Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Maġmūm göñüllerde olan nūr-ı ümīd
Ṣolġun görinür şebde çü mehtāb-ı sefīd
Mehtāb ile göñlümde ġam-ı muʿtediliñ
Ẕevḳin viremez şevḳ-i ḳaddi şems-i şedīd
In English
1. The light of hope in sorrowful hearts appears pale, like white moonlight in the night.
2. The pleasure of the mild sorrow I feel in my heart with the moonlight, the ardour of the fierce sun cannot give. (The second line is not entirely clear.)
Literary and Historical Commentary
Moonlight and the sun stand here for two states of the soul. In sorrowful hearts hope is like moonlight: it is there but pale, it does not wholly dispel the darkness, it only lights it softly. The poet does not belittle this pale light; on the contrary, he prefers it to the fierce brightness of the sun.
The preference is stated openly in the second couplet: the fierceness of the sun cannot give the pleasure of the mild sorrow, "gam-ı mu'tedil", that comes with the moonlight. The thought that a sad but measured state of the soul carries a deeper delight than an exuberant joy is an example of the mature, inward sensibility seen in many places in the divan. The white, pale light of the moon can also be read as a picture of the calm melancholy of old age. The last line is hard to settle from the thesis reading, and the English follows only its general drift.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 106 (poem no. 107; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
