Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Ḫōd-gāmlıġıñ ġāyetidir ḥırṣ u ḥasedd
İster birisi menbaʿ-ı ḥaṣr, ol biri sedd
Ḥayvān ne dimek? Cism-i ḥarīṣ ü ḫōd-gām
İnsān ne dimek? Rūḥ-ı ʿalā baḫş-ı cedd
In English
1. The utmost degree of selfishness is greed and envy; one wants a spring of plenty, the other a dam (across another's).
2. What does animal mean? A greedy, selfish body. What does man mean? A spirit that bestows loftiness and fortune. (The end of the last line is not entirely clear.)
Literary and Historical Commentary
Greed and envy are the two faces of selfishness, and the quatrain tells them apart through a short comparison. The greedy man wants for himself a "menba'-ı hasr", a spring of plenty; the envious man wants to build a dam across another's spring. One seeks to take, the other to block; both are the extreme state of selfishness.
The second couplet asks and answers two questions in the defining language of the logic books: what is an animal, what is a man? An animal is a greedy, selfish body; man is a spirit, and the mark of this spirit is giving, bestowing loftiness. Elsewhere in the divan the definition "hayvân-ı nâtık", speaking animal, was mocked or read in reverse; here man is defined not by his speech but by his generosity. This moral turn of the definition makes the quatrain a didactic maxim.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 122 (poem no. 162; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
