Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Taḥṣīl-i ʿulūm itmez ise bir insān
Taʿrīfi olur nuṭḳ idici bir ḥayvān
Her nāṭıḳıñ ancaḳ sözi ʿirfānı ḳadar
ʿİrfān ise taṣḥīḥe muḥavvel mīzān
In English
1. If a man does not acquire knowledge, his definition becomes "a speaking animal".
2. Every speaker's words are only as much as his knowledge; and knowledge is a pair of scales entrusted with correction.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The famous definition of man in the logic books, "hayvân-ı nâtık", the speaking animal, is read here in reverse. Logicians define man as the animal that thinks and speaks; according to the poet, for one who does not acquire knowledge this definition is not praise but a verdict: he is only an animal that speaks. The word "nâtık" here loses its sense of reasoning and comes down to the sense of merely making sounds, uttering words.
The worth of speech is then tied to knowledge: everyone speaks only in the measure of his knowledge. The last line likens knowledge to a pair of scales; but these scales are not finished, they are "tashîhe muhavvel", entrusted with correction. The thought that knowledge is a measure that must constantly be corrected brings a teacher-poet's modesty into the divan's poems on reason and learning. In another ghazal of the divan the same logical definition had been mocked as an example of circular proof.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 109 (poem no. 117; manuscript fol. 37b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
