Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Nice bir iñledesin derd ile ey yâr beni
Nice bir öldüresin cevr ile her bâr beni
Gözlerüñ ḳanım içer laḥẓada bir ṣu yerine
Ḳanda buldı ‘acebâ bu iki ḫûn-ḫâr beni
‘Aḳl u dil yoluña gitdi dil ü cân ḳalmış idi
Fürḳatüñ eyledi andan daḫi bîzâr beni
İşidüp derd ile iñledi mi dûlâb daḫi
Girye vü zâr ile her dem dönüp aġlar beni
Fürḳatüñden nice bir Mihrî senüñ cân çekişe
Dostum başuñ içün öldür e ḳurtar beni

In English

1. Beloved, how long will you make me moan with grief; how long will you kill me each time with torment?

2. Your eyes drink my blood at every moment as if drinking water; where, I wonder, did these two bloodshedders find me. (The couplet can be read in two ways: "ḳanda" means "where", but it can also be understood as "in blood"; in that reading it says "did these two bloodshedders find me in blood?")

3. My mind and my heart went on your path, and one heart and one soul were left; your separation has made me weary of them too.

4. Did the waterwheel (the water wheel that groans as it turns) hear that I moan with grief, that at every moment it turns, weeps and moans for me?

5. How long must Mihrî agonise in your separation; my friend, for your head's sake (for God's sake), kill me and set me free.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The 208th ghazal of the divan has five couplets and is written in the remel metre, in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün". Its redif (refrain word) is "beni"; the rhyme is built on the sound "-ar": yâr, bâr, ḫûn-ḫâr, bîzâr, aġlar, ḳurtar. In the last two words the vowel is not long, and the rhyme is carried on by a harmony based on the ear. The ghazal is found in the F, S and Ü manuscripts; among the manuscripts there is only a "yoluña / yolına" difference in the third couplet. The two "nice bir" (how long) questions in the first couplet return in the closing couplet and tie the beginning of the ghazal to its end.

Historical Context

This ghazal is among Mihrî's nazires (response poems) to the poems of Necâtî. Metin Hakverdioğlu, to test the verdict "Mihrî is an imitator of Necâtî" so often repeated in the sources, surveyed the two divans and set side by side twenty nazires that Mihrî wrote to Necâtî, stating that he chose these ghazals by looking at whether they were equivalent in rhyme, redif, metre and content. The last pair in the comparison is this ghazal. Necâtî's ghazal is also written in the same metre, with the same "-âr beni" rhyme and redif, and begins with this opening couplet: "Nice bir iñledesiñ derdile ey yâr beni / Raḥm ḳıl başuñ içün şöyle ḳoma zâr beni". Mihrî's first line repeats Necâtî's first line almost word for word. The oath "başuñ içün" in Necâtî's opening couplet appears again in Mihrî's closing couplet; Necâtî's request in the second couplet, "Evvel öldür kerem eyle beni zinhâr beni", is answered in Mihrî's words "öldür e ḳurtar beni". Necâtî's closing couplet, with the lines "Diyesin derd ile iñlerdi Necâtî miskîn / Ey ṣabâ ṣorar ise ol yüzi gül-zâr beni", repeats the phrase "derd ile iñlemek" once more.

Mihrî's relationship with Necâtî has been debated since the tezkires (biographical anthologies of poets). According to Latîfî, Necâtî wrote for Mihrî a qit‘a beginning "Ey benüm şi‘rüme naẓîre diyen"; Enes İlhan, however, questions this report, having found a note in a manuscript of Necâtî's Divan saying that the qit‘a was written for Revânî. Hakverdioğlu's study shows the concrete traces of this debate in the poems themselves: Mihrî takes Necâtî's ground and keeps his first line, but builds most of the couplets with her own imagery. The images of the eye, the blood and the waterwheel are not found in Necâtî's ghazal.

Sıtkı Nazik, comparing the similarly-refrained poems of Mihrî and Tâcîzâde Cafer Çelebi, also places this ghazal beside Cafer Çelebi's ghazals with the redif "beni". According to Nazik, both poets dwell on the deadly effect of the beloved's manner and some of her beauties on the lover; Mihrî attributes the killing to the beloved's cruelty, the grief she gives and her eyes.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The second couplet is the most open to interpretation in the ghazal. The beloved's eyes are likened to two "ḫûn-ḫâr", two bloodshedders, that drink blood as one drinks water. Nazik notes that the word "ḳanda" can also mean "where", so that the line may be understood as "where, I wonder, did these two bloodshedders find me". That the word can be read both as "in blood" and as "where", combined with the phrase "ḳanım içer" in the previous line, gives the couplet a double entendre (tevriye). There is also congruence of images (tenasüp) among "ṣu", "ḳan" and "içmek".

The third couplet counts what is left in the lover's hands. Mind and heart have already gone on the beloved's path; what remains has fallen into weariness because of the separation. The word "dil" occurring twice in the line gives it the air of an inventory in which losses are counted one after another.

The fourth couplet is Mihrî's own invention and carries the most original image of the ghazal. The waterwheel, used for watering gardens and fields and making a creaking sound as it turns, is described as if it had heard the lover's moaning and were weeping for her. The turning of the wheel, its sound and the water it pours are matched to the states of a weeping person; in this respect the couplet uses fantastic aetiology (hüsn-i ta‘lîl) and personification (teşhis) together. The word "dönüp" suggests both the turning of the wheel and turning round to look; "girye vü zâr" mentions weeping and moaning together.

In the closing couplet Mihrî carries the complaint of the first couplet to its end point: she prefers death to agonising in separation. The phrase "başuñ içün" is a form of oath used in older Turkish when pleading. The lover asking death of the beloved as a favour is a familiar attitude in divan poetry; the same request is in Necâtî's ghazal. Mihrî ends this request with the word "ḳurtar" and names death a deliverance.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 159-160, Ghazal 208 (F 70b, S 72a, Ü 76a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-Şu‘arâ ve Tabsıratü'n-Nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı e-book, 2018, pp. 496-498 (entry on Mihrî).

Academic studies

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Mihrî Hâtun'un Necâtî Bey'in Şiirlerine Nazîreleri", Turkish Studies 4/2 (Winter 2009), pp. 522-551 (general assessment pp. 524-527; comparison: Necâtî DCXXXIII / Mihrî CCXIV, numbered as in the author's own edition, pp. 550-551), doi:10.7827/TurkishStudies.638.
  • Sıtkı Nazik, "Benzer Redifli Şiirleri Bağlamında Mihrî Hatun ve Tâcî-zâde Cafer Çelebi'nin Karşılaştırılması", Uluslararası Amasya Âlimleri Sempozyumu Bildiriler Kitabı II, Amasya 2017, pp. 140-141. https://isamveri.org/pdfdrg/G00226/2017/2017_NAZIKS.pdf
  • Enes İlhan, "Mihrî Hâtun mu Revânî mi? 'Ey Benüm Şiirüme Nazire Diyen' Kim?", Hikmet-Akademik Edebiyat Dergisi 10/20 (2024), pp. 148-170. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/3697235

Other sources

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), "Ğazeliyyāt-ı Mihri-i Hāqīre", türkoloji-iran, 2007 (a different transliteration of the ghazal, no. 214).

Online sources