Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Dünyā denilen zinde nedir bu ʿiffet
Bir ʿāşıḳa baḥş itmedi ẕevḳ-i vuṣlat
Reftārına baḳdıḳca bir āşüfte ṣanır
Dünyāyı henūz añlamaz ehl-i ġaflet
In English
1. What is this chastity in the living thing called the world, that it has granted to no lover the joy of union?
2. The heedless, seeing how she walks, take her for a loose woman; they still do not understand the world. (A word in the first line is not entirely clear.)
Literary and Historical Commentary
Likening the world to a bride of a thousand husbands or to a loose woman is a tradition often seen in divan poetry; Cûdî turns the image upside down. The heedless, watching the world's swaying walk, take her for "âşüfte", a woman easily won. Yet the world has granted to none of her lovers the joy of union; no one has truly possessed her.
The fine conceit lies in this reversal. The world's "chastity" is that she gives herself wholly to no one: all who become attached to her are left empty-handed in the end. So the emptiness of desire for the world is expressed through a paradox of chastity. How the thesis reads the word "zinde" in the first line is uncertain; the context suggests the sense of a living being or a woman.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 115 (poem no. 138; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
