Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Aġyâr ile yâr oldı vü cânân yola gitdi
Ten bunda ḳalup rûḥ-ı revânum bile gitdi
Ġam ḫânelerinde yine ben aġlayu ḳaldum
Raḥm itmedi dil-ḫastesine o güle gitdi
Kûyuñda ḥabîbüm şu ḳadar aġlamışam kim
Ḳanlu gözümüñ yaşıla ‘âlem sele gitdi
Aġlañ gülüñ ol ‘âşıḳı ey ḥâl bilenler
Cânânı ḥabîbi anuñ ıraḳ ile gitdi
Ey ṭâli‘i yoḳ Mihrî hemân eyle taḥammül
Anca bu hevâlarda emegüñ yele gitdi

In English

1. The beloved has made friends with the strangers (aġyâr, the rivals) and gone on her way; the body stays here, and my flowing soul has gone with her.

2. Once more I am left weeping in the houses of grief; she, the rose-faced one, had no mercy on the one sick at heart, and went.

3. My beloved, I have wept so much in your quarter that the world has been swept away by the flood of my bloody tears.

4. O you who know the state of the heart, weep for that lover and laugh, for his beloved, his sweetheart, has gone far away. (The Arslan edition reads "Aġlañ gülüñ"; Havlioğlu's text reads "Aġlañ gelüñ", "Come, weep"; the second reading gives the sense more plainly.)

5. O Mihrî, ill-fated one, simply bear it; in these passions your labour has gone only to the wind, in vain. ("Hevâ" means both desire, passion, and air, wind.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The one hundred and seventy-ninth ghazal (gazel) has five couplets (beyit) and is composed in the hezec metre of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fa‘ûlün". The redif (refrain word) is the verb "gitdi", and every couplet closes with this verb; the rhyme (kafiye) is built on the sounds "-le" and "-e": yola, bile, güle, sele, ile, yele. The ghazal is in the Yâ section of the Divan and, in the Arslan edition, rests on the Ü manuscript alone. In the electronic text published by Didem Havlioğlu in the Ottoman Texts Archive it also appears, as the one hundred and eighty-first ghazal, read from folio 154a of the Istanbul manuscript. It is not known for whom it was written.

The redif "gitdi" also determines the subject of the ghazal. In every couplet something goes: the beloved goes on her way, the soul goes with her, the rose goes without mercy, the world goes to the flood, the labour goes to the wind. That the redif carries so heavy a load of meaning turns the ghazal into a poem of separation.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet builds separation on the division between body and soul. When the beloved goes, the lover's body stays where it is, but the "rûḥ-ı revân", the flowing soul, goes with her. Since "revân" means both soul and flowing, the image arises of a soul accompanying the beloved as she sets out; there is antithesis between ten and rûḥ, and a congruence of images (tenasüp) among yol, revân and gitmek.

The third couplet is the most exaggerated form of the tear motif. Gülşen Kaya gives it as an example when she describes how, in the Divan, the lover weeps so much for the beloved that bloody tears flow from his eyes. The lover's tears overflow from the beloved's quarter and drown the whole world in a flood; this hyperbole at the same time conveys, through the idiom "sele gitmek" (to be swept away by a flood), that everything has been destroyed and gone.

In the fourth couplet the poet speaks of herself in the third person and addresses "those who know the state", those who understand the condition of love. In Arslan's reading, the words "weep, laugh" form an antithesis; the lover's condition is one to weep over and to laugh at. In Havlioğlu's reading the line is a plain summons: "come, weep".

In the closing couplet (makta) Mihrî addresses herself as ill-fated and counsels patience. Kaya mentions this couplet among the examples of the idiom "yele vermek" (to give to the wind), often used in the Divan. The double meaning in the word "hevâ" gives the couplet a double entendre (tevriye): that her labour has gone to the wind "in these hevâs" means both that it has been wasted on these passions and that it has been scattered in the air; there is also a congruence of images between hevâ and yel. It is said outright in the ghazal that the beloved has set out on a journey, but there is no record that would allow this journey to be tied to a real event.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (hzl.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 144-145, Gazel 179 (Ü 68a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ġazeliyyât-ı Mihrî-i Ḥaḳîre, electronic edition, Ottoman Texts Archive Project (OTAP), Gazel 181 (İst 154a).

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 224, 276. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Online sources