Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Ẓann itme icāzetle çerāġ olmuşsuñ
Ey sūḫte efsürde-dimāġ olmuşsuñ
Eṭrafıñı ḳaplamış müselsel evhām
Sen ʿilme yanaşmaḳdan ıraġ olmuşsuñ
In English
1. Do not think that because you received a licence (icazet) you have become a lamp of learning; O burnt-out one, your brain has frozen.
2. Fancies linked one to another have surrounded you; you have fallen far from drawing near to knowledge.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The gap between holding a diploma and holding knowledge is the target of this satirical quatrain. "İcazet" in the madrasa tradition is the licence a teacher gives his student showing that he may teach a book or a science. "Çerağ olmak", to become a lamp, carries both the sense of becoming an illuminating light and, in the madrasa and guild traditions, of receiving leave from one's master to work on one's own. The poet plays on these two senses: receiving a licence does not by itself make a man an illuminating light.
The word "sûhte" is also read two ways: it means burnt, worn out, and it is the origin of "softa", the name given to madrasa students. So the addressee is drawn as a burnt-out softa with a frozen brain. In the second couplet the chained fancies surrounding him are like memorized formulas and moulds that have taken the place of knowledge. Coming from Cûdî, a teacher who came out of the madrasa but spent his life teaching in modern schools, this criticism joins the familiar debate in education between competence on paper and real knowledge.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 110 (poem no. 120; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
