Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Evlādıña aḥvāl-i cihāndan baḥŝ it
Ḫayr u şerri peşinde tamāmen beŝŝ it
Taṣḥīḥine diḳḳat idecek nüsḥadır o
Ol nüsḥayı taṣḥīḥde terk-i mekeŝ it
In English
1. Speak to your child about the ways of the world; tell him beforehand of good and evil in full.
2. He is a copy whose correction must be attended to; in correcting that copy, give up delay.
Literary and Historical Commentary
A father's and teacher's counsel on bringing up a child is given through an image from manuscript culture. The first couplet is an open counsel: one must tell the child beforehand and in full about the ways of the world, about good and evil. What is defended is teaching the child the facts of life in good time rather than shielding him from them.
The image of the copy gives the quatrain its real colour. The child is a "nüsha", a copy; in a world where manuscript books were multiplied by hand, a copy is a text copied from its original, and its errors must be subjected to "tashih", collated and corrected. The child too is a copy whose correction must be attended to, and there must be no delay in this correction. Cûdî, who uses images of book, pen and writing throughout the divan, speaks here like a copyist or a corrector. When one thinks that his own divan has come down to us as a copy written out by his brother, this comparison gains a further meaning.
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. 150; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
