Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Bir sāḥiredir tīri de var tārı da var
Bir sāhiredir nūrı da var nārı da var
Āmīziş-i eżdāde bir āyīne cihān
Ḫayrı şerri var nāfiʿ-i var żārrı da var
In English
1. (The world) is a sorceress; she has her arrow and her bowstring too; she is a sorceress; she has her light and her fire too.
2. The world is a mirror showing the mingling of opposites; it has good and evil, the useful and the harmful too.
Literary and Historical Commentary
After the garden of the previous quatrain with the refrain "var", this quatrain likens the world to a sorceress. The sorceress has her arrow and her bowstring; her light and her fire. The repetition at the beginning of the first two lines with the same words, "bir sâhiredir", she is a sorceress, makes the double face of sorcery heard at the level of sound as well.
Then the image is turned into a philosophical sentence: the world is a mirror of "âmîziş-i ezdâd", the mingling of opposites. Good and evil, benefit and harm are together in the world, and one is not found without the other. In many of the divan's poems the coexistence of opposites is seen as part of the divine order; God's saying "my wrath too is of use" in the fable of the basil and the nettle rests on the same understanding. This quatrain turns the thought of that fable into a short judgement.
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. 139; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
