Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Outside the rubai metre (no metre is given in the thesis)
Ne dimekdir bilemem ḥavf u recādan geçmek
Ṣaġ iken mümkin olur mı o memātı içmek
Keşf ile, ẕevḳ ile idrāḳ olunurmuş ol ḥāl
Keşf ile ẕevḳi ʿaceb neyle müyessir seçmek
In English
1. I cannot tell what it means to pass beyond fear and hope; is it possible for a man to drink that death while still alive?
2. That state, they say, is grasped by unveiling and by taste; but by what, I wonder, can one easily tell unveiling and taste apart?
Literary and Historical Commentary
Two claims of Sufism meet with doubt in this quatrain outside the rubai metre. The first is "havf u recâdan geçmek", passing beyond fear and hope; in Sufism it is said that the servant at the higher degrees acts no longer from fear of Hell or hope of Paradise. The second is the state known by the saying "die before you die": drinking that death while still alive. The poet says plainly that he does not know what these states mean.
What the second couplet questions is the source of the knowledge of these states. According to the Sufis they are grasped through "keşf", a divine unveiling, and "zevk", direct tasting. Cûdî's question is a question of the theory of knowledge: by what shall we distinguish and verify unveiling and taste? Set beside the divan's Sufi poems, this quatrain shows that the poet looked at Sufism with admiration and also with the attentiveness of a teacher of kalâm and logic. The quatrain titled "Bu da" that follows it carries on this debate.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 116 (poem no. 142; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
