Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Vezin: Mefâ‘îlün Mefâ‘îlün Fa‘ûlün
Göñül virdüm saña olmaduñ âgâh
İdersem ṭañ mıdur her demde ṣad-âh
Olur derdüñle dil âvâre her dem
Dil-ârâmum gel e gör ḥâli geh gâh
Mükedder ḥâlüme olmasa raḥmuñ
Ölürem sevdügüm derdüñle vallâh
Ṭolıdur dûd-ı âhumla semâlar
İderem âh her dem her seḥer-gâh
Göñülle mihrüñe kim virmese dil
Olursa ṭañ mıdur râhuñda güm-râh
Du‘âdur her kelâmı saña Mihr'üñ
Ki dergâhuñ aña sa‘d oldı her gâh
In English
1. I gave you my heart and you did not even take notice; is it any wonder if I cry "ah" a hundred times at every moment?
2. Because of your grief the heart is forever distracted and wandering, my heart's adorner and comforter; do come and see my state now and then.
3. If you do not take pity on my gloomy state, my beloved, I swear by God that I shall die of your grief.
4. The skies are full of the smoke of my sighs; I sigh at every moment, at every dawn. (In divan poetry the lover's sigh is fiery and its smoke rises to the heavens.)
5. If anyone does not give his heart wholeheartedly to your love and then loses his way on your road, is it any wonder? (The couplet can be read in two ways: that the one who does not give his heart to you is counted as having strayed from the right path, or that he is bewildered on the road of love.)
6. Every word Mihr (Mihrî) speaks to you is a prayer, for your dwelling, your door, has always been auspicious and happy for her.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Structure of the Poem
The 167th ghazal (gazel) of the divan has six couplets (beyit) and is composed in the hezec metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Mefâ‘îlün Mefâ‘îlün Fa‘ûlün". No redif (refrain word) is used; the rhyme (kafiye) is built on the sound "-âh": âgâh, ṣad-âh, gâh, vallâh, seḥer-gâh, güm-râh. The poem is found in only two manuscripts, M and Ü. In the Ü manuscript it carries a Persian heading: "Ġazelest ki Noḳṭa Ne-dâred", that is, "this is a ghazal that has no dots". The heading is absent from M. In M the positions of the fourth and fifth couplets differ and there are differences in a few words; for example the second line of the fifth couplet begins in M with "Olısar gerd-i" in place of "Olursa ṭañ mıdur". There is no information on whom the ghazal was written for.
A Ghazal Without Dots
What sets the poem apart from the other ghazals of the divan is that, written in Arabic letters, it contains no dotted letter. In divan literature such poems are given names like "mühmel", "bî-nukat" and "gayr-i menkûta". Mehmet Arslan, the editor of the edition, discusses this ghazal among the poet's artificial poems (sanatlı manzumeler) in his paper "Mihrî Hâtun Divanı'nda Sanatlı Manzumeler", presented at the Amasya Scholars Symposium held in Amasya in 2017. According to Arslan, in such poems only the thirteen undotted letters of the Arabic alphabet are used: alif, ḥa, dal, re, sin, ṣad, ṭı, ayn, kef, lam, mim, vav and he. Mihrî too declared, with the phrase "Noḳṭa Ne-dâred" in the heading, that the ghazal was written according to this rule.
In the same paper Arslan also describes how far this tradition was carried in divan poetry. In the seventeenth century a poet named Tecellî made a small divan (divançe) from poems written only in undotted letters; Arslan states that, as far as he has seen, nearly a hundred divan poets wrote undotted poems, among them long kasides, quatrains, chronograms, and even undotted prose letters and treatises. Mihrî's only example in this tradition is this six-couplet ghazal. In the same paper Arslan also lists other artificial poems by the poet, such as an elifnâme, a muvaşşah, and a ghazal containing no letter alif; these show that Mihrî took care to display skill of form like the male poets of her day.
This restriction directly governs the ghazal's choice of words. Since dotted letters (be, te, ye, nun, şın, kaf, fe, ze and the like) could not be used, the poet has to make do with words such as "göñül, dil, derd, âh, dem, ḥâl, raḥm, semâ, râh, kelâm, dergâh". The language of the ghazal is therefore plain and repetitive: the word "âh" and the sound "-âh" return throughout the poem, and the phrase "her dem" occurs three times. It is also striking that in the makta couplet the pen name appears as "Mihr" rather than "Mihrî". Part of these repetitions is a result of the restriction, but what comes out in the end is a ghazal that moans and insists on a single sound.
Meaning and Figures of Speech
The subject of the ghazal is the complaint of a lover whose beloved does not even notice that she has given her heart. In the second couplet the words "dil" (heart) and "dil-ârâm" (the one who adorns and comforts the heart, the beloved) are set side by side; using words of the same root together is close to the figure of derivation (iştikak). In the fourth couplet the smoke of the lover's sigh fills the heavens. In divan poetry the sigh is fiery, and the smoke of fire rises to the sky; dawn is also the hour when the lover laments most and when prayers are believed to be answered. Hyperbole (mübalağa) is plainly seen in this couplet.
The word "mihrüñe" in the fifth couplet means the beloved's love and at the same time forms a sound link with the poet's pen name "Mihrî"; when the pen name is mentioned as "Mihr" in the makta couplet, this link becomes clear. In the last couplet every word of the lover is a prayer to the beloved, and the beloved's "dergâh", her door, has always been auspicious for her. The word "dergâh" means both the door of the great and the dervish lodge; used together with "du‘â" it gives the couplet an air of supplication. The word "sa‘d" corresponds in old astral belief to a fortunate star, a happy fate.
Bibliography
- Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 138-139, Ghazal 167 (M 93a, Ü 65b). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
- Mehmet Arslan, "Mihrî Hâtun Divanı'nda Sanatlı Manzumeler", Uluslararası Amasya Âlimleri Sempozyumu Bildiriler Kitabı II, Amasya 2017, pp. 35-36.
Online sources
