Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Feʻilātün feʻilātün feʻilātün feʻilün

Gösterir mi bize devrān dem-i vuṣlat Ꜥaceb
Öldürür mi bizi bilmem ġam-ı fürḳat Ꜥaceb
İntiẓār ile helāk oldı dil-i nālānım
Eylemez mi o perī-rū daḫı [hīç] şefḳat Ꜥaceb
Ṭutalım vaꜤde-i vaṣl eyler imiş Ꜥāşüfte
Çarḫ-ı kec-rev de virir mi hele furṣat Ꜥaceb
Alıcaḳ hāle-i āġūşa o sīm-endāmı
Vire mi būse-i ruḫsārına ruḫṣat Ꜥaceb
Bilmem inṣāfa gelüp eylese mi ol gül-rū
Mihriyā vaꜤde vefā itmege meşiyyet Ꜥaceb

In English

1. Will fortune show us the moment of union, I wonder; will the grief of separation kill us, I do not know, I wonder.

2. My lamenting heart has perished with waiting; will that fairy-faced one still show no compassion at all, I wonder.

3. Let us suppose the beloved is promising the distraught lover union; but will the crooked-turning heavens give the chance for it, I wonder. (In divan poetry the heavens (felek) are the symbol of the ill fortune that stands in the way of the lover's wish.)

4. When I take that silver-bodied beauty into the ring of my embrace, will she allow me to kiss her cheek, I wonder.

5. O Mihrî, I do not know whether that rose-faced one will come to justice and wish to keep the promise she gave, I wonder.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This ghazal does not appear in Mihrî Hatun's divan; it is found under the pen name (mahlas) Mihrî on folio 67a of the poetry anthology registered under number 43 Va 2871 in the Kütahya Vahid Paşa Provincial Public Library. Mutlu Muhammet Aktaş, who published the twenty ghazals with the pen name Mihrî in the anthology, regards it as a strong possibility that they belong to Mihrî Hatun, but states openly that the comparisons he made do not lead to a firm judgment. The attribution of the poem is therefore uncertain.

The ghazal has five couplets (beyit) and is composed in the remel metre, in the aruz (quantitative metre) pattern "Fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is the word "‘aceb" (I wonder); the rhyme (kafiye) is built on the sounds "-at" and "-et" (vuṣlat, fürḳat, şefḳat, furṣat, ruḫṣat, meşiyyet). In the text given by Aktaş, a word in the second couplet is restored in square brackets ("[hîç]"). There is no information on to whom or on what occasion the ghazal was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal as a whole is woven of questions. Each couplet ends with a question, and the redif "‘aceb" ties these questions together with doubt and wonder. The lover wavers between the hope of union and the fear of death that separation brings; no question is answered. This arrangement gives the ghazal a single voice that carries the unease of waiting.

The opening couplet sets union and separation face to face in the same couplet: there is an antithesis between "dem-i vuṣlat" (the moment of union) and "ġam-ı fürḳat" (the grief of separation). The lines are built parallel to each other as well; the first asks whether fortune will show union, the second whether separation will kill. In the second couplet the word "intiẓâr" (waiting) names the subject of the ghazal outright. Calling the beloved "perî-rû" (fairy-faced) conveys her superhuman beauty and, at the same time, her unattainability.

The third couplet is the most carefully thought-out in the ghazal. The lover allows for a moment that the beloved is promising union ("ṭutalım", let us suppose), but this time the obstacle comes not from the beloved but from fate. "Çarḫ-ı kec-rev" (the crooked-turning wheel) is a well-known phrase in divan poetry for the way fortune and time work against the lover; its crooked turning points to its constantly turning the lover's affairs the wrong way. In this couplet the word "furṣat" (chance) is almost identical in sound to "ruḫṣat" (permission) in the fourth couplet. This closeness between the two rhyme words looks like a deliberate sound play in the ghazal.

The first line of the fourth couplet is almost the same as the first line of the fourth couplet of the fifteenth ghazal in the anthology: "Alıcaḳ hâle-i âġûşa o sîm-endâmı" here, "Almaġa hâle-i aġûşa o sîm-endâmı" there. The two ghazals are written in the same metre and are found on nearby folios of the anthology (66b and 67a). That the same image, taking the silver-bodied beloved into the ring of the embrace, is used in the same words in two separate ghazals suggests that these poems may have come from the same pen; but this resemblance does not settle the question of who the poet is.

In the closing couplet (makta) the poet addresses herself and gathers all the ghazal's questions into a single one: will the beloved wish to keep the promise she gave. The phrase "va‘de vefâ" (fidelity to a promise) is linked with "va‘de-i vaṣl" (the promise of union) in the third couplet; thus the ghazal closes at the end the subject of the promise that it opened in its middle, but once again with a question.

Bibliography

  • Mutlu Muhammet Aktaş, "Mihrî Hatun'un Yayımlanmamış Gazelleri", Hikmet-Akademik Edebiyat Dergisi 9/18 (Spring 2023), p. 122, ghazal 18 (Kütahya Vahid Paşa İl Halk Ktp. 43 Va 2871 Mecmû‘a-i Eş‘âr, f. 67a); ghazal 15 for comparison, pp. 120-121; discussion of attribution pp. 110-112, 124. doi:10.28981/hikmet.1200789. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/2757129

Online sources