Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fa‘ûlün

Çün bir nefes oldum saña ben bende ki hem-dem
‘Ālemde niçün ölmek içün pes çekerem ġam
Ḳorḫutma beni nâr-ı caḥîm ile i nâṣiḥ
Āhum şererinden yanar odlara cehennem
Öldürse gerek beni ḫayâl-i lebüñ ey dost
Bu ḫaste dile ḳılmaz iseñ ẕerre ḳadar em
Ġamzeñ ne ‘aceb yüregüme yâreler urdı
Vaṣluñdan irişdür meded it yâreye merhem
Ey dost benüm ḥâlüme luṭf it naẓar eyle
Cân ḥulḳuma irişdi hemân ḳaldı virem dem
Cürmine baḳup Mihrî'yi dûr itme ṭapuñdan
Olmaz bu cihânda çü günâh işlemez âdem

In English

1. I who am your servant have become, for the span of a single breath, your intimate companion (hem-dem, one who shares the same breath); so why should I grieve in this world over dying?

2. O preacher (nasih), do not frighten me with the fire of hell; from the sparks of my sighs, hell itself falls into the flames and burns.

3. O friend, if you give this sick heart not so much as an atom of medicine, the mere thought of your lips would be enough to kill me.

4. How strange that your glance (gamze) has opened wounds in my heart; help me, and bring a salve to this wound from union with you.

5. O friend, show kindness to my state and look at me; my soul has reached my throat and I am about to give up my last breath.

6. Do not look at her fault and drive Mihrî away from your door; for in this world there is no human being who does not sin.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The one hundred and fifth ghazal (gazel) of the divan has six couplets (beyit) and is written in the hezec metre of the aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fa‘ûlün". It stands in the section of the divan that collects poems ending in the letter "m". It has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme rests on the sound "-m" at the ends of the lines (hem-dem, ġam, cehennem, em, merhem, dem, âdem). Apart from the first couplet, which is built on "ġam", the fact that most of the rhyme words end in "-em" gives the poem a regular unity of sound. The ghazal appears in all four manuscripts (F, M, S, Ü) used in Arslan's edition; the differences among them consist of spelling variants such as "Ḳorḫutma / Ḳorḳutma" and "merhem / melhem", and of small changes of word order such as "luṭf eyle naẓar ḳıl" in the fifth couplet. Nothing is known about whom the poem was written for or on what occasion.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the ease before death of a lover who has been close to the beloved even for a moment, and her plea for the beloved's favour. The word "hem-dem" in the first couplet means one who shares the same breath, a companion in conversation and intimacy. By placing "bir nefes" (one breath) and "hem-dem" side by side, the poet builds a tenasüp (congruence of images) around the idea of breath: a single breath spent with the beloved has made the last breath that death will bring unimportant.

The second couplet brings on stage the nasih, the adviser who counsels the lover, a familiar type in divan poetry. The adviser tries to frighten the lover with hell; the lover replies that even hell will catch fire from the sparks of her sigh. Gülşen Kaya notes that in Mihrî's divan hell is used mostly to express the degree of suffering, and she cites this couplet as an example showing that the lover does not fear hell because she is already burning with the fire of love. The exaggeration in the couplet is a typical example of mübalağa (hyperbole).

The third and fourth couplets are built on the conceits of illness and cure. The lover is sick, the thought of the beloved's lips is killing her, and the remedy, an "em" (medicine), can come only from the beloved. In the fourth couplet the gamze, the beloved's languid, sidelong glance, is imagined as a weapon that opens wounds in the lover's heart, and the salve for the wound is union. There is a clear tenasüp among the words "yâre" (wound), "merhem" (salve), "em" (medicine) and "ḫaste" (sick), and the use of "yâre" twice in the same couplet sharpens the correspondence between wound and salve.

The fifth couplet describes the moment of death agony: the soul has come to the throat and the last breath is about to be given. Thus the lover who made light of death in the first couplet is, toward the end of the poem, begging a glance from the beloved on the threshold of death. The ghazal does not try to resolve the tension between these two attitudes; it leaves it as the kind of rise and fall often seen in love poetry.

In the pen-name couplet (mahlas) the poet refers to herself in the third person and asks the beloved not to drive her from the door because of her fault. The second line, "there is no human being in this world who does not sin", is framed like a proverb; in bringing a known truth forward as proof, it is an example of irsâl-i mesel (the proverb-like statement). Kaya cites this couplet in the section where she discusses the human being's flawed creation. The word "âdem" at the end of the line means "human being" and may also recall Adam, who committed the first sin and was driven out of paradise; when this second meaning is read, the poet ties her own fault to the fault of humanity's ancestor. Addressing the beloved as "ey dost" ("O friend") and the fear of being driven from the door are expressions that bring a human love poem close to a mystical (Sufi) supplication; but since human elements of beauty such as the lips and the gamze are also openly present in the ghazal, the poem remains open to both readings.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 106-107, Ghazal 105. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat University Institute of Social Sciences, Elazığ 2010. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Other sources

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), "Ğazeliyyāt-ı Mihri-i Hāqīre", türkoloji-iran, 2007 (a different transliteration of the ghazal).

Online sources