Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ)

Şübbān ki çocuḳlu[ḳ]dan olurlar bīdār
Ṣān eski muḥīṭ anları eyler bīzār
Eyler kimi nev-beyn olaraḳ meyl-i frenk
Kimi yeñi ẓannıyla ṭarīḳatde ḳarār

In English

1. The young, waking from childhood and coming to themselves, suppose that the old surroundings weary them.

2. Some, as innovators, incline towards the Franks (the West); some settle in a Sufi order, supposing they have found something new.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Youth and innovation are the subject of a small series that carries one of the divan's most social observations, and this quatrain opens it. When "şübbân", the young, wake from childhood and come to themselves, the old surroundings, "eski muhît", seem narrow and wearisome to them. This is a tension between generations seen in every age; but in Cûdî's age this tension had taken a particular form.

The young are swept in two different directions. Some, as "nev-bîn", those who see the new, innovators, incline towards the Franks, that is, the West; others enter a Sufi order, believing they have found something they take to be "new". The poet names both roads with the same eye: both are forms of flight from the old surroundings. This observation on the young by a poet who taught for thirty years joins in a single sentence the searches seen after the Tanzimat in the form of both Westernization and turning to the Sufi orders.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 121 (poem no. 157; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources