Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fa‘ûlün

Eşcâr yine dürlü şükûfeyle ṭonandı
‘Ayş eyleyelüm gûşe-i gülşende gel imdi
Sevdâ belürüp başda n'ola dilde delürse
Pes vaḳt-i bahâr irdi vü enhâr bulandı
Nic'aġlayasın ḫâr-ı cefâsı ile ey dil
Baḳ ġoncalaruñ ḥüsnine gül gibi gül imdi
Gel vaḳt-i ṣafâ devr-i bahâruñ gözenidür
Ey dil demidür sen daḫi şevḳ ile ṭol imdi
Şol deñlü fiġân eylemişem güllere ḳarşu
Bülbüllerüñ uyḫusı uçup cümle uyandı
Yüz sürmek içün pâyına her serv-i revânuñ
Gözüm yaşı Ceyḥûn-ı revân bâġı ṭolandı
Geçmiş ki ḥayıf Mihrî Amâsiyye'de ‘ömrüñ
Ḳosṭanṭini'de ‘âḳil iseñ gitme ḳal imdi

In English

1. The trees are once more adorned with flowers of every kind; come now, let us take our pleasure in a corner of the rose garden.

2. If love appears and the heart goes mad, what is there to wonder at? Spring has come, and the rivers have turned murky (as the snows melt). (The word "sevdâ" means both love and the black bile that old medicine held to cause madness; the muddying of the rivers in spring is set beside the clouding of the mind.)

3. How long will you weep, O heart, over the thorn of cruelty? Look at the beauty of the rosebuds and laugh now, as the rose does.

4. Come, for the time of pleasure is the very spring-head of the season of spring, its freshest moment; O heart, the hour is right, so be filled with ardour now. ("Göze" means a spring or source; the couplet says that within the season of spring the time of pleasure is like a spring-head, its most vital moment. The word may also be read as "göz", meaning the choicest, best place.)

5. I have lamented so much before the roses that the nightingales' sleep has fled and they have all awakened.

6. To rub my face against the feet of every swaying cypress (every tall and graceful beauty), my tears flowed like the river Ceyhun and flooded the garden.

7. Alas, O Mihrî, your life has passed in Amasya; if you are wise, stay in Istanbul now and do not go. (The couplet can be read in two ways; the details are given below.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The one hundred and seventy-sixth ghazal (gazel) has seven couplets (beyit) and is composed in the hezec metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fa‘ûlün". It stands in the section of the Divan under the letter Yâ and, in the Arslan edition, rests on the Ü manuscript alone; the other three manuscripts do not contain it. The rhyme (kafiye) scheme is loose: some couplets end in the sound "-andı" (ṭonandı, bulandı, uyandı, ṭolandı), others in "-l imdi" (gel imdi, gül imdi, ṭol imdi, ḳal imdi). The opening couplet joins the two sound groups, one in each line. Because the poem survives in a single manuscript, later copies could not be used to correct this feature of the text.

In subject the ghazal is a spring poem. In Divan poetry the arrival of spring is described through an invitation to revelry in the garden and to the wine gathering, and the first four couplets of this ghazal are built on that invitation. The final couplet turns suddenly to the poet's own life and is one of the few places in the Divan where the name of Amasya appears.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet describes the trees as "adorned" with blossom, as if dressing and ornamenting themselves; this is personification (teşhis), the attribution of human conduct to trees. Gülşen Kaya cites this couplet in her study of the Divan's conception of trees, which appear under the names şecer, eşcâr and dıraht and are treated in terms of their renewed greening and flowering in spring, their shade and their swaying in the wind.

The second couplet is the subtlest of the ghazal. Kaya uses it as her example of the Divan's idea that madness increases in the spring. The word "sevdâ" carries two meanings at once: the lover's passion, and the black bile that old medicine believed led to insanity. The rivers turning muddy as the snows melt is offered as the reason for the lover's clouded mind, so that a parallel is drawn between change in nature and the inner world of the human being. In the phrase "gül gibi gül" in the third couplet the same word is used first as a noun and then as a verb ("laugh like a rose"); this is among the best-known examples of wordplay (cinas).

