Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Eşk-i çeşmümden olur cûş itdügi ırmaġlar
Dûd-ı âhumdandur ebr olduġı her dem daġlar
Rûz u şeb yaşlar döker dûlâb ser-gerdân olup
Girye vü zârî ile ṭurmaz benimçün aġlar
Nâlem işitdükçe ditrer berg ârâm eylemez
Yaşumı gördükçe her âb-ı revânlar çaġlar
Gözlerüme sensüz ey rûḥ-ı revânum bir nefes
Gülşen ise neyleyüm külḫan görinür bâġlar
Geldügüñce güldürürsin gül gibi dil bülbülin
Gitdügüñce lâle-veş baġrumda ḳorsun dâġlar
Fürḳatüñ zaḫmıyla Mihrî çoḳdan olurdı helâk
Müstedâm ol yine vaṣluñ aña merhem baġlar

In English

1. The rivers that surge are born of the tears of my eyes; that the mountains are forever wrapped in cloud comes from the smoke of my sighs.

2. The water wheel (the wheel that waters gardens), its head spinning, sheds tears night and day; with weeping and lament it does not stop crying for me. (With the reading "niçün" in manuscripts F and S, the second line becomes: "It does not stop weeping and lamenting; why does it cry?")

3. The leaves tremble when they hear my lament and cannot keep still; every running stream roars when it sees my tears.

4. O my fleeting soul (the one I love as my own soul), without you, even for a moment, the gardens look to my eyes like a külhan (the furnace of a bathhouse where the fire is lit); what would I do with a rose garden?

5. When you come, you make the nightingale of the heart laugh like a rose; when you go, you leave scars in my breast like the tulip. (The black spot at the centre of the tulip is likened to the brand that love leaves on the heart.)

6. Mihrî would long ago have died of the wound of separation; but union with you again binds a salve on that wound. May you live forever. (The couplet can also be read: "Stay always, so that your union may again bind a salve upon her.")

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The twenty-first ghazal (gazel) of Mihrî Hatun's divan has six couplets (beyit) and is written in the remel meter of the aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". The ghazal is the most common verse form of divan poetry: both lines of the first couplet (matla) rhyme, in the following couplets only the second lines repeat the rhyme, and the poet names herself (pen name, mahlas) in the last couplet. In this ghazal the rhyme rests on the sound "-aġ" and the redif (refrain word) on the plural suffix "-lar": ırmaġlar, daġlar, aġlar, çaġlar, bâġlar, dâġlar, baġlar. The poem is among the divan's ghazals ending in the letter rā and appears in all four manuscripts on which Arslan's edition is based (F 44a, M 62b, S 46b, Ü 32a). The variants are small; the most notable is the reading "niçün" in manuscripts F and S in place of "benimçün" in the second couplet. In Sabiha Gemici's 1990 thesis this line also appears as "neyiçün". It is not known for whom the ghazal was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the pain of separation, which the poet spreads across the whole of nature. The first three couplets are built on hüsn-i ta‘lîl (attributing an event to a beautiful cause other than its real one), common in divan poetry. The surging of rivers comes from the lover's tears, the clouds on the mountain tops from the smoke of her sighs; the dripping of the garden wheel as it turns is ascribed to weeping, the stirring of leaves in the wind to trembling, the sound of running water to roaring. Studying the tear imagery of Mihrî's divan, Gülşen Kaya gives the rivers formed from the lover's tears and the clouds from her sighs as typical examples of this conception. Kaya also cites the phrase "rûz u şeb" (night and day) in the second couplet among uses in the divan that express continuity.

The rhyme words are where the ghazal shows its craft. "Daġlar" (mountains), "dâġlar" (brands, scars), "baġlar" (binds) and "bâġlar" (gardens) are very close in spelling and sound, and the poet draws a pun (cinas, wordplay based on sound similarity) from this closeness. "Aġlar" and "çaġlar" follow one another as if imitating the sound of water. Thus the rhyme holds together the world of water, mountain and garden in sound. In the fourth couplet the phrase "rûḥ-ı revân" (fleeting soul, the beloved) echoes in sound and sense the "âb-ı revân" (running water) of the third couplet; the beloved, like both soul and running water, slips away. In the same couplet the rose garden appearing to the lover's eye as a külhan is a fine example of antithesis: the coolest and most pleasant place becomes the hottest and blackest when the beloved is absent.

The fifth couplet compares the beloved's coming and going with two flowers. When she comes, the nightingale of the heart laughs like a rose; when she goes, a wound is left in the breast like a tulip. Rose and nightingale are the best-known pair of conceits (mazmun) in divan poetry, while the tulip, because of the black spot at its centre, stands for the brand left on the heart. In the last couplet separation is imagined as a wound (zaḫm) and union as the salve bound upon it. Kaya points out that couplets in the divan in which union is a salve for a heart wounded by separation are frequent. The pen name couplet ties the lover's survival to the beloved's existence and closes the ghazal with a prayer-like phrase ("Müstedâm ol", be everlasting).

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 61-62, Gazel 21 (F 44a, M 62b, S 46b, Ü 32a) and footnotes on manuscript variants. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 98, 208, 225-226, 268. openaccess.firat.edu.tr
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral thesis, Uludağ Üniversitesi, Balıkesir 1990, pp. 463-464 (ghazal 22 in Gemici).

Online sources