Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün
Zülf-i müşgînüñ n'ola boynuma ṣaldıysa kemend
Dostum lâzım durur dîvâneye elbette bend
‘İlm-i câẕûluḳda bir üstâddur çeşmüñ senüñ
Görse Hârût ile Mârût'ı geçerd'anlara bend
Ruḫlaruñ dil şâhını mât eyledi bir lu‘b ile
Gözlerüñ cân ferzine ḥâcet degül sürmek semend
Kellesin ortaya ḳoyup öykünürmüş la‘lüñe
Anuñ içün çâr-sûlar içre ber-dâr oldı ḳand
Gerçi çoḳ seyr eyledüm bâġ-ı cihân ṣaḥrâların
Râstî ḳaddüñ gibi hiç görmedüm serv-i bülend
Ḳo bizi meh-rûlaruñ mihriyle var sen fâriġ ol
Nâṣiḥâ itmez es̱er rüsvâ-yı ‘aşḳ olana pend
Ḫûblaruñ tîġ-i cefâsından yüzüm döndürmezem
Ṭoġrasalar sînemi ger rîze rîze bend bend
Der-peyince yollarına düşdügüm dilberlerüñ
Dir gören ḫaylî belâ-keşdür bu Mihrî derd-mend
Yıllar ile ben yüzin görmem dirîġâ âh kim
Sâyesinde ḫoş geçer dildârımuñ her bir levend
In English
1. What wonder if your musk-scented hair has cast a lasso around my neck? My friend, a madman surely needs a tether. (A kemend is a long rope with a noose at its end. In divan poetry the madman, the divane, is imagined bound in chains; the lover counts herself the madman and the beloved's hair the chain that binds her.)
2. Your eye is a master in the science of sorcery; if it saw Hârût and Mârût it would bind them and overcome them with its spell. (Hârût and Mârût are the two angels who, according to the Qur'an, taught people sorcery in Babylon. "Bend" here also means binding by magic.)
3. Your cheeks checkmated the shah of the heart in a single move; your eyes need not charge their knight against the vizier of the soul. (The couplet is built on chess terms: "ruḫ" is both cheek and the rook, "ferz" is the vizier (queen), "semend" the knight.)
4. Sugar put its head into the game and tried to rival your lip; for that it was hanged on the gallows in the middle of the bazaars. (The poet presents sugar's hanging in the bazaars as the punishment for presuming to resemble the lip. "To put one's head into the game" means to risk one's life.)
5. I have wandered much in the meadows of the world's garden; truly, I have never seen a cypress as tall as your stature. ("Râstî" means both "truly" and "straightness, uprightness"; it also points to the beloved's perfectly straight figure.)
6. O counsellor, leave us alone with the love of the moon-faced and go, mind your own business; counsel does not work on one disgraced by love. ("Mihr" means love and the sun; its mention together with the moon-faced sets up a relation between moon and sun, and also recalls the poet's pen name.)
7. I shall not turn my face from the sword of the beauties' cruelty, even if they cut my breast into pieces, joint by joint.
8. Those who see the beauties in whose footsteps I walk say, "This afflicted Mihrî is one who endures a great deal of trouble."
9. Alas, for years I have not seen her face; yet in my beloved's shade every young man enjoys himself. ("Levend": a young man, a gallant.)
Literary and Historical Commentary
Structure of the Poem
The fifteenth ghazal (gazel) has nine couplets (beyit) and is written in the metre "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". The poem has no redif (refrain word); the couplets are tied together only by the rhyme "-end" (kemend, bend, semend, ḳand, bülend, pend, derd-mend, levend). Because its last letter is dâl, it is in the section "Ḥarfü'd-Dâl" in the edition. Of the four manuscripts the ghazal is found only in the Istanbul University manuscript (Ü 30b); for this reason the edition has no footnote on manuscript variants. The same poem appears in Sabiha Gemici's 1990 study, which is based on manuscript Ü. It is not known to whom it was written.
