Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ)
Aḥkām-ı ezel rūḥ-ı tekevvün bulmuş
Her rūḥ bir üslūb-ı teʿayyün bulmuş
Mīzān-ı meşiyyetde saḳāmet yoḳdur
Her ṭartdıġı şey ḥüsn ü tevāzün bulmuş
In English
1. The decrees of eternity have found the spirit of coming-to-be; every spirit has found a manner of determination.
2. In the scales of the (divine) will there is no defect; everything it has weighed has found beauty and balance.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Here the order of the universe is pictured as a pair of scales. In the first couplet the decrees given in eternity turn into the spirit of coming-to-be; each spirit gains a manner of determination proper to it, a form of "ta'ayyün". These abstract terms of kalâm and Sufism become concrete in the second couplet through an everyday instrument: the scales of the divine will, "meşiyyet", never weigh crookedly, and everything they weigh exists in its beauty and balance.
The quatrain's rhyme is built with the verb "bulmuş", has found, and three of the four lines end with it. This repetition gives at the level of sound too the feeling that everything in the universe has "found", has completed, its place and measure. The phrase "hüsn ü tevâzün", beauty and balance, sums up the poet's aesthetic outlook: beauty is born of measure and balance. The müseddes at the beginning of the divan, which says that such an order could not be set up by chance, is repeated in this quatrain as a short judgement.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 104 (poem no. 100; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
