Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Ġurbetde teʾehhül ideniñ vay başına
Bī-çāre ġarībiñ ṣu ḳatarlar aşına
Eyler biri medḥ itdigini digeri ẕemm
Beñzer şu teʾehhül işi sil yaz ṭaşına
In English
1. Woe to the one who marries in a strange land! They water down the poor stranger's food.
2. What one praises the other condemns; this business of marriage is like a slate you write on and wipe clean.
Literary and Historical Commentary
This quatrain, bearing the title "Mudhike", a comic piece, shows the divan's playful face. Its subject is marrying in a strange land. According to the sources Cûdî married in 1886 in Salonica, far from Merzifon where he was born and Istanbul where he studied; whether the quatrain has any connection with this experience is not known, but the subject is not far from the poet's life.
The first couplet describes the state of the stranger who marries far from home through an idiom: "they water down his food". This expression is used in the sense of spoiling someone's affairs, taking advantage of him; the stranger is alone amid the family and circle he has newly joined. The second couplet describes the endless quarrels of marriage through a school implement: one praises a thing, the other condemns the same thing; marriage resembles a slate that is written on, wiped and written on again, a "sil yaz taşı". This comparison, plainly from a teacher's hand, ties the quatrain's humour to an everyday, endearing place.
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. 145; manuscript fol. ); introduction p. 3. http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
