Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Āfāḳda seyyān görinür nūr u ẓalām
Enfüsde niçün ġālib olur ḥāl-i melām
Sī sāl muʿallimlik idüp mektebde
Gördim idemez onda biri fehm-i kelām
In English
1. In the outer world light and darkness appear equal; why in the inner world does the blameworthy state prevail?
2. For thirty years I taught in the school; I saw that not one of them can understand speech.
Literary and Historical Commentary
"Sî sâl", thirty years: in the second couplet Cûdî says he taught in the school that long, which makes this quatrain one of the few places in the divan that openly touch on the poet's own life. The sources tell that, beginning at the Beşiktaş Military Middle School, he taught for many years in Salonica and Istanbul; thirty years is like a summary of this career, and suggests that the quatrain was written in the middle or near the end of it.
The quatrain's conclusion, however, is bitter: at the end of thirty years the poet has seen that not one of his students can truly understand speech. The first couplet ties this disappointment to an observation of the universe: in the outer world light and darkness receive equal shares, night and day balance each other; but why does the blameworthy, the dark side, prevail in man's inner world? In Ali Canip Yöntem's memoir it is said that Cûdî was not as fruitful in his lessons as his learning would suggest; this quatrain can be read as a reproach looking at the same relation from the teacher's side.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 117 (poem no. 144; manuscript fol. ); introduction pp. 3, 6. http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
