Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün

Cân bülbüli itdükçe sen ġonca-dehândan ḥaẓ
İtmedi cihân içre bir bâġ-ı cinândan ḥaẓ
Ey ehl-i ṣafâ cehd it ‘aşḳ ile geçür ‘ömri
Bulmaḳ diler iseñ ger cân ile cihândan ḥaẓ
Tîr-i müjeñi cânâ atsun ḳo kemân-ebrûñ
Eyler bu dil ü cânum ol tîr ü kemândan ḥaẓ
Gülzâr-ı cemâlüñi bozdı mı ṣanur ḫaṭṭuñ
İtmez mi ṣafâ ehli hey vaḳt-i ḫazândan ḥaẓ
Çeşmi dir imiş Mihri'ñ cânın ḳıluram yaġmâ
İtsün iderüz ġâyet hey biz bu ziyândan ḥaẓ

In English

1. Since the nightingale of the soul has taken pleasure in you, the bud-mouthed one, it has taken no such pleasure in any paradise garden in the world. (A bud mouth is a mouth that is admired for being small and closed. In Hakverdioğlu's text "itdükçe" is read as "ötdikçe"; the first line is then understood as "whenever the nightingale of the soul sings for you, the bud-mouthed one.")

2. O you who seek the joy of the heart, strive to spend your life in love, if you wish to find pleasure from both the soul and the world.

3. O beloved, let your bow-like eyebrow shoot the arrow of your lashes; this heart and soul of mine take pleasure in that arrow and that bow alike.

4. Does the down on your face think it has spoiled the rose garden of your face? Do the people of the heart not take pleasure in the season of autumn as well? (In divan poetry the first down that appears on the beloved's face is regarded as the end of the spring of beauty; the poet says that this does not diminish beauty.)

5. Her eye is said to be saying, "I will plunder Mihrî's soul." Let it; we take the greatest pleasure in this loss.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The seventieth ghazal (gazel) of the divan stands in the section Ḥarfü'z-Zâ and consists of five couplets (beyit). It is written in the hezec foot of aruz (quantitative metre) in the pattern "Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün"; because this pattern divides every line into two equal halves, it gives the poem a flowing rhythm close to song. The redif (refrain word) is "-dan ḥaẓ," and the rhyme is the sound "-ân" (dehân, cinân, cihân, kemân, ḫazân, ziyân). The ghazal is found in all four manuscripts on which the edition rests (F 48b, M 69a, S 51a, Ü 43a). The differences between manuscripts are small: the F manuscript reads "dehenden" in place of "dehândan" in the first couplet, and the Ü manuscript reads "her" in place of "hey" in the fourth. Didem Havlioğlu's electronic text also prefers the reading "her vaḳt" in the fourth couplet; with this reading the line means "do the people of the heart not take pleasure in autumn at all times?"

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The idea that ties all the couplets of the ghazal together is that the true lover will take pleasure in everything that belongs to the beloved, even in pain and loss. In the first couplet the soul is likened to a nightingale and the beloved's mouth to a bud. Rose and nightingale are the best-known pair in divan poetry; here the pleasure given by the bud mouth is set above the pleasure of the garden of paradise (bâġ-ı cinân). The relation among the words nightingale, bud and garden forms the figure of congruence of images (tenasüp).

The second couplet is advice addressed less to the beloved than to the reader, the "ehl-i ṣafâ" (people of joy): the way to take pleasure from both the soul and the world is to spend one's life in love. In the third couplet the eyebrow is likened to a bow and the lash to an arrow. The lover does not flee this arrow; on the contrary, arrow and bow are a source of pleasure to her. That the words "tîr" and "kemân" appear separately in the first line and side by side in the second ties the two halves of the couplet together.

The fourth couplet carries the finest conceit of the ghazal. The appearance of down (ḫaṭ) on the beloved's face is thought of in divan poetry as the end of the spring of beauty and the coming of autumn. Gülşen Kaya cites this couplet among the examples in which autumn describes the end of beauty, and notes that the down appearing on the beloved's face, a rose garden, is likened to the brushwood that appears in autumn. Mihrî, however, turns this expectation upside down: if the down thinks it has spoiled the face, it is mistaken, because the people of the heart like autumn as well. The contrast between spring and autumn is the figure of antithesis (tezat), and since the answer to the question is obvious, the couplet is built on a rhetorical question (istifham-ı inkârî).

In the closing couplet the beloved's eye is made to speak like a raider plundering lives. Mihrî submits to this threat and even counts it a gain: to lose one's life is a loss, but this loss too gives pleasure. That the words "ziyân" (loss) and "ḥaẓ" (pleasure) meet in the same line carries the idea of taking pleasure in pain, which the ghazal has pursued from the start, to its final point.

Historical Context

This ghazal is a nazire (response poem) to a ghazal by Necâtî Bey, Mihrî's contemporary and, according to the tezkire (biographical anthologies of poets), the poet she took as her model. A nazire is a reply, written in the same metre, rhyme and refrain, to a poem that has been admired. In his study comparing the twenty nazires Mihrî wrote to Necâtî by going through both divans, Metin Hakverdioğlu sets this ghazal beside ghazal CCLIX of Necâtî's divan. Necâtî's ghazal is in the same metre and with the same rhyme and refrain "-ândan ḥaẓ," has seven couplets, and begins with the couplet "Doldur var iken sâḳî yâḳût-ı revândan ḥaẓ / Çün ‘ömr degül bâḳî al ḳût-ı revândan ḥaẓ."

The closeness between the two poems is not only one of form. The phrase "bâġ-ı cinândan ḥaẓ" in Necâtî's third couplet appears word for word in Mihrî's opening couplet. Necâtî mentions taking a share from the bow of the eyebrow (ḳaşı kemân) in one couplet, and in his last couplet the spring box tree that takes no pleasure in autumn leaves: "Ol serv Necâtînüñ baḳmaz yüzine zîrâ / Şimşâd-ı bahâr itmez evrâḳ-ı ḫazândan ḥaẓ." Mihrî too carries the bow of the eyebrow and autumn into her own ghazal, but this time ties autumn to the beloved's down and says that the people of the heart will take pleasure even in decline. Where in Necâtî spring turns its face from autumn, in Mihrî the lover is content with autumn as well. Hakverdioğlu says that Mihrî's ghazals are more successful than her kasides and the poems in the Tażarru‘-nâme, and that in her lines a lyricism is captured that some of Necâtî's ghazals lack. It is not known when the ghazal was written.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications (Cultural Works Series 576), 2018, pp. 88-89, Ghazal 70 (F 48b, M 69a, S 51a, Ü 43a).
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral dissertation, Uludağ University, Balıkesir 1990, pp. 505-506 (ghazal 72 in Gemici).

Academic studies

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Mihrî Hâtun'un Necâtî Bey'in Şiirlerine Nazîreleri", Turkish Studies 4/2 (Winter 2009), pp. 522-551 (comparison: Necâtî CCLIX / Mihrî LXXII, by the numbering of the author's own edition, pp. 531-532), doi:10.7827/TurkishStudies.638.
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat University Institute of Social Sciences, Elazığ 2010, p. 267. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Books

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ġazeliyyât-ı Mihrî-i Ḥaḳîre, OTAP electronic edition, ghazal 72 (text published on the türkoloji-iran page, 2007).

Online sources