Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâ‘ilün Fe‘ilâtün Mefâ‘ilün Fe‘ilün

Ne cânı var yaza Mânî ḳaşuñ işâretini
Ne ḥaddi var bile ‘âḳil lebüñ ‘ibâretini
Firâḳuñ odını dilden viṣâlüñ itmedi ḳaṭ‘
Meger ki la‘l-i nebâtuñ kese ḥarâretini
Ġamuñla ḫâne-i dil her cihetden oldı ḫarâb
Keremler eyleseñ itseñ n'ola ‘imâretini
S̱evâb-ı ḥacc bulam dirseñ eylegil cânâ
Şikeste-ḫâṭıruñuñ göñlinüñ ziyâretini
Viṣâl-i dilberi Mihrî cihânda fetḥ ide mi
Sa‘âdeti çala mı baḫtınuñ beşâretini

In English

1. What power has Mânî (the legendary painter famed for his pictures) to paint the sign of your eyebrow; what business has a wise man to grasp the meaning of the word that comes from your lips?

2. Even union could not uproot the fire of separation from the heart, unless your sugar-sweet red lip (la‘l-i nebât) cuts the heat of that fire.

3. With your grief the house of the heart has fallen into ruin on every side; what if you were to be kind and rebuild it?

4. O beloved, if you say "let me earn the reward of the pilgrimage", visit the heart of your broken-hearted lover (visiting a broken heart earns the reward of a pilgrimage).

5. Will Mihrî conquer union with the beloved in this world; will good fortune proclaim the glad tidings of her fate (as if with beating drums)?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The 206th ghazal of the divan has five couplets and is recorded in the edition in the pattern "Mefâ‘ilün Fe‘ilâtün Mefâ‘ilün Fe‘ilün". The ghazal stands in the last section of the divan, where the poems ending in the letter "yâ" are collected, and is found in the F, S and Ü manuscripts; it is absent from the M manuscript in Ankara. The rhyme is built on the sound "-âret": işâret, ‘ibâret, ḥarâret, ‘imâret, ziyâret, beşâret. The possessive and accusative suffix "-ini", added to the end of all these words, serves as the redif (refrain word). The six words in the rhyme, all Arabic verbal nouns of the same pattern, thus form an orderly sequence of sounds to the ear. The differences between the manuscripts are small: the F manuscript reads "ḥaccı" in place of "ḥacc" in the fourth couplet and "işâretini" in place of "beşâretini" in the fifth. Nothing is known of whom the poem was written for or on what occasion.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet says that the beauty of the beloved fits neither into a picture nor into words. Mânî, named in the first line, is the legendary painter remembered in divan poetry as the greatest master of the art of painting. Mahmut Başaran, in his study of the influence of the Shahnameh on Mihrî's divan, notes that Mânî is also named in the Shahnameh, that he is regarded as the founder of the Manichaean religion, and that he stands out in classical Turkish poetry for his painting; he explains this couplet as saying that however skilled Mânî may be, he could not grasp and draw the beloved's eyebrow and lip. Gülşen Kaya likewise records that Mânî is the only painter (nakkaş) named in the divan, that in one place he is mentioned for his inability to draw the beauty of the beloved and in another for his envy of the lover, and she cites this couplet as an example. The balance between the lines is striking: the eyebrow "gestures" and the lip "speaks"; the painter cannot draw the one, and the wise man cannot grasp the other. That the verb "yazmak" in the older language also meant to paint or to depict lends the couplet a further coherence when it is read together with Mânî.

In the second couplet, instead of fire and water, fire and sugar come together. The fire of separation has not been put out even by union; the remedy can only be found by "la‘l-i nebât", the lip that is both a red jewel and as sweet as crystallised sugar. The word "ḥarâret" here suggests both the heat of fire and the burning of illness, and the verb "kesmek" is used in the sense of cutting the fire, that is, of quenching it. The third couplet compares the heart to a house: the heart, ruined on all four sides by the grief the beloved has given, can only be rebuilt ("imâr") by her kindness. Repairing a fallen house is a metaphor (istiare) often used in divan poetry, and the contrast between "ḫarâb" and "‘imâret" carries the meaning of the couplet.

The couplet most easily remembered in the ghazal is the fourth. The beloved who wants the reward of a pilgrimage is advised not to go to distant roads but to visit the heart of her broken-hearted lover. The thought that to visit a heart is as valuable as a pilgrimage sets a sacred journey beside the lover's broken heart, and can be read as an elegant reproach addressed to the beloved in religious language. That "ziyâret" means both visiting holy places and calling on someone sets up in the couplet a double meaning close to tevriye (double entendre); the words "ḥacc", "s̱evâb" and "ziyâret" create congruence of images (tenasüp) among themselves.

In the closing couplet Mihrî addresses herself and speaks of union as a "conquest". The "beşâret" (glad tidings) and the verb "çalmak" that follow bring to mind the old custom of announcing glad tidings with drum and kettledrum: just as news of a conquest is proclaimed through the city by drum, so the good news of union will be sounded. The poet, however, leaves this outcome as a question; the poem closes between hope and doubt. The reading "işâretini" in the F manuscript ties the rhyme of the last couplet to the same word as that of the first and ends the ghazal on the word with which it began; the edition gives this reading in a footnote.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 158-159, Ghazal 206 (F 73b, S 75b, Ü 75b). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

Other sources

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), "Ğazeliyyāt-ı Mihri-i Hāqīre", türkoloji-iran, 2007 (a different transliteration of the ghazal, no. 212).

Online sources