Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Yâ Rab ol serv-i revân ḳanda durur ḳanda iki
Yâ Rab ol âfet-i cân ḳanda durur ḳanda iki
Gözlerüm rûy-ı laṭîfinden ıraġ olalı cân
Dir idüp âh u fiġân ḳanda durur ḳanda iki
Āfitâbı götürüp gülşen-i ḥüsni getüren
Yâ Rab ol mûy-miyân ḳanda durur ḳanda iki
Ḳaşları yâsına ḳırbân olayın ġamzesine
İtdügüm cânı nişân ḳanda durur ḳanda iki
Ḫâr-ı ġamda dil-i giryânum ider nâleleri
‘Aceb ol ġonca-dehân ḳanda durur ḳanda iki
Yüzüm üzre sürinüp ilte idüm ḫaste dili
Mihriyâ nâm u nişân ḳanda durur ḳanda iki

In English

1. O Lord, where is that swaying cypress, where, I wonder; O Lord, where is that beauty who is the bane of souls, where, I wonder.

2. Ever since my eyes were parted from her delicate face, the soul sighs and cries out, "Where is she, where, I wonder."

3. O Lord, where is the one who put the sun's brilliance in the shade and brought the rose garden of beauty, the one with a waist fine as a hair, where, I wonder.

4. May I be a sacrifice to the bow of your brows and to your glance (the arrow shot from that bow); where is the beauty at whom I make my soul the target, where, I wonder.

5. My heart, weeping among the thorns of grief, goes on moaning; where is the one with a rosebud mouth, where, I wonder.

6. I meant to carry my sick heart to her crawling on my face; O Mihrî, where is a name, a trace of her, where, I wonder.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The 209th ghazal of the divan has six couplets and is written in the remel metre, in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün". The weight of the ghazal rests on its long redif (refrain word): "ḳanda durur ḳanda iki". Before this redif the rhyme is built on the sound "-ân": revân, cân, fiġân, miyân, nişân, dehân. The word "nişân" serves as a rhyme twice, in the fourth and the sixth couplets, but with two different meanings: first "target", then "trace, sign". The ghazal is found in the F, S and Ü manuscripts. In the F manuscript the third and fourth couplets stand in a different order; the S manuscript reads "âh" in place of "âh u" in the second couplet and "gülşeni" in place of "gülşen-i" in the third. Nothing is known of whom the poem was written for or on what occasion.

Sıtkı Nazik, in a table showing the similarly-refrained poems of Mihrî and Tâcîzâde Cafer Çelebi, places this ghazal on the same line as Cafer Çelebi's 243rd ghazal with the redif "iki". The table shows only the shared redif; no comparison of the meaning of the two ghazals is made.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the search for a beloved who has vanished from sight. Each couplet names another beauty of the beloved and ends with the same question: where is she. The cypress figure, the bane of souls, the delicate face, the slender waist, the bow-shaped brow and the rosebud mouth are listed in turn, while the redif turns each link of this enumeration into a search. The ghazal thus joins a description of beauty with a poem of inquiry and longing.

The phrase "ḳanda iki" in the redif is also remarkable from the point of view of language. Tuğba Bıyık, preparing a glossary of Mihrî's divan, states that she found this phrase neither in structure nor in meaning in the survey dictionaries or other lexical sources. According to Bıyık, the word "ḳanda" is used in Old Anatolian Turkish in the sense of "where, to where"; "ḳanda iki" should be understood from context as "where, I wonder", an expression of curiosity and doubt. Bıyık adds that the edition does not correct this phrase with a footnote and that it also fits the metre, so that there is no mistake in its spelling, and she concludes that Mihrî used the redif to arouse astonishment, doubt and curiosity. In the rendering into present-day Turkish the equivalent "nerededir, acaba nerede" was therefore preferred; in this English version it is rendered "where is she, where, I wonder".

The call "Yâ Rab" in the first couplet is repeated in both lines and establishes the tone of the ghazal, which moves back and forth between prayer and lament. "Serv-i revân" (the swaying cypress) is a known comparison that describes the beloved's tall and straight figure together with her gait; "âfet-i cân" expresses beauty turning into a calamity for the lover's soul. In the third couplet the beloved is described as one who "carries away" the sun and "brings" the rose garden of beauty; the contrast between the two verbs gives the couplet an antithesis (tezat). "Mûy-miyân" (hair-waist) is a simile (teşbih) that exaggerates the slenderness of the beloved's waist.

In the fourth couplet the brows are likened to a bow, the glance to an arrow shot from this bow, and the lover's soul to the target. Of these three words only the bow is mentioned outright ("yâ"); the arrow is thought of within the word glance (gamze), and the target is given by the word "nişân". That the lover willingly makes her soul a target and wants to be sacrificed to the beloved's arrow is a widespread attitude in divan poetry. In the fifth couplet thorn and rosebud face each other: the heart moaning among the thorns of grief calls the nightingale to mind without naming it, and the beloved with her rosebud mouth is the rose. There is congruence of images (tenasüp) among thorn, rosebud and nâle (lament).

The closing couplet ends the search with a confession of helplessness. The lover is ready to carry her sick heart to the beloved crawling on her face, but there is neither a name nor a trace of her. The idiom "nâm u nişân" (name and trace) carries the same sound as the word "nişân" (target) of the fourth couplet; because the repeated rhyme carries two different meanings, it is read as a wordplay rather than a flaw. Mihrî addressing herself by name is an ordinary example of the divan tradition of mentioning the pen name (mahlas) in the closing couplet; here, however, the question is put to herself and no answer is given.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 160, Ghazal 209 (F 70a, S 72a, Ü 76a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

Online sources