Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Vezin: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Ayru düşdügüm ḥabîbümden Ḫudâ göstermesün
Olduġum serv-i bülendümden cüdâ göstermesün
La‘l-i nâbından beni maḥrûm ḳılsun râżıyam
Deñ raḳîbe vaṣlı ḫânından ‘aṭâ göstermesün
Yüze yüz yâre muḳâbil olmasun deñ âyine
Kendü özin gizlesün ol bî-ḥayâ göstermesün
Ḳanda bir ḫûbî görürse bizden artuḳ cân virür
‘Ārifâne ẕevḳ idüp zâhid riyâ göstermesün
Dostlar billâh deñ ol çoḳ sevdügüm dildâra kim
Mihrî'ye cevr idüp aġyâra vefâ göstermesün

In English

1. May God not show me being parted from my beloved; may He not show me being cut off from my tall cypress.

2. Let him deprive me of her pure ruby lip, I consent; but tell the rival that she must not show him any gift from the table of union.

3. Tell the mirror not to stand face to face with the beloved; let that shameless thing hide itself and not show her face. (The mirror becomes an object of the lover's jealousy because it gazes at the beloved's face as long as it likes and reflects it to others as well.)

4. Wherever the ascetic sees a beauty, he gives his life for her before we do; since he tastes this pleasure like a man of the heart, let him not show hypocrisy. (The ascetic, zâhid, is the one who displays outward piety and censures lovers; the poet throws his hidden weakness in his face.)

5. Friends, for God's sake, tell that heart-stealer whom I love so dearly: let her not wrong Mihrî and then show faithfulness to strangers (rivals).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The hundred and eighteenth ghazal (gazel) of the divan has five couplets (beyit) and is composed in the remel metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". Its redif (refrain word) is the verb "göstermesün" ("may he/she not show"); the rhyme is built on the sound "-â" (Ḫudâ, cüdâ, ‘aṭâ, ḥayâ, riyâ, vefâ). The ghazal appears in all four manuscripts and is among the first poems of the Harfü'n-Nûn section. Nothing is known about whom it was written for; that it is a nazire (response poem) to a ghazal by Necâtî is explained below.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The negative optative of the redif turns the ghazal from beginning to end into a series of wishes. In each couplet something is asked not to be "shown", but the addressee of the wish changes from couplet to couplet: God in the first, the beloved in the second, the mirror in the third, the ascetic in the fourth, and the beloved again in the last. The skill of the ghazal lies in the same verb being used each time with a different sense. In the first couplet "Ḫudâ göstermesün" is the prayer "God forbid" ("may God not show it"), still alive in Turkish today; in the second "to show a gift" means to bestow one, in the third "to show" means to reflect, in the fourth "to show hypocrisy" means to act hypocritically, and in the fifth "to show faithfulness" means to display loyalty.

In the opening couplet (matla) the beloved is called "serv-i bülend", the tall cypress; in divan poetry the cypress stands for a straight, tall figure. In the second couplet the lover is willing to be deprived of the beloved's "la‘l-i nâb", her pure lip red as ruby, provided the rival gets no share of the "vaṣl ḫânı", the table of union. Here the lover's self-sacrifice and her jealousy come together in the same sentence.

The third couplet carries the finest image of the ghazal. The mirror is the only object that can come face to face with the beloved and gaze at her as it wishes; for this reason the lover is jealous of it and calls it "bî-ḥayâ", shameless. The mirror is asked to hide itself. It is imagined here as a person; through personification (teşhis) the feeling of jealousy is extended to a lifeless object.

In the fourth couplet the ascetic (zâhid), one of the familiar types of divan poetry, comes on the scene. Gülşen Kaya cites this couplet to show that the divan treats the ascetic as the lover's opposite: he is forever censuring the lover, yet when he sees a beauty he gives his life for her before the lover does, and then denies it. The word "‘Ārifâne" in the couplet means both "knowingly, with awareness" and "like an ârif, like a man of the heart". The ascetic has tasted the pleasure of beauty like an ârif; then he must not be hypocritical. This opposition between ascetic and ârif is placed within the couplet through the two meanings the word carries.

The closing couplet (makta) completes the fear of separation at the start of the ghazal with a reproach. Mihrî addresses "friends" and sends a message to the beloved: let her not wrong Mihrî and then show faithfulness to strangers. By setting the words "cevr" and "vefâ", "Mihrî" and "aġyâr" against one another, the poet makes use of the figure of contrast (tezat).

Historical Context

Metin Hakverdioğlu, in his study of the twenty nazires Mihrî wrote to Necâtî, prints this ghazal side by side with Necâtî's ghazal opening "Baña dirmiş şöyle kendüñ mübtelâ göstermesün". The two poems are in the same metre, the same rhyme and the same redif. Necâtî's ghazal also contains the image of the mirror ("Ehl-i derdüñ dûd-ı âhından ṣaḳınsın âyine") and a couplet addressed to the ascetic ("Zâhidâ dünyâ degül meyl eyler iseñ cennete"); Necâtî also closes one couplet with "K'anları yâr ile bir görem Ḫudâ göstermesün". Mihrî's ghazal rebuilds these elements in her own order: where in Necâtî "Ḫudâ göstermesün" occurs inside a couplet, Mihrî moves it to the head of the opening couplet, to the centre of the prayer against separation; and where in Necâtî the mirror is an object asked to beware of the smoke of lovers' sighs, in Mihrî it becomes a rival envied for gazing at the beloved's face.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 113, Ghazal 118 (F 59b, M 84b, S 61b, Ü 55a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Mihrî Hâtun'un Necâtî Bey'in Şiirlerine Nazîreleri", Turkish Studies 4/2 (Winter 2009), pp. 522-551 (comparison: Mihrî CXXII, numbered as in the author's own edition, pp. 539-540), doi:10.7827/TurkishStudies.638.
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, MA thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, p. 54. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Online sources