Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Vezin: Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün

Ben umardum ki seni yâr-ı vefâ-dâr olasın
Ne bileydüm ki begüm böyle cefâ-kâr olasın
Hele sen ḳâ‘ide-i cevrde eksük ḳomaduñ
Dostluḳ ḥaḳı ise ancaḳ ola var olasın
Reh-i ‘aşḳuñda neler çekdügüm ey dost benüm
Bilesin bir gün ola ‘aşḳa giriftâr olasın
Sözüme uymaduñ ey aṣılası dil dilerem
Ser-i zülfine anuñ âḫiri ber-dâr olasın
Sen ki cân gülşeninüñ bir gül-i nev-restesisin
Ne revâdur bu ki her ḫâr u ḫasa yâr olasın
Beni âzâde iken ‘aşḳa giriftâr itdüñ
Göreyin sen de benüm gibi giriftâr olasın
Sen çıḳarduñ beni zülfine uyup başdan i dil
Göreyin sen daḫi bu yolda ki ber-dâr olasın
Bed-du‘â itmezem ammâ ki Ḫudâ'dan dilerem
Bir senüñ gibi cefâ-kara hevâ-dâr olasın
Şimdi bir ḥâldeyem kim ilenen düşmenine
Dir ki Mihrî gibi sen daḫi siyeh-kâr olasın

In English

1. I hoped that you would be a faithful beloved; how could I have known, my lord, that you would be so cruel?

2. You, at least, have left nothing lacking in the rules of cruelty; as for the due of friendship, well, may you live long. (The couplet can be read in two ways: "may you live long" is either a thank-you spoken with bitter mockery, or a wish meaning "I can expect the due of friendship only as long as you live.")

3. O my friend, may you one day fall in love yourself and so come to know what I have suffered on the path of your love.

4. O heart, you deserve to be hanged, for you did not heed my word; I wish that in the end you may be hanged on the tip of her tress. (The beloved's long, curling tress is likened in divan poetry to a gallows and a rope; the heart is caught there and left hanging.)

5. You who are a freshly opened rose in the garden of the soul, how can it be proper that you should be a friend to every thorn and bit of rubbish (every worthless person)?

6. You made me a captive of love when I was free; may I live to see you, too, a captive as I am.

7. O heart, by following her tress you led me astray; may I live to see you, too, hanged on this road. (Baştan çıkarmak means both to lead astray and to take away someone's reason.)

8. I do not curse you, but I ask of God that you may fall in love with someone as cruel as you.

9. I am now in such a state that one who curses his enemy says, "May you too be black-fated like Mihrî." (Siyeh-kâr means ill-starred and wretched, and also "sinner".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The hundred and twentieth ghazal (gazel) of the divan has nine couplets (beyit) and is composed in the remel metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün". Its redif (refrain word) is "olasın" ("may you be"); the rhyme is built on the sound "-âr" (vefâ-dâr, cefâ-kâr, var, giriftâr, ber-dâr, yâr, hevâ-dâr, siyeh-kâr). "Giriftâr" is used twice in rhyming position, in the third and sixth couplets, and "ber-dâr" in the fourth and seventh. These repetitions echo twice within the ghazal the two basic wishes on which the poem is built: that the beloved too be seized by love, and that the heart be hanged on the tress. The ghazal appears in all four manuscripts; with nine couplets it is among the long ghazals of the divan. Nothing is known about whom it was written for.

It is one of Mihrî's best-known poems. Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi quotes four couplets from this ghazal (the 1st, 5th, 8th and 9th) in his entry on Mihrî in his tezkire (biographical anthology of poets). Today, too, it is given first, with its full text, as a sample of the poet's works in Mehmet Arslan's entry on Mihrî in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the cruelty found where faithfulness was hoped for, and the poem says this disappointment openly in its first couplet. The two lines beginning "Ben umardum" ("I hoped") and "Ne bileydüm" ("How could I have known") set expectation against reality, and the rhyme words "vefâ-dâr" and "cefâ-kâr" complete this contrast at the level of sound. The address to the beloved as "begüm" ("my lord") follows the tradition of divan poetry in which the beloved is addressed like a master.

A striking feature of the poem is that the address passes back and forth between two persons. In the first, second, third, fifth and eighth couplets the poet addresses the beloved; in the fourth and seventh she addresses her own heart. The heart is imagined as a separate person who did not listen to her and followed the beloved's tress, and so "led its owner astray". Gülşen Kaya cites the seventh couplet as an example in which the poet abstracts her heart as a being separate from herself and, because it did not heed her word, wishes it hanged on the tress as a punishment. The likening of the tress to a gallows (dâr) is a known motif of divan poetry; the word "aṣılası" ("who deserves to be hanged") is used in the fourth couplet as a curse and then completed literally with "ber-dâr olasın" ("may you be hanged"), so that curse and comparison meet in the same sentence. The addressee of the sixth couplet is not clearly stated: it may be the beloved who made the poet a captive of love, or it may be the heart.

The voice of the ghazal rests on an irony set between cursing and not cursing. In the third and sixth couplets the poet wishes that the beloved too be seized by love, so that she may then understand what the poet has suffered. Sıtkı Nazik observes that the redif "olasın" can open the door to both positive and negative feelings, but that in this ghazal the poet, fallen into a hopeless love, almost curses her addressee by wishing her to be afflicted with love as well. The eighth couplet states this situation itself: the line beginning "Bed-du‘â itmezem ammâ" ("I do not curse, but") ends, immediately after, in a full curse by asking God that the beloved too give her heart to someone as cruel as herself. This gap between what is said and what is meant is the liveliest place in the ghazal.

The fifth couplet, in the middle of this sequence where the tone hardens, is a couplet of praise and reproach. The beloved is a freshly opened rose of the "cân gülşeni", the rose garden of the soul; yet she is a friend to every "ḫâr u ḫas", every thorn and bit of rubbish. The traditional relation between rose and thorn is turned here into the relation between the beloved and her worthless rivals, and a congruence of images (tenasüp) is built with the words rose, rose garden, thorn and rubbish.

The closing couplet (makta) turns the poet's own condition into a proverb. Mihrî has fallen into such wretchedness that people, when cursing their enemies, say "May you too be siyeh-kâr like Mihrî." By setting her own name inside a formula of cursing, the poet both magnifies her suffering and carries it like a fame. Sabiha Gemici says that in the ghazal's beginning with "Ben umardum ki" and ending with this couplet one hears Mihrî's lament, as a woman, before love.

Historical Context

The couplets quoted by Kınalızâde differ from Arslan's text in some details. In the tezkire the opening couplet reads "Ben umardum ki bana yâr-ı vefâdâr olasın / Kim umardı ki seni böyle cefâkâr olasın"; in the fifth couplet it has "gülzâr-ı cinân" (the gardens of paradise) in place of "cân gülşeni", and in the last couplet it reads "ḥâldeyüz" in place of "ḥâldeyem". This last reading agrees with the variant "ḥâldeyiz" that Arslan records from the F and S manuscripts. Kınalızâde gives these couplets under the heading "Diger" ("Another") immediately after the ghazal "Ḫâbdan açdum gözüm" in which the name İskender appears; he does not say that this ghazal has any connection with the İskender Çelebi story.

Another ghazal written on the same ground belongs to Mevlânâ Alî bin Yûsuf el-Fenârî, who served as military judge (kazasker) in the time of Bayezid II and is known in the tezkires by the pen name Gamî. Kınalızâde and Beyânî quote two couplets from his ghazal with the opening "Ben umardum ki cihân içre bana yâr olasın / Yârlık işi tamâm oldı begüm var olasın". The second couplet, "Beni âzâde iken ‘ışka giriftâr itdüñ / Göreyin sen de benüm gibi giriftâr olasın", is almost word for word the same as Mihrî's sixth couplet; and "begüm var olasın" in Gamî's opening couplet recalls the phrase "var olasın" in Mihrî's second couplet. Whether this similarity arises from a nazire relationship, from a shared language, or from a confusion that arose in the transmission of manuscripts and tezkires is not explained in the sources. Which ghazal was written first is likewise unknown.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 114, Ghazal 120 (F 61a, M 87b, S 63a, Ü 55b). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu‘arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 546), 2017, p. 809 (entry on Mihrî), pp. 645-646 (entry on Gamî). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Beyânî Mustafa bin Cârullah, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu‘arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 467), 2017, p. 142 (entry on Gamî). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Sıtkı Nazik, "Benzer Redifli Şiirleri Bağlamında Mihrî Hatun ve Tâcî-zâde Cafer Çelebi'nin Karşılaştırılması", Uluslararası Amasya Âlimleri Sempozyumu Bildiriler Kitabı II, Amasya 2017, pp. 133-148 (esp. p. 138). https://isamveri.org/pdfdrg/G00226/2017/2017_NAZIKS.pdf
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, PhD thesis, Uludağ Üniversitesi, Balıkesir 1990, p. 27. https://archive.org/details/MihriHatunDivann
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, MA thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, p. 212.

Books

Other sources

Online sources