Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Bûy-ı zülfüñ gibi ‘anber-bâr miskîn olmaya
Ḫadd ü ḳaddüñ gibi ra‘nâ serv nesrîn olmaya
Pister-i nesrîn gerekmez bir dem ârâm itmege
Āsitânuñ gibi dil-miskîne bâlîn olmaya
Var mıdur bir yer ġamuñdan aġladuḳça dostum
Gözlerimüñ ḳanlu yaşı ile rengîn olmaya
Gerçi ġamzeñ ḳaṣd-ı cân itmekde tîr-endâzdur
Lîk çeşmüñ gibi ḳan içici bî-dîn olmaya
Olmadı bir dem düşelden Mihrî ‘aşḳuñ nârına
Sîne yanup dil göyünüp dîde nemgîn olmaya

In English

1. There can be no musk that smells of amber like the scent of your hair; there can be no wild rose (nesrin) and cypress as graceful as your cheek and stature. (The cheek, being rose-coloured, is likened to the nesrin, and the stature, being tall and straight, to the cypress.)

2. To rest for a moment one needs no bed made of nesrin petals; for this poor heart there can be no pillow like your threshold. (For the lover the softest bed is the threshold of the beloved's door.)

3. My friend, as I weep from your pain, is there any place left that my eyes' bloody tears have not coloured? (Everywhere has reddened with my bloody tears.)

4. Though your glance is an archer shooting arrows to take a life, there can be no infidel who drinks blood like your eye.

5. Since Mihrî fell into the fire of your love there has not been a moment when her breast did not burn, her heart did not catch fire, her eye was not moist.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This poem is the first ghazal in the ghazal section of Mehmet Arslan's edition and stands in the "elif" section of the divan. Because in divans ghazals are arranged alphabetically by the final letter of the rhyme or the redif, the first ghazal often carries a redif ending in the letter elif. In the Istanbul University manuscript the ghazal section opens with this poem and with the heading "Ġazeliyyât-ı Mihrî Ḥaḳîre" (the ghazals of worthless Mihrî). The poem is in all four manuscripts (F 33a, M 47a, S 35a, Ü 27b); the differences between the manuscripts amount to reading variants of a few words.

The ghazal has five couplets and is written in the remel metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fâ'ilâtün Fâ'ilâtün Fâ'ilâtün Fâ'ilün". The ghazal is a verse form that is usually kept between five and fifteen couplets, whose first couplet has rhyming hemistichs, whose later couplets rhyme only in the second hemistich, and whose last couplet carries the poet's pen name (mahlas). Here the rhyme is the sound "-în" (miskîn, nesrîn, bâlîn, rengîn, bî-dîn, nemgîn), and the redif (refrain word) is "olmaya". This form in Old Anatolian Turkish gives the sentence the sense "cannot be, is not to be found", or, in a question, "let it not be". The pen name appears in the last couplet. There is no information on for whom or on what occasion it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first two couplets of the ghazal describe the beloved's uniqueness, and the last three the state of the lover, and the redif ties these two parts to the same pattern. In the first couplet the scent of the hair is compared with musk and amber, and the cheek and stature with nesrin and cypress; none can match a single feature of the beloved. Musk and amber are two famous sources of fragrance in divan poetry; Gülşen Kaya notes that in Mihrî's divan the source of fragrance is always the beloved, that the scents of musk and amber spread to the world from her hair or cheek, and she cites this matla couplet as an example. In the second hemistich "ḫadd ü ḳadd" (cheek and stature) are listed first and their counterparts "serv" and "nesrîn" are given in reverse order. The art of first listing several things and then enumerating their counterparts is called leff ü neşr; since the order of the counterparts is disturbed, this is here the mixed (müşevveş) kind.

Between the first two couplets there is a subtle wordplay. The "miskîn" in the first couplet comes from the word musk and means "musk-scented". The "dil-miskîn" in the second couplet, on the other hand, means "poor, wretched heart". The use of a word of the same sound in two successive couplets with two different meanings creates a pleasing echo for the reader of the ghazal. In the second couplet a soft bed made of nesrin petals is set against the beloved's stone threshold, and the lover prefers the threshold. Kaya illustrates with this couplet that in the divan the beloved's threshold is regarded as the finest bed and pillow for the lover.

The third couplet is built on the figure of hyperbole (mübalağa): the lover's bloody tears have left no place in the world uncoloured. The couplet is in the form of a question, but because its answer is clear, it states something forcefully rather than asking; this is a common use of the art called istifham in divan poetry. In the fourth couplet the beloved's glance (gamze) and her eye (çeşm) are compared. As Kaya explains, the gamze is an archer bent on taking life, but the eye is an infidel who has surpassed it in drinking blood. In divan poetry the beloved's eye is imagined as bloody, cruel and unbelieving; the adjective "bî-dîn" (without religion) expresses this mercilessness.

In the pen-name couplet Mihrî describes her state through three organs since she fell into the fire of love: the breast burns, the heart catches fire, the eye is moist. There is a contrast between what the fire burns and the moisture of the eye, and the same picture is seen in other poems of the divan; in the seventeenth kaside the line "Dilde ġam dîdede nem sînede âteş" is built on a similar sequence. In the ghazal as a whole the relationship between beloved and lover remains within the familiar patterns of divan poetry. There is no sign in the poem that the speaker is a woman; here Mihrî uses the common lover's voice of the ghazal tradition.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 51, Ghazal 1 (F 33a, M 47a, S 35a, Ü 27b) and footnotes on manuscript variants. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, p. 137, 157, 186, 291. openaccess.firat.edu.tr
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral thesis, Uludağ Üniversitesi, Balıkesir 1990, p. 448 (Gazel 1).

Other sources

  • "Buy'ı Zülfün Gibi Anber-bar ü Miskin Olmaya", Wikisource (transliterated text). tr.wikisource.org

Online sources