Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Bir eyü güzeller güzeli göñlümi aldı
Göz göre benüm başumı ġavġâlara ṣaldı
Ḳurdurdı hemân gözlerine ḳaşları yayın
Kirpükleri oḳların atup baġrumı deldi
Öldürmese güc ile beni bâri iñende
Derdine düşelden berü baña olan oldı
Cânumı benüm sevgüsi odlara yaḳaldan
Āhum tütüni yerlere vü göklere ṭoldı
Göñlüm alalı ol baña itdüklerini vâh
Dostlar işidüp aġladı düşmen ḳatı güldi
Ey Mihrî saña yâr cefâ itse ‘aceb mi
Gücini çeker dünyede ancaḳ seni buldı

In English

1. A truly fine beauty of beauties took my heart; before my very eyes she cast me into tumult and trouble.

2. At once she had the bow of her eyebrows strung above her eyes; her lashes loosed their arrows and pierced my breast.

3. If only she would not kill me by force; since I fell into the grief of her, whatever was to befall me has befallen me. (The meaning of the word "iñende" in the Arslan edition is unclear; Havlioğlu reads the place as "igen de", "very much". The couplet can be understood in two ways: "if only she would not kill me outright by force", or "even if she does not kill me by force, what was to befall me has already befallen me".)

4. Since her love set my soul on fire, the smoke of my sighs has filled the earth and the heavens.

5. Alas, since she took my heart, the friends who heard what she did to me wept, while the enemy laughed heartily.

6. O Mihrî, is it any wonder if the beloved is cruel to you? She found in the world only you to bear her torment.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The one hundred and eighty-first ghazal (gazel) has six 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 rhyme (kafiye) rests on the sound "-l", and the redif (refrain word) on the past-tense suffix "-dı/-di": aldı, ṣaldı, deldi, oldı, ṭoldı, güldi, buldı. All the rhyme words are Turkish verbs, which gives the ghazal a plain manner of speaking close to the spoken language. The ghazal is in the Yâ section of the Divan and, in the Arslan edition, rests on the Ü manuscript alone; in Havlioğlu's electronic text it is the one hundred and eighty-third ghazal. It is not known for whom it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal tells the course of a love from its beginning to the present state in past-tense forms, as a story is told. The phrase "eyü güzeller güzeli" in the opening couplet is close to popular speech; the idiom "göz göre" (before one's eyes) says that the lover fell into this love knowing what would befall her.

The second couplet brings together the familiar weapon images of Divan poetry. The eyebrow is likened to a bow and the lashes to arrows; the beloved has the bow strung above her eyes, and the lash-arrows pierce the lover's breast. Gülşen Kaya notes that in the Divan the lash is mentioned, together with the eye, the eyebrow and the dimple, as a weapon that wounds the lover and sometimes hunts her, and she gives this couplet as an example. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words bow, arrow, shoot and pierce, and metaphor (istiare) in eyebrow as bow and lash as arrow.

In the fourth couplet love is conceived as a fire that burns the soul; the lover's sigh is the smoke of this fire and fills earth and heaven. There is antithesis between earth and heaven, a congruence of images among od (fire), yakmak (to burn) and tütün (smoke), and hyperbole in the smoke's filling the heavens. The fifth couplet describes the lover's state through the reaction of those around her: friends weep, the enemy laughs. Two antitheses, weeping and laughing, friend and enemy, divide the couplet into two balanced parts.

The closing couplet (makta) adds a small consolation to the bitter tone of the ghazal. Kaya mentions this couplet when she observes that the lover, despite so much torment, is steadfast against every kind of cruelty from the beloved, and that the beloved therefore exaggerates her tyranny. Mihrî interprets the beloved's cruelty to her as a kind of election: in all the world there is only she who can bear this burden. The turning of torment into a privilege is one of the basic features of the lover type in Divan poetry.

There are a few small differences between the two texts. In the opening couplet Havlioğlu reads "ġavġavlara" in place of "ġavġâlara", and in the second couplet "Ḳudurdı" in place of "Ḳurdurdı"; in her text the second line of the fifth couplet ends incompletely with the word "ḳatı". Arslan's critical text is better suited to the metre and the sense in these places.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (hzl.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 145-146, Gazel 181 (Ü 68a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ġazeliyyât-ı Mihrî-i Ḥaḳîre, electronic edition, Ottoman Texts Archive Project (OTAP), Gazel 183 (İst 154a).

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 163, 192. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Online sources