Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Yine dil düşdi bugün bir gözi âhû elige
Ki güneş görse yüzin gire seḥâbe elege
Gelse ol yâr n'ola külbe-i aḥzânımuza
Yüzüm üstine ḳadem baṣmaġa bu gölgelige
N'ola ol rûḥ-ı revânum ḳosa iḥsânlar idüp
Ḫâk-i pâyine yüzüm sürmege bir kerrelige
Ḳahr-ı aġyâr ile bıçaḳ süñüge irmiş idi
Cevr-i yâr ile bu kez geçdi süñükden ilige
Yâri yanumda görüp ḫışm ile çün baḳdı raḳîb
Ol çepel şeklini döndürdi hemân sirkelige
Reh-i ‘aşḳuñda ‘ömür geçdi mülâzımlıġ ile
Ya gel öldür ya ḳabûl eyle beni bendelige
Bu cihândur dem ola Mihrî'ye raḥm eyleye yâr
Daḫi yer ḳalmaya aġyâr saña dilkülige

In English

1. Once more the heart has fallen today for a gazelle-eyed doe, that is, a beauty; so lovely that if the sun saw her face it would slip into the sieve of the cloud and hide behind it. (Elik means a roe deer; "seḥâb elegi" imagines the cloud as a sieve that filters light.)

2. What if that beloved came to our hut of sorrows, and set her foot upon my face as she stepped into this shady place? (The lover is ready, when the beloved comes, to make his face a footstool for her foot.)

3. What if she, my flowing soul, out of kindness allowed me, just once, to rub my face on the dust of her foot?

4. The knife had already reached the bone through the rivals' wrath; this time, through the beloved's cruelty, it passed the bone and went into the marrow. ("The knife has reached the bone" is an idiom for something becoming unbearable; the poet takes it one step further.)

5. When the rival saw the beloved beside me and looked on in anger, that ugly face of his at once turned sour as vinegar. (Çepel means dirty, ugly.)

6. My life has passed on the road of your love like that of a candidate waiting at your door for service; either come and kill me or accept me into servitude. (A mülâzım is one waiting his turn to be appointed to a post.)

7. This is the world; a day will come when the beloved takes pity on Mihrî. Then, rival, there will be no place left for you to play the fox.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The 175th ghazal has seven 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 redif (refrain word) is the dative suffix "-e"; the rhyme (kafiye) is built from Turkish words ending in "-lik", most of them from everyday speech: elik, elek, gölgelik, kerrelik, ilik, sirkelik, bendelik, dilkülik (tilkilik). The ghazal stands in the section of the letter Hâ and is found in three manuscripts in Arslan's edition. There is no record of whom it was written for.

The most distinctive feature of the ghazal is these Turkish rhymes. In the matla couplet "elige" (to the doe) and "elege" (to the sieve) come side by side; "ilige" (to the marrow) in the fourth couplet echoes the same sound once more. Bringing different meanings together through similarity of sound is a kind of paronomasia (cinas), and Mihrî builds this play, in place of Persian and Arabic compounds, with words that people use every day. Words like vinegar, marrow, sieve and fox are pieces of everyday life brought into the high language of divan poetry.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet is a classic praise of beauty and holds a hüsn-i talil (fantastic etiology, assigning a pretty cause): the reason the sun goes behind the cloud is its shame before the beloved's face. Likening the beloved's eye to a gazelle's eye is a familiar simile of divan poetry; Mihrî extends this simile to the whole of the beloved by saying "âhû elik", a doe with gazelle eyes.

The second and third couplets are built on humility. The lover's house is a "külbe-i aḥzân", a hut of sorrows; if the beloved came there, the lover would make her face a footstool for her foot. In the third couplet the lover wishes only to rub her face once on the dust of the beloved's foot. The smallness of these requests shows how little the lover is content with.

The fourth couplet is the harshest of the ghazal. There is a gradation between the wrath of the rival and the cruelty of the beloved: the first has brought the pain to the bone, the second has driven it into the marrow. Between the words knife, bone and marrow there is a congruence of images (tenasüp), and in extending the idiom there is hyperbole (mübalağa). In the fifth couplet the rival's face, soured with anger, is likened to vinegar; this is a comparison that plainly shows Mihrî's mocking stance toward the rival.

In the sixth couplet love is described in the language of court service. Gülşen Kaya gives this couplet as an example when studying the conceptions of servant and slave around the sultan; she shows with it that being a servant is not easy and that one must first pass through certain stages. The lover has spent her life as a mülâzım, that is, waiting to be accepted into service, and now asks for a decision: death or acceptance.

In the makta couplet the rival is likened to a fox. Kaya says that this is the only couplet in the divan in which the rival is mentioned with the fox, and that the fox is treated here for its opportunism and cunning. Mihrî closes the ghazal with a mixture of hope and threat, saying that the beloved will one day take pity on her and that on that day the rival will find no place to play tricks. The words "Bu cihândur" are a reference to the changeability of the world's state.

Bibliography

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 142-143, Ghazal 175 (F 67b, S 69b, Ü 67a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 85, 248, 280. openaccess.firat.edu.tr