Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün

Kim var güzeller içre cihânda saña yeter
Yâḫud belâ-keş ‘âşıḳ-ı şeydâ baña yeter
Dil ḥücresinde her gice ‘aşḳuñ Muṭavvelin
Görmege cân delîl ü tenüm bûriyâ yeter
Zecr ise ḥadden aşdı gözüm yaşı başdan
Cevr ise yetdi cânuma ey dil-rübâ yeter
Ḳahruñ cihânda ben görürem luṭfuñı raḳîb
Öldürmek ise ‘âşıḳı hey bî-vefâ yeter
Yüz sürmek ile izlerine oldum âşinâ
Kûyuñda itlerüñle bu ben mübtelâ yeter
Sen ey Necâtî ister iseñ bûriyâ döşek
Yâr işiginde Mihrî'ye bir ḳurı câ yeter
Bir dâne ile zülfi göñül murġın itdi ṣayd
Baña cihânda ‘ömrüm olınca ġıdâ yeter

In English

1. Who is there among the beautiful in the world who could match you? Or who could match me as a lover, a mad lover who endures affliction? (The couplet can be read in two ways: yeter may be taken here as "is a match, can compete", or the second line may be understood as "for me, being a mad lover who endures affliction is enough".)

2. To read your love's Mutavvel each night in the cell of the heart, my soul is enough as a guide and my body as a mat spread beneath me. (The Mutavvel is Taftazani's commentary on rhetoric; its name also means "long". "Cell" is a madrasa room, and bûriyâ is a mat spread on the floor. The lover is likened to a poor student who reads love through the nights like a long textbook.)

3. If your aim is to scold me and drive me away, my tears have passed all bounds and risen over my head; if it is to torment me, it has reached my very life. O stealer of hearts, enough. (Zecr means rebuke, prohibition. "Passing bounds" and water "rising over the head" come together in the same line.)

4. In this world I am the one who sees your wrath, and the rival sees your kindness. O faithless one, if your aim is to kill the lover, this much is enough.

5. By rubbing my face on your footprints I have become familiar with them; to be with your dogs in your street is enough for this afflicted lover of yours. (The lover is content to be counted with the dogs that wait at the beloved's door.)

6. O Necâtî, if you want a mat for a bed, so be it; for Mihrî, a bare place at the beloved's threshold is enough. (Necâtî had said in one of his couplets that a mat was enough for him as cover and bed; Mihrî says she is content with less, a bare spot at the beloved's door. Câ means "place"; it has been suggested that the word may also be read as "sack".)

7. With a single grain the beloved's lock trapped the bird of my heart; that grain is enough food for me in this world for as long as I live. (The lock is likened to a snare, and the beauty mark in it to the grain of bait that draws the bird to the snare.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal stands forty-sixth in the Harfü'r-Râ section of the divan, where poems ending in the letter re are gathered, and has seven couplets. It is written in the metre "Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is "yeter" ("is enough"), repeated at the end of every couplet; the rhyme rests on the sound "-â": saña, baña, bûriyâ, dil-rübâ, bî-vefâ, mübtelâ, câ, ġıdâ. A notable structural feature of the ghazal is that the pen name (mahlas) does not stand in the last couplet but in the one before it. The name Mihrî occurs in the sixth couplet, which addresses Necâtî; the seventh couplet comes after the pen name. The ghazal is found in all four manuscripts; in manuscript Ü the phrase "cân delîl ü tenüm" in the second line of the second couplet appears only as "cân".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The poem is built on the different senses of the redif "yeter". In some couplets the word means "keeps pace, is a match", in others "is sufficient"; in the third and fourth couplets it carries a reproach that says "this much is enough now". In the third couplet the use of "yetdi" and "yeter" one after the other strengthens this reproach. The tears passing bounds and rising over the head rests on the divan-poetry image of the lover's tears swelling like a flood. Kaya mentions this couplet among those in which longing turns the lover's liver to blood, cruelty bends his back and he finally rebels.

The second couplet is the richest of the ghazal. Kaya notes that in it the heart is likened to a cell because of its narrowness and lack of light. A congruence of images (tenasüp) is built among the madrasa room, the textbook read through the night, the book's title Mutavvel and the mat spread in the room. The soul becomes the guide and the body the mat; the lover reads love like a student reading a long rhetorical commentary. That the title means "long" also recalls the unending nights of love. The word bûriyâ in the same couplet foreshadows the answer given to Necâtî in the sixth.

In the last couplet the lock is imagined as a hunter and the heart as the bird that is caught. Kaya gives this couplet as an example of the lock catching the heart-bird, sometimes with the help of a net and sometimes with the beauty mark pictured as a grain. The lover does not complain of this hunt; the single grain in the trap becomes sustenance enough for a lifetime.

Historical Context

The sixth couplet of the ghazal stands at the centre of the biographical-anthology (tezkire) accounts of Mihrî's relationship with Necâtî. Âşık Çelebi begins his entry on Mihrî in Meşâ‘irü'ş-Şu‘arâ by describing the poet's boldness: "Egerçi zendür ammâ ol nâ-merd niçe merd-i meydâna cüfte-zendür." That is, she is a woman, but she kicks many a man of the field with both heels and leaves them behind. As an example Âşık Çelebi says that Mihrî "alluded" to Necâtî, that is, made a pointed jab, and first quotes Necâtî's couplet: "Tek yirde gökde zerre ḳadar minnet olmasun / Örti döşek Necâtiye bir bûriyâ yiter." In today's Turkish: may there be no obligation, not even the size of an atom, on earth or in heaven; a mat is enough for Necâtî as cover and bed. He then gives Mihrî's reply, the sixth couplet of this ghazal.

Necâtî's couplet is the last couplet of his ghazal with the redif "yeter" that begins "Dil kişverine zülf-i siyâhuñ belâ yeter". In his study placing twenty response poems by Mihrî to Necâtî side by side after surveying both divans, Metin Hakverdioğlu also compares these two ghazals. The two poems are written in the same metre with the same redif and rhyme scheme, so Mihrî's ghazal can be read as a nazire (response poem) to Necâtî's. Tuğba Bıyık likewise mentions this poem as a nazire Mihrî wrote to Necâtî.

The subtlety of the couplet lies in the comparison between bûriyâ and kurı câ. Necâtî expresses a self-sufficiency that owes nothing to anyone by being content with a mat. Mihrî takes this claim a step further: even a mat is a bed, whereas for her a bare place at the beloved's threshold is enough. According to Enes İlhan, Ömer Arslan determined that Mihrî achieved a successful iham (double meaning) in the phrase "kurı câ", that she caught the iham in Necâtî's word "bûriyâ", and that she thereby made a claim to poetic standing. Bıyık, for her part, argues that the first meaning of "câ" is "place", but that in context, by association with the word "cağ" (a large sack) in Anatolian dialects, it can also be understood as "dry sack"; in this reading an antithesis is set up between a comfortable bed and a coarse dry sack.

İlhan treats this couplet together with Necâtî's quatrain-like piece (kıt‘a) beginning "Ey benüm şi‘rüme naẓîre diyen". According to Latîfî, Necâtî wrote this kıt‘a for Mihrî. İlhan says that when the two tezkire texts are set side by side, Necâtî's retort may have arisen not merely from Mihrî's writing a nazire but from her seeing herself at the same level as Necâtî and hinting at it in pointed words. The same researcher, however, treats this report with suspicion because he found, in one manuscript of Necâtî's Divan, a note that the kıt‘a was written to Revânî. In that case, it is plainly written in the tezkire that the sixth couplet of the ghazal was a jab at Necâtî; that Necâtî answered it with the kıt‘a is a disputed report.

Mihrî is known to mention Necâtî in three places in her divan: this ghazal, ghazal 160, and a tahmis (five-line expansion) written on a ghazal by Necâtî. In this ghazal the poet takes up the great master's words and answers them in the same metre and with the same redif, with a reply that is more modest in appearance but bolder in substance. That Âşık Çelebi chose this couplet as evidence of Mihrî's daring in competing with male poets shows how attentively the readers of the age recorded this voice of a woman poet.

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