Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Oñmaduḳ Nâmi ṭutaldan beri bir yâr etegin
Gel berü gel ṭutalum biz daḫi tekrâr etegin
Nice hercâyi cefâ-kârlara yalvaralum
Ṭutayuz bir gün ola belki vefâ-dâr etegin
Hey felekdür bu cihân ġoncalarınuñ dem olur
Ṭaġıdur yapraġını yel ḳoparur ḫâr etegin
Göñül alduḳlarına ḫoş ider iḳrâr bular
Dönüben ṣoñra ṭutarlar yine inkâr etegin
İrteden tîz felek uş yüzlerini ḳara ḳıla
Mihrî muḥkem ṭutasın ṣıdḳ ile iḳrâr etegin

In English

1. The couplet can be read in two ways. With the reading in the edition: O Nâmî, ever since we took the hem of a beloved we have not prospered; come here, come, let us take another hem again. With the reading "Oñmaduḳ nâmı" proposed by Günay Tulum: ever since that accursed rival, may his name be ruined, took a beloved's hem, come here, come, let us too take that beloved's hem again. (Oñmaduk is a word of imprecation meaning "ill-starred, never to prosper".)

2. How long shall we plead with the faithless and the tormenting? One day, perhaps, we may take the hem of a faithful one. (A hercâyî is someone who settles anywhere, stays nowhere and does not keep his word.)

3. Hey, this is fate, take care: when its time comes, the wind scatters the petals of the world's rosebuds and tears off the thorn's hem. (Fate, felek, is the turning fortune that brings a person everything, good or bad. The bud stands for the beautiful and the thorn for the rivals; neither escapes the wind of time.)

4. These beauties avow their love with pleasing words to those whose hearts they have stolen; then they turn back on their word and again take hold of the hem of denial.

5. May fate blacken their faces right now, before tomorrow comes. O Mihrî, hold firmly to the hem of the promise you have given in sincerity. (To have a black face means to fall into a shameful state.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The hundred and twenty-fifth ghazal (gazel) of the divan has five 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 "etegin" ("the hem"), and its rhyme is the sound "-âr" in the words "yâr, tekrâr, vefâ-dâr, ḫâr, inkâr, iḳrâr". The pen name (mahlas) stands in the last couplet, as in the tradition. In the divan the hundred and twenty-fourth ghazal, immediately before it, is written in the same metre, rhyme and redif; the two ghazals stand side by side like a pair. The ghazal is found only in the Ankara Millî Kütüphane (M) manuscript.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The lover who in the previous ghazal never let go of the beloved's hem is in this poem a complainant against both the beloved and the rivals. The subject of the poem is faithlessness: beauties who steal hearts first avow their love with pleasing words and then turn back on their word into denial. The words "iḳrâr" ("avowal") and "inkâr" ("denial") in the fourth and fifth couplets form a contrast (tezat); the poet ties this opposition to the idiom "to take the hem" and sets the "hem of denial" against the "hem of avowal". At the end of the poem Mihrî addresses herself and counsels fidelity to her own word in the face of the faithless. Gülşen Kaya regards this ghazal and the previous one as poems in the nature of a "hasbıhal" (an intimate talk), and says that the poet is telling how time has passed and how, although the beloved gives countenance to the rival, she herself has not let go of the beloved's hem.

The third couplet ties the personal complaint of love to the transience of the world. Fate, the turning fortune, when its time comes gives the petals of the bud to the wind and tears off the thorn's hem. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words bud, petal, wind and thorn; with this garden picture the poet says that both the beautiful and the rivals will fall to time. The idiom "yüzü kara olmak" ("to have a black face") is used in the fifth couplet as a curse and adds the warmth of spoken language to the poem.

The word "Nâmi" in the first couplet is disputed, as in the previous ghazal. The edition reads the word as a proper name, and the couplet is understood as a call made to someone called Nâmî. Günay Tulum, however, argues that the word should be read as "nâmı", and that the phrase "oñmaduḳ nâmı" is a curse uttered against the rival, meaning "may his name be ruined, ill-starred". In this reading Mihrî begins her poem by cursing the rival and, in the last couplet, closes the poem like a circle by wishing from fate that the faces of the same people be blackened.

Historical Context

The sources contain no record of whom this ghazal was written for. In the Mecma‘u'n-Neẓâ’ir only Mihrî's previous ghazal is recorded as a nazire (response poem) to Necâtî's ghazal "Şöyle muhkem tutayın bir dahi dil-dâr eteğin". Tulum notes that this second ghazal too has the same metre, rhyme and redif and shares basic words with Necâtî's poem such as beloved, rival, rose, hem and denial, and says that it may therefore also belong to the chain of nazires that began with Necâtî. That the sixteenth-century poet Emrî also wrote a second ghazal with the same outer structure shows how wide a circle this chain found an echo in.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources