Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Billāh ne ḫoşdı o saʿādetli zamān
Yoḳdı üzerimde eŝer-i naḳş-ı ʿıyān
Gördi beni āsūde-nişīn sāde-żamīr
Dolāb ile āġūşuna çekdi devrān
In English
1. By God, how sweet was that happy time! There was on me no trace of the mark of a family.
2. Fortune saw me sitting at ease, plain of heart; it worked its wheel and drew me into its embrace.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Here a few linked quatrains of the divan begin, all taking as their subject man's becoming bound to the world, to family and to marriage. The first opens with a sentence of longing: how sweet was the time when there was no trace of "ıyâl", a family, on him. A youth spent single and plain of heart is remembered in the shadow of the responsibilities taken on later.
In the second couplet "devrân", time and the sphere, is named like a trickster with a wheel. The word "dolâb" means in Turkish both a wheel and a trick; on seeing this man sitting at ease, fortune turned its wheel and drew him into its own embrace, that is, into the affairs of the world. The quatrain's light, joking tone will become more marked in the quatrains that follow and turn into the story of a marriage made with the world.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 112 (poem no. 128; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
