Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Görinelden gözüme cânâ cemâlüñ gülşeni
Bülbül-i şûrîdedür tâ ṣubḥ olınca dâmeni
Gülşen-i ḥüsnüñsüz ey dilber gerekmez cenneti
Gerçi var her gûşesinde nice biñ gül ḫırmeni
Cânıma ġamzeñ ḫadengin geçdügin men‘ eyleme
Râḥat olsun dostum oḫ ḫoşça bulmış meskeni
Ḳılca cân ile yüz üstine sürinüp ḫaste-dil
Tuḥfe cân iltür ṭapuña görmege cânum seni
Dünye vü ‘uḳbâda bu ‘izzet yeterdi Mihrî'ye
Girse bir kez destine anuñ ḥabîbi dâmeni

In English

1. Ever since the rose garden of your beauty appeared before my eyes, my beloved, the nightingale has been frenzied at its skirt until morning. The couplet can be read in two ways: if "dâmen" is taken as the edge or border of the rose garden, the lover is a frenzied nightingale wailing at the garden's border until dawn; if "dâmen" is taken as the lover's own hem, the lover cries out like a nightingale until dawn. The reading "şûrîde-dildür" in the F and S manuscripts (a nightingale with a distracted heart) is closer to this second reading.

2. O beauty, without the rose garden of your loveliness I have no need of paradise, though in every corner of it there are thousands of heaps of roses.

3. Do not forbid the arrow of your glance to pass into my soul; my friend, the arrow has found a pleasant home there, let it be at rest.

4. The sick heart, with a soul no thicker than a hair, crawls on its face and brings its soul as a gift to your presence, my dear, to see you.

5. If the hem of his beloved came into his hand even once, this honour would suffice for Mihrî in this world and the next. (To hold someone's hem means to take refuge in him and never to leave him.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The 204th ghazal of the divan has five couplets and is written in the remel metre, in the pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". The ghazal has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is built on the sounds "-eni": gülşeni, dâmeni, ḫırmeni, meskeni, seni. The rhyme word "dâmeni" of the opening couplet is used again in the closing couplet, so that the ghazal opens and closes with the word "hem". The poem is found in the F, S and Ü manuscripts. Variants are few: the F and S manuscripts read "şûrîde-dildür" in place of "şûrîdedür tâ" in the opening couplet, and the F manuscript has "ḫadengi" in place of "ḫadengin" in the third. Nothing is known of whom the ghazal was written for or on what occasion.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first two couplets imagine the beloved's face as a rose garden. The compounds "cemâlüñ gülşeni" and "gülşen-i ḥüsnüñ" are built through simile (teşbih): the face is a garden and the cheeks are its roses. The lover who sees this garden becomes, within the conventional image (mazmun) of rose and nightingale in divan poetry, a frenzied ("şûrîde") nightingale that wails until dawn. In the second couplet the beloved's garden is compared with paradise. In paradise there are thousands of heaps of roses in every corner, yet without the garden of the beloved's beauty the lover does not want paradise. Ranking the beloved's face above paradise is a familiar hyperbole in divan poetry; there is also congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words gülşen, gül, ḫırmen and cennet.

The third couplet rests on the image of the glance as an arrow. "Ġamze" is the beloved's sidelong glance and in divan poetry is imagined as an arrow or dagger that wounds the lover. The lover does not complain that this arrow lodges in her soul; on the contrary, she asks the beloved not to hold it back, because the arrow has found a pleasant home inside the soul. Taking pleasure in pain and counting a wound from the beloved as a gift is one of the basic traits of the lover figure in divan poetry. In the fourth couplet the lover's state is a soul worn as thin as a hair. The sick heart crawls on its face to bring its soul as a gift to the beloved so that it may see her. The phrase "ḳılca cân" (a soul as thin as a hair) describes the lover's frailty by exaggeration; it is also notable that the word "cân" occurs three times in the same couplet with different shades of meaning: the soul reduced to a hair's breadth, the soul presented as a gift, and "cânum", the way the beloved is addressed.

The closing couplet gives the real idea of the ghazal. For Mihrî, being able to take hold of the beloved's hem even once would be an honour sufficient for her in this world and the next. Gülşen Kaya notes, in her study of the beloved's attributes in Mihrî's divan, that the word "dâmen" (hem) has a place worth attention: holding the beloved's hem, finding happiness in her, and never withdrawing one's hand from the beloved's hem even after death is often treated in the divan. According to Kaya, some couplets in the divan stress that there is no greater honour than holding the beloved's hem in this world and the next, and that the hem becomes a symbol of union with the beloved. The closing couplet of this ghazal is a clear example of this idea. There is an antithesis (tezat) between "dünye" and "‘uḳbâ" (the next world); "dâmen", which was the border of the garden in the opening couplet, becomes the beloved's hem in the closing one and thereby gathers the ghazal together.

Bibliography

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 157-158, Ghazal 204 (F 69b, S 71b, Ü 75a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat University Institute of Social Sciences, Elazığ 2010, p. 189. openaccess.firat.edu.tr