The fifth couplet reverses the image of the rose and the nightingale. In Divan poetry it is the nightingale that laments before the rose; here the lover laments more than the nightingales and robs them of their sleep. Kaya mentions this couplet when she observes that the Divan's couplets of lament (feryat, figan) usually contain a garden, roses and a wailing nightingale. In the sixth couplet the beloved is a swaying cypress and the lover's tears are likened to the Ceyhun, the great river of Central Asia. Tears that become a river and flood the garden are among the most extreme cases of hyperbole; the words serv, revân, Ceyhûn and bâġ form a congruence of images (tenasüp).

Historical Context

What makes the ghazal important for Mihrî's biography is its last couplet: "Geçmiş ki ḥayıf Mihrî Amâsiyye'de ‘ömrüñ / Ḳosṭanṭini'de ‘âḳil iseñ gitme ḳal imdi." In the introduction to his edition, Mehmet Arslan writes that the sources give no information on whether Mihrî always lived in Amasya or went to Istanbul, and that only this couplet gives one pause. On the reading Arslan prefers, the meaning is: "O Mihrî, alas, your life has been spent entirely in Amasya; if you are wise, stay in Istanbul now, and do not go (to Amasya)."

Arslan also states plainly that this reading depends on a problem of writing. The word he reads as "Ḳosṭanṭini'de" is spelled in the manuscript with the letters qaf, sin, tı, nun, tı, nun, dal and he. If the word is read "Kostantin'de", the metre is broken; since the name of the city appears in old texts as Kostantin, Kostantiniyye, Kostantini and Kostantine, Arslan chooses the reading "Kostantini'de". The word could also be read "Kostantin'e de", which fits the metre, but then the writing should have a he after the second nun. On this second reading the sense is reversed: "O Mihrî, alas, your life has been spent entirely in Amasya; if you are wise, stay (in Amasya) again now and do not go to Istanbul." Arslan says that in this sense the word "ḥayıf" loses its function, but adds that in this form the couplet still gives the impression that Mihrî was being invited to Istanbul by someone.

Arslan supports the possibility that Mihrî was in Istanbul with two records. In Mehmed Zihnî Efendi's Meşâhirü'n-Nisâ she is called one of "the learned women of Istanbul", and Zâtî's Letâ’if says: "There was a woman poet from Amasya, they called her Mihrî Hâtûn, she used to live in Istanbul." Arslan also counts the one hundred and sixty-first ghazal, which describes exile and a sea voyage, among the signs of this possibility. He nevertheless says openly that he cannot settle the matter, and notes that all the important sources report that Mihrî died and was buried in Amasya, so that if she did go to Istanbul she later returned to Amasya.

Other researchers treat the couplet differently. In the entry on Mihrî Hatun in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, İsmail E. Erünsal writes that the poet was born in Amasya and spent her life in that city, and says that the line "Geçmiş ki hayf Mihrî Amâsiyye'de ömrün" in the Divan points to this. Gülşen Kaya likewise lists the couplet among the poems of the Divan in which Amasya is named, and says that the poet regrets that her life was spent in Amasya and expresses a wish to stay in Istanbul. The same couplet has thus been cited as evidence both that Mihrî spent her whole life in Amasya and that she was at one time in Istanbul. Because the poem survives in a single manuscript and the reading of the city's name is uncertain, the question cannot be answered with certainty.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (hzl.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 143, Gazel 176 (Ü 67a); introduction pp. 7-9 (the reading of couplet G176-7 and the possibility of Mihrî's presence in Istanbul). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Mihrî Hatun", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 30, 2020 edition, pp. 37-38 (online: islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/mihri-hatun). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 79, 226, 228, 282. openaccess.firat.edu.tr