Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Kim görürse dir ser-i zülfeynüñ ey ġonca-dehen
Baġlamış müşgîn resenler nâfe-i âhû-Ḫuten
Geh geh ol serv-i sehî seyr itdügince bâġda
Ḫâk-i pâyine yüzüñ sür benden ey serv-i semen
Senüñ ile dilberâ ‘âlem ḳamu gülzârdur
Görinür sensüz gözüme dostum her gül diken
Çün dem-i ‘Īsâ gibi ‘aşḳuñ dirildürmiş öli
Gelmeyince başuma bilmedüm ol nesneyi ben
Mihrî'nüñ biñ cân ile gitdi dil-i bî-çâresi
Şâm-ı zülfinde ḥabîbüñ ṭutdı ol miskîn vaṭan

In English

1. O rosebud-mouthed beloved, whoever sees the ends of your two locks says, "Musk-scented cords have tied the musk pods of the Khotan gazelle." (Musk is the perfume obtained from the gazelles of the Khotan region of Central Asia. The black, fragrant ends of the hair are likened to cords tied round musk pods; a rosebud mouth is a small, closed mouth.)

2. O cypress and jasmine, whenever that straight cypress of a beloved goes out for a stroll in the garden, rub your face, on my behalf, on the dust of her foot. (Serv-i sehî is the upright, even cypress, the beloved's stature. The lover tells the garden's cypress and jasmine to rub their faces, in her name, on the earth where the beloved steps.)

3. O beauty, with you the whole world is a rose garden; without you, my friend, every rose looks to my eye like a thorn.

4. I did not know, until it came upon me, that your love brings the dead back to life like the breath of Jesus. (Jesus is believed to have raised the dead with his breath. One manuscript has "velî" (saint) in place of "öli" (the dead); with that reading the couplet is understood as "it is said that your love gives life like the breath of Jesus, but I did not know this until it happened to me.")

5. Mihrî's helpless heart departed with a thousand lives; that wretched heart made its home in the evening, the Sham, of the beloved's curl. (Shâm means both evening and the city of Damascus (Sham); the black curl is likened to a dark evening. Miskîn recalls both "wretched" and "musk-scented".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The hundred and thirty-first ghazal of the Divan has five couplets and is written in the remel metre of the aruz, in the pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". The ghazal has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme rests on the sound "-en" in the words "dehen, Ḫuten, semen, diken, ben, vaṭan". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is found in all four manuscripts; the manuscript differences are the readings "müşgîn / miskîn", "âhû / âhû-yı" and "öli / velî" in the fourth couplet. There is no record of whom it was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens with the beloved's hair and closes with her hair; between these two ends it speaks of the garden, the rose and the reviving power of love. The first couplet rests on one of the commonest similes of divan poetry: black, fragrant hair is likened to the musk of the Khotan gazelle. The poet nests two similes: the ends of the two locks are musk-scented cords, and the curls at the ends of these cords are musk pods. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words rosebud mouth, musk, gazelle and Khotan. That one of the manuscripts reads "miskîn" in place of "müşgîn" shows how close these words stand in the old script.

In the second couplet the lover gives the cypress and jasmine of the garden the task of intercession. The beloved too is a cypress; the garden's cypress falls short of her and is charged with rubbing its face on the dust of her foot. The third couplet is built on a contrast: with the beloved the world is a rose garden, without her every rose is a thorn. Rose and thorn also stand in divan poetry for the beloved and the rival; but here the thorn expresses how the beloved's absence changes the world.

In the fourth couplet an allusion is made to the breath of Jesus that raises the dead. Gülşen Kaya illustrates through this couplet that Jesus is the prophet most often named in the Divan, and that in couplets the beloved, or at times the morning breeze, is described as "Jesus-breathed", giving life to the lover or to nature; here what gives life is love itself. The poet had heard of this power of love from others but learned it only when it happened to her. In the fifth couplet, as Kaya also notes, the word "şâm" is used as a double entendre (tevriye): it means both evening and the land of Sham. While the blackness of the curl is likened to the darkness of evening, the phrase "to make a home" makes one think of Sham as a city, and an ihâm-ı tenasüp arises. The word "miskîn" recalls both the wretchedness of the heart and the scent of musk in the first couplet, and so ties the beginning of the poem to its end.

Bibliography

Online sources