Original Text (Mixed Languages)
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Keşf eyledim īmān ile pīş ü pesimi
Aḳbeltü ilaʾllāhi ve edbertü sivāh
In English
1. Through faith I discovered what lies before me and behind me; (Arabic) I turned towards God and turned my back on all besides Him.
Literary and Historical Commentary
This single couplet built of two languages describes a movement of turning towards and turning away. The first line is Turkish: the poet says that through faith he discovered his "pîş ü pes", what is before and behind him, that is, his future and his past. The second line is Arabic and completes the same movement with a sentence of prayer: "Aḳbeltü ile'llâhi ve edbertü sivâh", I turned towards God and turned my back on all besides Him.
The power of the couplet comes from the two verbs of the Arabic line being opposites. "Akbeltü" means turning one's face, "edbertü" turning one's back; "pîş" and "pes", front and back, in the first line are like the Persian equivalents of these two verbs. So the couplet binds Turkish, Persian and Arabic words together around the notion of front and back. A story of repentance and submission is told within a single couplet.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 100 (poem no. 86; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
