Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fa‘ûlün

Ḥasret cigerüm derd ile ḳan itmemek olmaz
Miḥnet belümi devr-i kemân itmemek olmaz
Göz yaşını ḳaddüñ görüp ey serv-i revânum
Yüz ṣuyıla sen serve revân itmemek olmaz
Fettân gözüñüñ ḳaṣdı dil ü cân imiş ey dost
Tîr-i müjeñe sîne nişân itmemek olmaz
Per yaḳmada pervâne-ṣıfat şem‘-i ruḫuñda
‘Aşḳuñ beni üstâd-ı cihân itmemek olmaz
Gülşende görürsin güli her ḫâr ile Mihrî
Tâ ṣubḥa degin âh u fiġân itmemek olmaz

In English

1. Longing cannot but turn my liver to blood with grief; hardship cannot but bend my waist into a bow. ("Cannot but" means it surely does so; it is inevitable.)

2. O swaying cypress of mine, on seeing your stature my tears cannot but flow toward your cypress form with the water of my face. (The cypress grows by water; "revân" means both "flowing" and "walking." "Yüz suyu," "face water," is both the tears running down the face and the idiom "yüzü suyu hürmetine," "for the sake of one's honour"; the couplet can be read with both meanings.)

3. O friend, the aim of your bewitching eye was heart and soul; I cannot but make my breast the target of the arrow of your lashes.

4. Burning my wings like a moth at the candle of your cheek, your love cannot but make me the master of the world.

5. Mihrî, in the rose garden you see the rose together with every thorn; you cannot but sigh and lament until morning. (The rose is the beloved, the thorn is the rival; the lover groans until dawn like a nightingale.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The fifty-eighth ghazal (gazel) of the divan has five couplets (beyit) and is composed in the aruz (quantitative metre) pattern "Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fa‘ûlün". The rhyme is the sound "-ân" (ḳan, kemân, revân, nişân, cihân, fiġân), and the redif (refrain word) is "itmemek olmaz". The redif asserts certainty by linking a negative with a negative: "etmemek olmaz" means "it surely does so; no other course is conceivable." Each couplet thus lists an inevitable consequence of love. The ghazal is found in all four manuscripts (F 46a, M 64b, S 48a, Ü 40b); in Havlioğlu's OTAP text it is ghazal 60. It is not known to whom it was addressed.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet personifies longing and hardship: one turns the liver to blood, the other bends the waist. "Devr-i kemân" means the arc of a bow; the lover whose waist is bent becomes a bow, and elsewhere in divan poetry the beloved's eyebrow is likened to a bow. The second couplet carries the densest image of the ghazal. Gülşen Kaya cites it in her entry on the cypress among the examples in which the beloved is named directly as a cypress; in her entry on tears she explains the same couplet, noting that in the divan tears are mentioned in relation to the cypress and water, and that with the thought of the beloved's cypress stature the tears become "revân" and are poured at the cypress's feet. Kaya observes that the expression "yüz suyu" is used as an idiom while also describing tears. The play of sound and meaning between "serv-i revân" (swaying cypress) and "revân itmek" (to make flow) builds the couplet on tevriye (double entendre) and jinas (punning).

In the third couplet the eye is bewitching (fettân), the lashes are arrows, and the breast becomes the target of these arrows. The words eye, lash, arrow and target call one another up (tenasüp, congruence of images). The fourth couplet works the candle and moth image. Kaya cites this couplet together with the third couplet of ghazal 56 and says that the lover has become so skilled at burning his wings like a moth at the candle of the beloved's cheek that he is "the master of the world" on this path; in the section on types of lovers she repeats that the lover is regarded as the world's master in burning his wings. The lover's treating suffering as a matter of mastery turns his complaint into a boast.

The closing couplet ends with the rose garden scene. To see the rose together with every thorn is for the beloved to be found with every rival; faced with this, the lover moans until morning like a nightingale. Thus the nightingale, not openly named in the first line of the couplet, reveals itself in the "âh u fiġân" of the second line.

In comparing similar redifs in Mihrî's divan and in the divan of Tâcî-zâde Cafer Çelebi, Sıtkı Nazik shows the redif "itmemek olmaz" of this ghazal on the same line as Cafer Çelebi's ghazal 72 with the redif "olmaz"; he does not speak of a nazire (response poem) relationship between the two poems.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 81, Ghazal 58 (F 46a, M 64b, S 48a, Ü 40b). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 134, 194, 201, 223 (entries on the cypress, the moth, types of lovers and tears). openaccess.firat.edu.tr
  • 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. 137, 140 (redif tables: "itmemek olmaz", G.58).

Books

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ġazeliyyât-ı Mihrî-i Ḥaḳîre, OTAP electronic edition, ghazal 60 (text published on the türkoloji-iran page, 2007).

Online sources