Original Persian Text

در کار شوان مشغله در معزل باش
جدّی شو و دور از سخن هازل باش
مَکذار زکف حبل زمام امّید
باخوف خدا همسفر و منزل باش
همر و هم منزل باش

Transliteration (not given in the thesis; the reading is ours):

Der kâr-ı [okunamadı] meşġale der maʿzil bâş
Ciddî şov u dûr ez suḫan-ı hâzil bâş
Me-gzâr zi kef ḥabl-i zimâm-ı ümmîd
Bâ ḫavf-ı Ḫudâ hem-sefer u menzil bâş
Hem-reh(?) u hem-menzil bâş

In English

1. In the busyness of (worldly) affairs stand apart; be serious and keep away from the words of the jester. (One word of the first line could not be read.)

2. Do not let the rope of hope's bridle slip from your hand; be a companion on the road and at the halt with the fear of God. (The thesis also gives, as a last line, a second wording meaning "be both fellow traveller and fellow lodger".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Every line of this Persian quatrain ends on the imperative "bâş", be, and the whole is a string of counsels. The reader is told four things: to stand apart amid the busyness of worldly affairs, to be serious and keep away from the words of jesters, not to let go of the bridle of hope, and to take the fear of God as companion on the road and at the halt. The last two counsels balance each other: hope and fear are counted in Sufi ethics as the two wings of the servant; without one, the other casts a man either into despair or into heedlessness.

In the thesis the quatrain is set as five lines; the fifth is like a variant restating the end of the fourth as "be both fellow traveller and fellow lodger", and may be a correction by the copyist or the poet. A word in the first line could not be made out in the Arabic-script setting and is marked as unread. The divan's distinction between serious and jesting speech carries an interesting tension when set beside Cûdî's own use of jest and sermon side by side in his poetry.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 103 (poem no. 98; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources