Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Dost hecrüñdür dem-â-dem baġrumı ḳan eyleyen
La‘l-i nâbuñdur ṣorarsam aña dermân eyleyen
Gülşen-i ḥüsnüñde cânâ giceler tâ ṣubḥa dek
Derd ile cân bülbülidür âh u efġân eyleyen
Aġlamaḳdan munḳaṭı‘ olmazdı çeşmüm neyleyem
Ḳanlu yaşumdur raḳîb-i kelbi ḫandân eyleyen
Key ḥaẕer ḳıl gözlerinden ḫûnîdür dilberlerüñ
Günde biñ kez hey budur nâ-ḥaḳ yere ḳan eyleyen
Ḥasret-i çâh-ı zenaḫdânuñ durur ger var ise
Bu cihân gülşenlerin Mihrî'ye zindân eyleyen

In English

1. My friend, it is your separation that turns my breast to blood at every moment; and if I ask what is its remedy, it is your pure ruby lip.

2. O beloved, in the rose garden of your beauty, it is the nightingale of the soul that sighs and laments with grief through the nights until dawn. (The poet's soul is likened to a nightingale singing in the garden of the beloved's beauty.)

3. My eye would never cease from weeping, what can I do; it is my bloody tears that make the rival, that dog, laugh. (The lover's weeping delights the rival, who is, as often in divan poetry, likened to a dog.)

4. Hey, beware of the eyes of the beautiful, for they are bloodshedders; it is these that shed blood unjustly a thousand times a day. (The beauty's glance is imagined as a weapon that kills.)

5. If there is anything that has made the rose gardens of this world a prison for Mihrî, it is the longing for the pit of your chin. (Çâh-ı zenaḫdân means "the well of the chin"; in divan poetry the dimple in the beloved's chin is imagined as a well and a dungeon into which the lover's heart falls.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The hundred and twenty-second 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 participle "eyleyen" ("the one that makes"); the rhyme is built on the sound "-ân" (ḳan, dermân, efġân, ḫandân, zindân). The word "ḳan" ("blood") is used twice in rhyming position, in the opening couplet (matla) and in the fourth couplet: in the first, separation makes the breast bleed; in the second, the beautiful shed blood unjustly. The ghazal appears in all four manuscripts. Nothing is known about whom it was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The form of the redif determines the manner of speech of the ghazal. Almost every couplet is built on the pattern "It is X that ... makes": "it is your separation that turns my breast to blood", "it is the nightingale of the soul that sighs and laments", "it is my bloody tears that make the rival laugh". This structure brings a cause to the fore in each couplet and stresses it; the poem thus becomes a series of statements that point out, one by one, the causes of the lover's sufferings.

The opening couplet ties pain and remedy to the same source. What turns the breast to blood is the beloved's separation, and its remedy is her "la‘l-i nâb", her pure lip red as ruby. The contrast between "ḳan" and "dermân" is a known example of the way divan poetry imagines the beloved as one who both wounds and heals; a colour relation is also set between the redness of the lip and the redness of blood.

In the second couplet the beloved's beauty is a rose garden, and the poet's soul is a nightingale that laments in that garden until morning. The love between the rose and the nightingale is among the best-known motifs of divan poetry. Gülşen Kaya cites this couplet in noting that the hours between night and morning are treated as the hours in which the lover's sighs and laments, her anguish, increase. A congruence of images (tenasüp) is built by using the words "gülşen", "bülbül", "âh u efġân" and "ṣubḥ" together.

The third couplet joins the pain to a feeling of humiliation. The lover's eye cannot stop weeping, but these bloody tears make laugh not the beloved but the rival, who is likened to a dog. The contrast between weeping and laughing (ḫandân) is the basis of the couplet. In the fourth couplet the speech becomes general: the poet says that the eyes of the beautiful are "ḫûnî", bloodshedding, and that it is these eyes that shed blood unjustly a thousand times a day. That the beauty's glance is imagined as a deadly weapon is the basis of divan poetry's motifs concerning the eye, the dimple and the eyelash.

In the closing couplet (makta) the motif of the "çâh-ı zenaḫdân", the well of the chin, is used. The hollow in the beloved's chin is imagined as a well into which the lover's heart falls. Kaya, citing this couplet separately, notes that the thought of the chin's hollow turns the world's rose gardens into a dungeon for the lover, and adds that in the divan the element of the well (çâh) also alludes to the well into which the Prophet Joseph was thrown. In the couplet "gülşen" and "zindân" are set against each other: even all the gardens of the world seem like a prison to the lover who longs for the well of the beloved's chin.

Bibliography

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 115, Ghazal 122 (F 60a, M 85a, S 62a, Ü 56a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, MA thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 180, 267. openaccess.firat.edu.tr