Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Bir dem ol dilber cemâlinden ıraġ olmaḳ ne güç
Bir nefes cânânesüz ‘âlemde ṣaġ olmaḳ ne güç
Gülsitânda ġoncanuñ yanında ḫâr olmaḳ ne ḫoş
Lâle gibi bülbülüñ baġrında dâġ olmaḳ ne güç
Ben gedâsını ḳomazlar yüz sürem dergâhına
Pâdişâhuñ âsitânında yasaġ olmaḳ ne güç
Çeşmi ḫışm itdükçe câna ġamzesi ḫançer çeker
Mest elinde dostlar ḳılıç bıçaġ olmaḳ ne güç
Gülşen-i ḥüsni kenârın ṭutdı Mihrî ḫatt-ı yâr
Bülbülüñ tâze gülistânında zâġ olmaḳ ne güç

In English

1. How hard it is to be far from that beauty's face even for a moment; how hard to stay alive in this world for a single breath without the beloved. (In manuscripts F and S the line begins "Her dem" instead of "Bir dem": "to be far at every moment, how hard".)

2. How sweet to be a thorn beside the rosebud in the rose garden; how hard to be a brand upon the nightingale's breast like the tulip. (The black spot at the centre of the tulip is counted in divan poetry as a "dâğ", a scar burned with hot iron. The lover envies the thorn that never leaves the bud's side and likens herself to the nightingale with a wounded breast.)

3. They do not let me, the beggar, rub my face on her threshold; how hard to be forbidden at the sultan's door. (The beloved is likened to a sultan, the lover to a poor man waiting at his door.)

4. Whenever her eye grows angry, her glance draws a dagger on my soul. Friends, how hard (how dangerous) it is to be a sword and knife in a drunkard's hand. (The beloved's eye is likened to a drunkard, her glance to the weapon in his hand.)

5. O Mihrî, the down on the beloved's cheek has taken the edge of the garden of her beauty; how heavy it is for a crow to be in the nightingale's fresh rose garden. (The first down on the cheek, the "ḫatt", is likened for its blackness to a flock of crows. The face is the rose garden, the lover the nightingale.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The eleventh ghazal (gazel) of the divan has five couplets (beyit) and is composed in the remel metre of the aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". The rhyme is the sound "-aġ" (ıraġ, ṣaġ, dâġ, yasaġ, bıçaġ, zâġ); "olmaḳ ne güç" (how hard to be), repeated at the end of every couplet, is the redif (refrain word). The ghazal is a short verse form whose couplets are tied together by the same rhyme and refrain, whose first couplet (matla) rhymes in both lines, and whose last couplet (makta) contains the poet's pen name (mahlas). The ghazals in the divan are arranged alphabetically by the last letter of the redif. Because the last letter of the word "güç" was written in the old script with the letter çim, which is cîm with three dots, the poem is placed in the edition in the section "Ḥarfü'l-Cîm".

The poem is found in all four manuscripts (F 35b, M 50a, S 37b, Ü 30a). The manuscript variants are few: the words "Bir dem" at the start of the first line read "Her dem" in F and S, and "dâġ" in the second couplet is written "ṭaġ" (mountain) in F and S. The reading "ṭaġ" keeps the rhyme but weakens the sense of "to be a mountain on the breast like a tulip"; the edition prefers "dâġ". It is not known to whom or on what occasion it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the weight of being apart from the beloved, and each couplet expresses this weight with a different image: separation, a forbidden threshold, a knife in a drunkard's hand, a crow settling in a rose garden. The redif "ne güç" gives the poem a tone of complaint. In the second couplet this tone is broken once: the first line ends with "ne ḫoş" (how sweet), and the second answers with "ne güç" (how hard). Antithesis (tezat) is thus set up between the words rosebud and thorn, tulip and nightingale, sweet and hard. The placing of rosebud and thorn side by side is set against the parting of rose and nightingale; the lover envies even the thorn because it can stay close to the beloved.

The third couplet uses the familiar conceit of divan poetry that carries the relation of sultan and subject into love. The beloved is the sultan, and the lover a beggar who wishes to rub her face on his threshold; the words dergâh (court), âsitân (threshold), pâdişâh (sultan), gedâ (beggar) and yasak (ban) form a congruence of images (tenasüp). Examining the types of lover in Mihrî's divan, Gülşen Kaya cites this couplet as an example of the beggar lover for whom the sultan beloved's door is banned, and notes that being barred from the sultan's threshold is counted as the heaviest condition for a lover.

In the fourth couplet the beloved's eye is imagined as drunk (mest). In divan poetry an eye with a languid, swooning look is likened to a drunkard, and the eyelash and the glance (ġamze) are the arrow or dagger in its hand. According to Kaya, the couplet alludes to the readiness of drunkards to shed blood, to their quickness to anger, and to the rule that they should not be given cutting tools. The address "dostlar" (friends) at the end of the line turns the words toward those around the lover and gives the couplet a conversational air.

The last couplet describes the first down appearing on the beloved's face. In divan poetry this down (ḫatt) is counted as the beginning of the end of beauty. When the face is the rose garden and the lover the nightingale, the black down that surrounds the garden's edge becomes a crow settled in the nightingale's garden. Kaya gives the couplet as an example of the comparison between ḫatt and crow, and recalls that the crow also stands for the rival in the divan. It is also notable that the pen name occurs in the first line of the couplet, in "Mihrî ḫatt-ı yâr", in a closeness of sound. With the words nightingale, rose, rosebud, tulip, thorn and crow, the whole ghazal is gathered into the picture of a single garden.

Bibliography

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 56-57, Gazel 11 (F 35b, M 50a, S 37b, Ü 30a) and the footnotes on manuscript variants. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010 (entries mest, gedâ and zâġ). openaccess.firat.edu.tr