Özgün Metin

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

Sevdi göñlüm yine bir ḫûb-liḳâyı yeñile
Çâre mi var ki benim gözüm ü göñlüm yañıla
Aldadı ḫâli göñül murġını bir dâne ile
Dâm-ı zülfine göñül düşdi mi kendü dek ile
Aġlaram yaş yerine ḳan dökilür çeşmümden
Yâr raḥm eyleyüben silmedi bir gün yeñile
Düşeli ‘aşḳı hevâsına anuñ leyl ü nehâr
Geçdi kûyında günüm derd ile âh itmegile
Ney gibi tîġı cefâsıyla delindi cigerüm
İmdi dil sen de fiġân eyle derûndan iñile
Bulmaduḳ yâr-ı vefâ-dâr behey yâr dirîġ
Cânumuz çıḳdı vefâsız güzeli sevmegile
Bir nefes Mihrî vücûduñdan ıraġ olmadı ġam
Ḫûblaruñ cevri meger kim bile yoġruldı gile

In English

1. My heart has fallen in love again, anew, with someone fair of face. Is there any remedy to stop my eye and my heart from erring? (Hûb-likâ means one with a beautiful face. The lover laments that his eye and heart give him up to a new beauty every time.)

2. The beloved's mole deceived the bird of my heart with a single grain; did the heart fall into the snare of her tress through its own trick? (The mole is likened to the grain of bait that draws the bird into the trap, and the hair to the net spread over the bird. "Dek" means trick or ruse; the phrase "kendü dek ile" can also be understood as "by itself, of its own accord.")

3. I weep; blood, not tears, pours from my eye. The beloved never took pity and wiped these bloody tears with a sleeve. ("Yeñ" means the sleeve of a garment. While "yeñile" in the first couplet means "anew," here it means "with the sleeve.")

4. Since I fell for the passion of her love, my days, night and day, have passed in her quarter in suffering and sighing. (Kûy is the quarter or street where the beloved lives, the place the lover roams without rest.)

5. My liver has been pierced like a reed flute by the torment of her sword. Now, my heart, you too cry out and lament from within. (The ney, because it is perforated and laments in a plaintive voice, is likened to the wounded and lamenting lover.)

6. We have not found a faithful beloved; oh, beloved, what a pity. Our soul has gone out of us from loving a faithless beauty.

7. Mihrî, grief has not been absent from your being for a single breath. It seems the cruelty of the beautiful was kneaded together with the clay of your creation. (Gil means mud or clay. Drawing on the belief that man was created from earth, the lover says that suffering is part of his own makeup.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The one hundred and fifty-seventh ghazal of the divan has seven couplets (beyit) and is written in the ramal metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün". The ghazal has no separate redif (refrain word). The line endings meet in the sound "-ile", as seen in "yeñile, yañıla, dek ile, yeñile, itmegile, iñile, sevmegile, gile". Part of this sound comes from the fused form of the postposition "ile" (dek ile, itmegile, sevmegile, gile), and part from the word itself (yañıla, iñile). Because the lines end with the letter he in the manuscript, the ghazal is placed in the "Ḥarfü'l-Hâ" section of the divan. The poem is found only in the Istanbul University (Ü) manuscript. The pen name (mahlas) is in the last couplet. There is no record of whom or on what occasion it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens with the complaint of a lover whose heart is repeatedly taken by a new beauty. The words "yine" (again) and "yeñile" (anew) in the first couplet show that this infatuation is not the first; the lover sees his condition as the "erring" of eye and heart and asks whether there is a remedy for it. Thus the poem begins with a confession and ends with the acceptance that this fate lies in the lover's very makeup.

The second couplet is built from the familiar hunting conceits of divan poetry. Gülşen Kaya cites this couplet when she explains that in Mihrî's divan the lover's heart is treated as a hunted bird, the beloved's hair as the snare and her mole as the grain that deceives the bird. The words bird, grain (dâne), snare (dâm) and deceive form a congruence of images (tenasüp). The question at the end of the line leaves open whether the heart fell into the trap by the beloved's trick or by its own wish, and ties in with the idea of "erring" in the first couplet.

The most striking wordplay of the poem is the word "yeñile" in the first and third couplets. In the first it means "anew," in the third "with the sleeve." This use, with the same spelling and two different meanings, is an example of a pun (cinas). In the third couplet, blood flowing from the eye instead of tears is a common hyperbole for the greatness of the lover's pain; the beloved's failure to wipe these bloody tears with her sleeve shows her pitilessness through a concrete gesture.

In the fifth couplet the lover's liver has been pierced like a ney. Kaya notes that in this couplet Mihrî uses the ney for the lover without giving it a mystical meaning, in terms of its hollowed and branded body and its plaintive voice. The command "iñile" at the end of the line joins the sound of the ney with the heart's lament. The sixth couplet sets the faithless beauty against the lover who seeks fidelity through the words "vefâ-dâr" (faithful) and "vefâsız" (faithless).

In the last couplet grief does not leave Mihrî's being for a single breath. Kaya counts this couplet among the examples that show that the beloved's cruelty and grief are never absent from the lover, as if the dough of the lover's body had been kneaded with cruelty. The word "gil" recalls the belief that man was created from clay; the lover thus presents the torment he suffers as something allotted to him since his creation.

Bibliography

Online sources