Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Ḥummāda ne idrāk idebilsün maḥmūm
Bildim didigiñ şeyler efendim mevhūm
Senden daha vāḳıfı dimişdir şu sözi:
“Oldı baña maʿlūm ki yoḳ bir maʿlūm”
In English
1. What can a man in a fever perceive? My lord, the things you say you have come to know are fancies.
2. One more learned than you said these words: "It became known to me that there is nothing known."
Literary and Historical Commentary
A lesson in modesty against the claim to knowledge, the quatrain begins with a comparison in its first line: a patient lying in a fever cannot soundly perceive what he sees and hears; the things known by one who says "I have come to know" also resemble such delirium, such fancy. The addressee is called "efendim", my lord, and this courteous form of address gives the quatrain a light tone of irony.
A quotation closes the second couplet: someone "more learned than you" said, "It became known to me that nothing is known." These words recall the saying attributed to Socrates, "The only thing I know is that I know nothing", and the views in Islamic thought that the end of knowledge is the confession of helplessness. The poet does not name the author of the saying; but the thought looks in the same direction as the divan's other poems that bring forward the limits of reason and wonder.
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. 118; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
