḥissiñ naẓar-ı raġbeti ḥüsne maḥṣūr
Lākin göremez rūḥ ile ʿaḳl olmayıcaḳ
In English
1. The soul's desire is absolute goodness and righteousness; the goal the mind seeks to reach is to find the truth of what is most right.
2. The eager gaze of the senses is confined to beauty; but without soul and mind (even it) cannot see.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The soul desires the good, the mind the true, the senses the beautiful: three faculties of man and the three values they turn to are fitted into four lines. The triad of the good, the true and the beautiful is a well-known scheme in the history of philosophy separating the domains of ethics, knowledge and art; it is plain that Cûdî, who taught philosophy as well as literature at the Gelenbevi Sultanîsi, knew this scheme.
The quatrain's originality lies in its last line. The poet does not separate these three faculties but binds them to one another: the senses seek the beautiful, but without soul and mind they cannot see even beauty. The feeling for beauty, the desire for good and the power to seek the true remain incomplete unless they work together. This conclusion leans on a thought seen in other poems of the divan too, the idea that beauty is the appearance of a divine truth.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 101 (poem no. 90; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