One detail in the arrangement of the ghazal draws attention: the pen name (mahlas) occurs in the eighth couplet and is followed by a ninth. In a ghazal the pen name is usually in the last couplet. Since the poem is found in a single manuscript, it is not possible to learn by comparison with other manuscripts whether this order was the poet's choice or an arrangement by the copyist.
Meaning and Figures of Speech
Each couplet of the ghazal describes an element of the beloved's beauty or a state of the lover through a simile taken from a different field: madness and chains, sorcery, chess, the bazaar and sugar, the cypress, counsel, the sword. In the opening couplet (matla) the beloved's hair is thought of as lasso and tether. Gülşen Kaya cites this couplet when examining the types of lover: the type of lover most often mentioned in the divan is the "dîvâne", always imagined bound in chains, and the chain that binds the madman is the beloved's hair. Kaya also mentions the same couplet among the similes about hair, and notes that since a madman needs a tether, it is no wonder that the beloved casts her musk-scented hair as a lasso around the lover's neck.
In the second couplet the eye is likened to a master who surpasses even Hârût and Mârût in sorcery. Kaya says that in the divan Hârût and Mârût are mentioned for their practice of sorcery and that the beloved's eye is said to surpass them in this science; she gives the couplet as an example both among religious figures and among the similes of the eye. The third couplet is the most skilful of the ghazal. According to Kaya, in this couplet the words "ruḫ" (rook), "ferz" (vizier), "semend" (knight) and "şâh-mât" (checkmate) are used with double meaning (tevriye), and the beloved is described in chess terms. The word "ruḫ" means both cheek and the rook; because the beloved's cheeks checkmated the shah of the heart in one move, the eyes no longer need to charge their knight against the "vizier of the soul".
In the fourth couplet a poetic reason is given in place of a real one; this is the figure of fantastic aetiology (hüsn-i talil). "Ḳand" is sugar in a loaf. Gökçehan Aysel Yılmaz, in her study of ghazals with the redif "lezîz", notes that the expression "kand-ı mükerrer" corresponds to the white sugar called "kelle şekeri" (sugarloaf, literally "head sugar"). The word "kelle" (head) in the couplet may be recalling this name given to loaf sugar. Mihrî joins the idiom "kellesini ortaya koymak" (to put one's head on the line) to the sight of sugar hanging in the bazaar: the sugar that presumed to resemble the lip has been hanged on the gallows in the "çâr-sû", the market at the crossroads, for this audacity. The words ber-dâr (on the gallows), head and çâr-sû build the scene of an execution; the sweetness of the sugar and the weight of the punishment thus meet in the same couplet.
In the sixth couplet the counsellor (nâṣıḥ) is one of the familiar types of divan poetry; it is said that counsel does not work on a lover whom love has disgraced. In the seventh couplet the reduplications "rîze rîze" (piece by piece) and "bend bend" (joint by joint) make the sword's cutting of the breast visible to the eye. The word "bend" enters the rhyme three times in the ghazal: in the first couplet it is the chain that binds the madman, in the second binding by magic, in the seventh the joint. The repetition of the same word with different meanings is the figure of pun (cinas) and turns the repetition of the rhyme into wordplay. In the last couplet the lover says that while for years she has not seen the beloved's face, other young men enjoy themselves in her shade, and the ghazal closes with a complaint of jealousy.
Bibliography
Primary sources
- Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 58-59, Gazel 15 (only Ü 30b). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
Academic studies
- Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010 (entries on dîvâne, kemend, Hârût and Mârût, and chess). openaccess.firat.edu.tr
- Gökçehan Aysel Yılmaz, "'Lezîz' Redifli Gazellerde Sevgilinin Dudağının Tatlı Yiyeceklerle İlişkisi", Uluslararası Türkçe Edebiyat Kültür Eğitim Dergisi 10/3 (2021), pp. 926-942.
- Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral thesis, Uludağ Üniversitesi, Balıkesir 1990 (ghazal 16 according to manuscript Ü).
Online sources
