Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Bir zen ki degil şūḫ u ẓarīf ü dil-cū
Ḫoş-ṭabʿ u şeker-ḫand u laṭīf ü ḫoş-gū
Maḥrūm-ı meḥāsin yalıñız ʿiffeti var
Ḳatlanmalı bu çıḳdı naṣībe yā hū
In English
1. A woman who is neither playful, nor graceful, nor charming; neither good-natured, nor sugar-smiling, nor gracious, nor sweet-spoken.
2. Deprived of all beauties, she has only her chastity; one must bear it, this is what fell to one's lot, yâ hû!
Literary and Historical Commentary
An earlier quatrain of the marriage sequence is restated here with small changes; both open with the same mould: "Bir zen ki degil şûh u zarîf...", a woman who is neither playful nor graceful. Just as three drafts of the same ghazal passed into the divan together, here too the poet is seen to have worked twice on the same thought. In this version the first couplet counts the qualities sought in a beloved in a longer list: playfulness, grace, charm, good nature, a smile like sugar, delicacy and sweet speech.
The difference in the second couplet is the real difference. In the earlier quatrain the burden had been taken on "for the heart's regard"; here there is an acceptance of fate: one must bear it, this is what fell to one's lot. The "yâ hû" at the end of the line is a cry used by dervishes in remembrance, and it gives the acceptance a light tone of resignation, perhaps of light irony too. The copyist's note "cemîl" for the last line shows that another wording of the line contained the word "beautiful".
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 113 (poem no. 135; manuscript fol. 39a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
