Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Syllabic metre (4+4=8); under the title the thesis also gives the pattern "feʿilātün feʿilātün"

Ḳaraçārlı ḳaraçārlı
Aman ey serv-i ḫırāmān
Ne edālı ne vaḳārlı
Sürinür yerlere dāmān
Ḳaraçārlı beyāż elli
Teniñiz ḳar gibi belli
Ya lelelli ya lelelli
Uçuyor ṣabr ile sāmān
Yürüyüş mevceli mevzūn
Gören olmaz mı ya meftūn
Hele ben cümleden efzūn
Olurum bende-i fermān
Ḳaraçārlı ḳaraçārlı
Bu gidiş ḫalḳa żararlı
A gözi āhū naẓarlı
Beni mest itdi o çeşmān
Ḳara perde yüziñüzde
Gicedir gündüziñüzde
Hele bir göz süziñüzde
İdeyim çeşmiñe peymān
Ḳaraçār bālıñız oldum
Ḳara sevdālıñız oldum
Amān abdālıñız oldum
Amān ammān amān ammān
Seni ṣardı o sīne-çār
Beni ṣardı ḳara efkār
Açıñız lemʾa-i dīdār
Ola sevdālara dermān
Ne zamān muḳniʿa-keşsin
Bulut altında güneşsin
Ya ṭutılmuş aya eşsin
Görün ey ḳudret-i raḥmān
Baña ṭoġsañ diye ḳurdum
Delilikden mi dem urdum
Anadan ṭoġma olurdum
Yā şifā-ḫāye-i mihmān

In English

1. Black-veiled one, black-veiled one! Ah, O cypress walking with a sway; what grace, what dignity! Her skirt trails along the ground.

2. Black-veiled one, white-handed one; your skin shows white as snow. Ya leylelli, ya leylelli; patience and peace fly away.

3. Her walk is wave upon wave, in measure; who that sees it would not be smitten? And I above all become a servant ready at her command.

4. Black-veiled one, black-veiled one, this way of walking does the people harm! O you with the gazelle's glance, those eyes have made me drunk.

5. A black curtain on your face; even your day is night. Just narrow your eyes once, and let me swear an oath by your eye.

6. I have become a captive of your black veil, I have fallen into black passion for you; ah, I have become your wandering dervish; ah, ah, ah, ah.

7. That veil has wrapped you, black thoughts have wrapped me; uncover the gleam of your face, so that there may be a cure for passions.

8. How long have you drawn the veil? You are a sun beneath a cloud, or the twin of the eclipsed moon; O power of the Merciful, show yourselves.

9. I dreamed, "If only you would rise for me"; was it madness I spoke of? I would be as on the day I was born... (The last line is unclear as read in the thesis.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Black-Veiled One

The divan's only "şarkı" (song) is called in its title "bî-nakarât", without refrain, and according to the thesis note it is written in an eight-syllable syllabic metre. Built of nine four-line stanzas, this poem shows how close Cûdî could come, outside divan poetry, to the language of folk and city songs. Tok Yıldız notes that the şarkı form is seldom seen in divans apart from Nedîm and Şeyh Gâlib; Cûdî's song, however, resembles less their elegant Istanbul songs than street songs that proceed with cries like "aman" and "ya leylelli".

The person addressed in the poem is called "Karaçarlı". This reading in the thesis suggests that the word is used in the sense of "kara çarşaflı", the one in a black çarşaf, that is, for a woman wrapped in the black outer veil that became widespread in Istanbul at the end of the nineteenth century; the words "white-handed" and "your skin shows white as snow" in the second stanza set up a contrast of colour between the black veil and the white skin. The woman walks with a sway, her skirt trails along the ground, and "this way of walking does the people harm". In the fifth and eighth stanzas the black curtain over the face is likened to a cloud that turns day into night, and the face behind the veil to a sun under a cloud or an eclipsed moon.

The sixth stanza is the song's most exuberant place: the lover, captive of the black veil, in black passion, become a wandering dervish, cries out "aman ammān amān ammān". The end of one line in the last stanza, by contrast, defeats the thesis's reading and is left to conjecture in the English. Among the divan's heavy Sufi and philosophical poems this song is one of the texts that most clearly show the poet's cheerful, playful face, the "wit and grace" mentioned by Ali Canip Yöntem.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 80-81 (poem no. 57; manuscript fol. 26b-27a); introduction p. 9. http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources