Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Bu bāġçeniñ bergi de var bārı da var
Bülbülleri var gülleri var ḫārı da var
Bu bāġçeyi cāy-ı tenezzühe ṣanma
Ezhār-ı bahārı var ise mārı da var
In English
1. This garden has leaves and fruit too; it has nightingales, it has roses, and it has thorns too.
2. Do not take this garden for a pleasure ground; if it has the flowers of spring, it has serpents too.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Built on the refrain "var", there is, this quatrain likens the world to divan poetry's favourite place, the garden, and shows the two faces of that garden together. In the first couplet, as leaves and fruit, nightingale and rose are counted, the thorn too is named at the end of the line; beside beauty there is always its price.
The thought then becomes a warning: this garden is more than a pleasure ground, a "cây-ı tenezzüh". If it has the flowers of spring, it has serpents too. The image of the serpent may be thought of together with the "serpent of life" in the last of the divan's marriage quatrains and with the story of the serpent in the garden of Paradise. The quatrain is like a warning balancing the joy of the divan's spring tableaux: beauty comes together with its danger.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 114 (poem no. 137; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
