Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Yine dil düşdi bugün bir yüzi meh-pâresine
Luṭf idüp raḥm ide mi ‘âşıḳ-ı bî-çâresine
‘Acebâ la‘l-i lebinden yine emsem ḳıla mı
Yüregümde görinen ġamzeleri yâresine
Yâri ben hem-dem iderdüm baña illâ nideyin
Müdde‘î girmese ger ikimüzüñ arasına
‘Aşḳı râhında bulur mı dil ü cân terk idici
Bir benüm gibi cihân içre daḫi arasın a
Ne ḳadar cevr ider iseñ ṣanemâ terk itmez
Mihrî mihrüñi senüñ tâ meger ol vara sine

In English

1. Once more the heart has fallen today for a beauty whose face is a piece of the moon. Will she, out of kindness, take pity on her helpless lover?

2. Will she once more offer a remedy, a cure, from her ruby-red lip for the wound that her languid glances (ġamze) have opened, visible in my heart? (Emsem is the doublet "em-sem," meaning medicine, remedy; the beloved's lip is counted as the cure for the lover's pain.)

3. What can I do; if the rival had not come between the two of us, I would have made the beloved my companion and confidant.

4. Can they find, on the road of her love, another who, like me, gives up heart and life in this world? Let them search, then.

5. O idol-like beloved, however much you torment her, Mihrî will give up your love only on the day she enters the grave. (Sin in old Turkish means grave; "vara sine" means "until she reaches her grave.")

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The 174th ghazal (gazel) of the divan has five couplets (beyit) and is composed in the remel metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün". The ghazal is a verse form whose couplets are composed in the same metre and the same rhyme, whose first couplet rhymes within itself, and whose last couplet carries the poet's pen name (mahlas); love and beauty are its chief subjects. In this poem the redif (refrain word) is the suffix "-ine"; the rhyme (kafiye) is built on the sounds "-âre" and "-ara": meh-pâresine, bî-çâresine, yâresine, arasına, arasın a, vara sine. The ghazal, which stands in the section of the letter Hâ of the divan, is found in all four manuscripts in Arslan's edition. There is no information on whom or on what occasion it was written.

A choice in the rhyme rests on Mihrî's sound play. The word "arasına" (between the two of us) in the third couplet becomes in the fourth couplet "arasın a", a verb meaning "let them search"; and the "vara sine" in the fifth couplet builds the same sounds by placing a verb and an old noun side by side. Using the same or very close sounds in different meanings is called cinas (paronomasia) in divan poetry; here this play is carried into the rhyme itself.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens with the heart's falling for a new beauty, and with the word "yine" (once more) makes one feel that this is not the first time. The beloved's face is a "meh-pâre", a piece of the moon; in divan poetry the face is likened to the moon for its brightness and roundness. In the second line of the matla couplet the lover is introduced as "bî-çâre", helpless; this state, which never changes throughout the poem, is tied at the end of the ghazal to a devotion that will last until Mihrî's death.

The second couplet works a familiar conceit of divan poetry: the beloved's "ġamze", her sidelong glance, is an arrow that opens a wound in the lover's heart; the same beloved's lip, the colour of ruby (la‘l), is the remedy for that wound. That the one who opens the wound and the one who gives the cure are the same person gives the couplet both antithesis (tezat) and congruence of images (tenasüp): the words glance, wound, ruby, lip and remedy form a web of meaning that calls to one another.

In the third couplet the rival comes onto the scene as the "müddeî" of divan poetry. Gülşen Kaya, studying the conceptions of companion and intimate (hem-dem) in the divan, gives this couplet as an example: she says that the lover is the companion of love, grief and tears, but that the only one she really wishes to be a companion of is the beloved. The rival is the obstacle in the way of this wish. The fourth couplet is the one in which the lover praises herself and turns her sacrifice into a challenge; it is as if to say, search and find another who gives up life as I do. Such boasting is a small example, adapted to the language of love, of the manner called "fahriye" in divan poetry.

In the makta couplet Mihrî sets her own name beside the word "mihr" (love, and also the sun): "Mihrî mihrüñi". The poet's joining of her pen name with a word of love in the same line is a play often seen in the divan. Addressing the beloved as "ṣanem", an idol, is also part of the same tradition: the beloved is likened to an idol worshipped for her beauty. The couplet closes the ghazal by saying that however much torment she suffers, the lover will not give up love.

The differences among the manuscripts are small. According to Arslan's footnotes, in the first line of the fourth couplet one manuscript reads "ḳalur mı" in place of "bulur mı"; in the third couplet three manuscripts write "nideyim" in place of "nideyin".

Bibliography

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 141-142, Ghazal 174 (F 63b, M 89a, S 65b, Ü 67a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, p. 101. openaccess.firat.edu.tr