Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

‘Aşḳuñ ṣanemâ çün yed-i ḳudret dile yazdı
Başuma belâ vü ġam u hecrüñ bile yazdı
Sen ġonca-dehen gül gibi yüzüme gülünce
Cân bülbüli bu ḫâr-ı cefâdan öleyazdı
Ḫaddüñi görüp ḳorḫaram âh itmege cânâ
Zîrâ bu hevâdan nice güller ṣolayazdı
Hecrüñde ḥabîbüm şu ḳadar aġlamışam kim
Dil zevraḳı ḳanlu yaşıma ġarḳ olayazdı
Bir bûse vir öldüm didi Mihrî aña yâri
Çeşmi ile ḫışm itdi egerçi güleyazdı

In English

1. O idol-like beloved, when the hand of power (God's decree) wrote your love upon my heart, it wrote calamity, sorrow and separation from you upon my head along with it.

2. When you, bud-mouthed beloved, smiled upon my face like a rose, the nightingale of my soul all but died of this thorn of cruelty. (The opening of the rose and the nightingale's being pricked by the thorn are thought of together: the beloved's smile brings the lover both joy and torment.)

3. O beloved, seeing your cheek, I fear to sigh; for in the air of this sigh many roses all but withered. ("Hevâ" means both air, wind, and desire, passion; the fiery wind of a sigh can wither roses, that is, the rose-like cheek.)

4. My beloved, in your separation I have wept so much that the boat of my heart all but sank in my bloody tears.

5. Mihrî said to the beloved, "Give me a kiss, I am dying"; the beloved showed anger with her eyes, though she all but smiled.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The one hundred and ninety-eighth ghazal (gazel) of the divan has five couplets (beyit) and is composed in the hezec metre with the pattern "Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fa‘ûlün". Its redif (refrain word) is "yazdı"; the rhyme is built on the sounds "-le/-la": dile, bile, öle, ṣola, ola, güle. The poem is found in manuscripts F, S and Ü, but the manuscripts lack couplets here and there: the opening couplet (matla) is missing in manuscript Ü, and the second couplet in manuscript S. The edition constructs the complete text by combining the manuscripts. There is no information on whom the ghazal was written for or on what occasion.

In his paper comparing the choice of redifs of Mihrî Hatun and her contemporary, the Amasya poet Tâcîzâde Cafer Çelebi, Sıtkı Nazik records the redif of this ghazal as "yazdı (-e yazdı)" and counts it among the redifs seen only in Mihrî's divan. This record points to the two separate uses of the redif.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The real mastery of the ghazal lies in the way the redif is used. In the opening couplet the word "yazdı" appears with its own meaning, as the verb "to write": the hand of power wrote the beloved's love upon the lover's heart and wrote calamity, sorrow and separation upon her head. The idea of what is written on the forehead, of fate, is clear here; love and the pains it brings came from the same pen. In the following couplets the same sound is used as an auxiliary verb in the forms "öleyazdı", "ṣolayazdı", "olayazdı" and "güleyazdı", in the sense of "all but did". The redif thus performs two separate functions, "write" in the opening couplet and "all but" in the others. This play, which rests on a difference of meaning within unity of sound, is close to paronomasia (cinas) and brings to every couplet of the ghazal a tension of "almost": the lover has all but died, the roses have all but withered, the boat of the heart has all but sunk, the beloved has all but smiled.

The second couplet works the motif of the rose and the nightingale. The beloved is "ġonca-dehen", that is, small-mouthed like a bud; when she smiles, the rose may be said to open. The soul is likened to the nightingale. That the nightingale is pricked and wounded by a thorn when the rose opens is a well-known image of divan poetry; Mihrî calls this thorn "ḫâr-ı cefâ", the thorn of cruelty. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among bud, rose, nightingale and thorn. The third couplet is built on the burning power of the sigh. The lover's sigh is fiery; the wind of this sigh can wither the beloved's rose-like cheek, so the lover shrinks even from sighing. The word "hevâ" is used in both its senses of air and desire, producing an expression close to a double entendre (tevriye).

The fourth couplet rests on the image of a boat about to sink in a sea of tears. The heart is a "zevraḳ", a small boat; the tears are bloody and so abundant that they make a sea. The exaggerated description of weeping is a typical example of hyperbole (mübalağa) in divan poetry. In the final couplet (makta) the mood of the ghazal lightens. Mihrî asks the beloved for a kiss; the beloved shows anger with her eyes but can hardly hold back the smile on her lips. This small scene, between the beloved's coquetry and her hidden consent, is a kind of dialogue couplet often found in divan poetry, and with "güleyazdı", the last use of the redif, it closes the ghazal on a light scene.

Bibliography

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 154-155, Ghazal 198 (F 69a, S 70b, Ü 73b). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Sıtkı Nazik, "Benzer Redifli Şiirleri Bağlamında Mihrî Hatun ve Tâcî-zâde Cafer Çelebi'nin Karşılaştırılması", Uluslararası Amasya Âlimleri Sempozyumu Bildiriler Kitabı II, Amasya 2017, p. 137.

Online sources