Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Şimdiden girü cihân ḫûblarınuñ varına yuf
Ḳurı da‘vâlar ile itdügi iḳrârına yuf
Eyü çekdük bularuñ cevr ü cefâsın be yüri
Nice bir yalvaralum yârına aġyârına yuf
Hey bu rîş-ḫandelerüñ bir başı vü biñ dil ile
‘Āşıḳın aldayıcı ḳavli yalan yârına yuf
Seveni sevmez ü bunlar ha sever sevmeyeni
Ḳo bu maḥbûblaruñ dünyede bî-‘ârına yuf
İ‘timâd itdügiçün ‘ahdine hercâyilerüñ
Mihrî'nüñ daḫi cihânda çürük efkârına yuf

In English

1. From now on, shame on all that the beauties of the world possess; shame on the promises they make with empty claims.

2. We have suffered enough of their cruelty and torment; come, be off with you. How long are we to beg? Shame on their beloved, and shame on their stranger too.

3. Hey, shame on these mockers (rîş-ḫand), with their one head and a thousand tongues, and on the beloved whose word deceives the lover and is false. ("One head, a thousand tongues": a single person speaking in a thousand ways, duplicity.)

4. They do not love the one who loves them, and, strange to say, they love the one who does not love them. Leave it; shame on the shamelessness of these beloveds in the world.

5. Because Mihrî trusted the pledge of the fickle (hercâyî, those faithless ones who give their hearts everywhere), shame also on her rotten thoughts in this world.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The seventy-fourth ghazal (gazel) of the divan stands in the section Ḥarfü'l-Fâ and consists of five couplets (beyit). It is written in the remel foot of aruz (quantitative metre) in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün." The redif (refrain word) is the exclamation "yuf," expressing blame and disgust; the rhyme is built on the sound "-âr," and together with the suffix "-ına" it repeats the same tune in every couplet (var, iḳrâr, aġyâr, yâr, bî-‘âr, efkâr). The ghazal is found in all four manuscripts (F 50a, M 70b, S 52a, Ü 44a). The differences between manuscripts are small: the F manuscript reads "yüri var" in place of "be yüri" in the second couplet, and F and M read "sevmez" in place of "sevmez ü" in the fourth. Nothing is known about whom it was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the divan ghazal the lover mostly submits to the beloved's cruelty and even takes pleasure in it. This ghazal expresses the exact opposite of that attitude: the lover is now fed up and cries "yuf" at all the beauties of the world. That the refrain is an exclamation turns the end of every couplet into an outburst of anger. In his paper on the refrains of Mihrî's divan, Sıtkı Nazik notes that the refrain "yuf" gives the feeling that storms of anger and hatred are breaking out; he writes that in the opening couplet the poet is angry at the inconsistency of the beauties of the world and shows her reaction by touching on their cruelty and torment, their refusing to show the lover a kind face, and their fickleness. In Nazik's table the refrain "yuf" appears in Mihrî's divan only in this ghazal.

The language of the ghazal is closer to speech than to the ornate expression of divan poetry. Words such as "be yüri" (come, be off with you), "ha" (there, strange to say) and "ḳo" (leave it) give the poem the voice of a person angrily rounding on someone. The "rîş-ḫand" in the third couplet means laughing at the beard, that is, making fun of someone; the phrase "one head and a thousand tongues" describes one person speaking in a thousand ways, the untrustworthiness of her word. The relation between "head" and "tongue" and the contrast between "one" and "thousand" make the couplet lively.

The fourth couplet is the centre of thought of the ghazal: the beauties do not love the one who loves them, and love the one who does not. That the words "seveni sevmez" and "sever sevmeyeni" are arranged crosswise is a manner of expression in which words are repeated in exchanged places, and it shows the perversity in the meaning in the form as well. Where she discusses the places in which Mihrî expresses the feelings of the world of women, Sabiha Gemici mentions the line "Seveni kendüleri sevmeğe iderler ‘âr" from another of her ghazals and says that in this line the poet is "only a woman." The same thought is found in the fourth couplet of this ghazal.

In the closing couplet the anger turns back on the poet herself. Mihrî says "yuf" to her own "rotten" thoughts, because she trusted the word of the faithless. This inner reckoning ensures that the ghazal does not remain the record of a moment of anger but closes with a mockery the poet directs at herself.

Where Gemici gives examples of couplets in the divan in which the poet appears with a personality that defies her surroundings and would not bring to mind that she is a woman, she counts the opening couplet of this ghazal as well. According to Gemici, this defiance is not surprising once one knows the personality of Mihrî as described in the tezkire (biographical anthologies of poets). The hard and outspoken language of the ghazal is one of the most evident traces of this personality in the divan; there is, however, no record that the poem was tied to a particular person or event.

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. 90-91, Ghazal 74 (F 50a, M 70b, S 52a, Ü 44a).
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral dissertation, Uludağ University, Balıkesir 1990, pp. 26-27, 507-508 (ghazal 76 in Gemici).

Academic studies

  • 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. 133-148 (especially pp. 137-138).

Books

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ġazeliyyât-ı Mihrî-i Ḥaḳîre, OTAP electronic edition, ghazal 76 (text published on the türkoloji-iran page, 2007).

Online sources