Özgün Metin

Vezin: Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün

Cân vir ġamumla ger dir iseñ başum üstine
Teslîm-i cân idem ṣanemâ başum üstine
Sehm-i belâña sînemi ḳılsam siper n'ola
Rûz-ı ezelde yazdı çü Ḥaḳ ḳaşum üstine
Mey-gûn lebüñ ḫayâli ile rûz u şeb müdâm
Baġrum ḳanını nûş iderem aşum üstine
Cânâna cân virüp ġam ile olduġum helâk
Dâġ-ı dilümle yazuñ anı ṭaşum üstine
Ḳaddüñ ḫayâli dîde-i Mihrî'de dostum
Bir servdür ki ṭutdı vaṭan yaşum üstine

In English

1. Beloved, beautiful as an idol, if you say "give your life through my grief," I will answer "upon my head" and surrender my soul. ("Upon my head" is an idiom still used today for accepting a request willingly. Sanem, "idol," refers in divan poetry to the beloved whose beauty is worshipped.)

2. What does it matter if I make my breast a shield against the arrow of your affliction? God wrote it above my brow on the day of eternity. ("Above the brow" means the forehead; the phrase points to the writing on the forehead, that is, fate. The lover regards bearing the pain that comes from the beloved's glances as the requirement of his destiny.)

3. Thinking of your wine-coloured lip, day and night without pause, I drink the blood of my liver over my meal. (The beloved's lip is likened to wine because of its redness. Instead of wine with his food, the lover drinks his own liver's blood, that is, sorrow and pain.)

4. Write on my gravestone that I gave my life to the beloved and perished of grief, and write it with the scar of my heart. ("Dâġ" means both a wound's scar and the mark made by branding; the wound in the heart is imagined as an inscription cut into the gravestone.)

5. My friend, the image of your stature in Mihrî's eye is a cypress that has made its home above my tears. (The cypress grows beside water; the image of the beloved's cypress-like stature has likewise settled on the bank of the lover's river of tears.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal (gazel) has five couplets (beyit) and is written in the muzari' metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is "üstine". The rhyme rests on the words "başum, ḳaşum, aşum, ṭaşum, yaşum"; these five words differ only in their first letters, and this closeness of sound creates much of the ghazal's harmony. Both lines of the opening couplet (matla) end in the same phrase, "başum üstine", so in the first couplet the rhyme word is repeated together with the refrain. The ghazal appears in all four manuscripts; apart from "başım" being read in place of "yaşum" in the last couplet in manuscript F, the differences are minor spelling variants. According to Sıtkı Nazik's tables, the refrain "üstine" is used in two ghazals in Mihrî's divan (G.152 and G.159), and in one kaside (qasida) and two ghazals in the divan of Tâcîzâde Cafer Çelebi. There is no record of whom the poem was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Each couplet builds a new meaning by attaching the refrain "üstine" to a different word for a body part or an object: acceptance above the head, fate above the brow, pain above the meal, death above the stone, imagination above the tears. The sequence traces a road from the lover's submission to the beloved to his death. The idiom "başum üstine" in the first couplet is an expression of acceptance taken from everyday speech, and it carries the weight of the couplet in a plain, conversational tone: even if the beloved demands his death, the lover accepts it like a command of service.

The second couplet ties the familiar image of the beloved's glance as an arrow and the lover's breast as a shield to the idea of fate. In discussing this couplet, Gülşen Kaya notes that in the divan the compound "sehm-i belâ" (arrow of affliction) points to the day of eternity, and that affliction finding a person suddenly like an arrow is the basis of the compound. Being written "above the brow" on "rûz-ı ezel" (the day of eternity) is the poem's version of the belief in a destiny written on the forehead. In the third couplet there is a congruence of colour (tenasüp) between "mey-gûn" (wine-coloured) lip and "baġrum ḳanı" (the blood of my liver); the lover drinks his own blood in place of the wine he cannot drink from the beloved's lip.

The fourth couplet has the lover pronounce his own epitaph in advance. Kaya gives this couplet as an example of a lover who perished of grief and asks that this be written on his gravestone so that it will be known. The request rests on the divan-poetry view that dying on the path of love is a kind of martyrdom. The phrase "dâġ-ı dil" (scar of the heart) makes the wound itself the ink of the inscription.

The last couplet is a fantastic etiology (hüsn-i talil) and a simile built on the relation between cypress and water. Kaya says that the conceit of the cypress watered by the lover's tears arises from the cypress growing beside water, and she cites this couplet as an example. The beloved's stature is the cypress, the lover's tears are the river, and the eye is the garden where the two meet. The phrase "vaṭan ṭutmak" (to take up residence) shows that the image is not passing but lasting; the lover's eye is never without both the tears and the image of the beloved.

Bibliography

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Academic studies

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