Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ(fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Eṭfāl oyun oynar iken incitme
Sen oynadıġıñ günleri nisyān itme
Eṭfāle çü ḳānūn-ı ʿumūmīdir oyun
Ḳānūn-ı ʿumūmīye muḫālif gitme
In English
1. Do not hurt children while they are playing; do not forget the days when you played.
2. For children play is a general law; do not go against the general law.
Literary and Historical Commentary
One of the warmest counsels in the divan sits in this small quatrain, and with it a teacher-poet's view of children. One must not hurt a child at play, for the grown man too once played; this reminder brings impatient elders back to their own childhood. The words "etfâl", children, and "nisyân itme", do not forget, give the quatrain a gentle tone of warning.
In the second couplet play is defined in the language of law: for children play is "kânûn-ı umûmî", a general law, and one does not go against the general law. Applying a serious legal term to children's play is both the joking and the serious side of the quatrain; seeing play as a law of the child's nature is close to the new ideas of upbringing that spread at the end of the nineteenth century. Together with poems such as "Âyîne vü Çocuk" and "Reyhân u Isırgan", this quatrain is an endearing link in Cûdî's poems about children.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 118 (poem no. 147; manuscript fol. 40a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
