Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ġamzeñ ġarażı cân ise cânâ ne tekellüf
Başumda senüñ cân daḫi cânâna tekellüf
Ger sen ḳılasın dost ser-i zülfüñi çevgân
Ben daḫi ḳılam başumı meydâna tekellüf
Geldükçe ḫayâlüñ dile mihmân ṭutar elde
Ḫûn-ı cigerümle ṭolu peymâne tekellüf
Kûyuñda raḳîbüñi aṣayduḳ boġazından
İt degmeñüz olmaz yazuḳ urġana tekellüf
Mihrî saña biñ cân diler iseñ virür ey dost
Bir bûse vire send'aña rindâne tekellüf

In English

1. If the aim of your glance is my life, my beloved, what trouble is that (tekellüf)? My head is yours; even the soul is a courtesy (tekellüf) offered to the beloved. (Tekellüf is used here both for "trouble, burden" and for "hospitality, gift.")

2. O friend, if you make the tip of your lock of hair a çevgân (the crook-ended stick used to strike the ball in the game of cirit), I too offer my head to the field as the ball, no trouble (tekellüf) at all.

3. Whenever your image comes to the heart as a guest, the heart takes in hand, as its courtesy (tekellüf), a cup filled with the blood of my liver.

4. In your quarter we would hang your rival by the throat; but that dog is not worth it, and it would be a pity to spend the rope on him; no need for ceremony (tekellüf). (The second line can be understood in two ways: it can also be read as "you must not touch the dog, it is a pity to trouble the rope"; in both readings the rival is seen as too worthless even to be hanged.)

5. O friend, if you wish, Mihrî will give you a thousand lives; and you, in the manner of a free-spirited rind, grant her a kiss as a courtesy (tekellüf).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The seventy-fifth ghazal (gazel) of the divan stands in the section Ḥarfü'l-Fâ and consists of five couplets (beyit). It is written in the hezec foot of aruz (quantitative metre) in the pattern "Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fa‘ûlün." The redif (refrain word) is the Arabic-derived word "tekellüf"; the rhyme is the sound "-âne/-âna" (cânâ ne, cânâna, meydâna, peymâne, urġana, rindâne). In the table of Sıtkı Nazik showing the refrains in Mihrî's divan, the refrain "tekellüf" appears only in this ghazal. The ghazal is found in all four manuscripts (F 50a, M 70a, S 52a, Ü 44a). The F manuscript reads "bîmâr" in place of "peymâne" in the third couplet. Nothing is known about whom it was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The whole subtlety of the ghazal rests on the breadth of meaning of the refrain. "Tekellüf" means doing a task by putting up with trouble, a burden, and also means offering a guest careful hospitality, presenting someone with a gift. Mihrî uses the refrain so that it goes back and forth between these two meanings. In the opening couplet the question "ne tekellüf" means "what trouble is there in this"; in the second line of the same couplet the soul becomes a courtesy offered to the beloved. The words "cânâ ne" at the end of the first line and "cânâna" at the end of the second are very close to each other in sound; in the texts of Havlioğlu and Gemici both lines end in "cânâ ne tekellüf." Sabiha Gemici says that in some of her poems in which Mihrî describes the torments of love she does not use a weary expression, that in these poems she speaks with self-confidence like a cheerful, lively woman, and among her examples she gives the opening couplet of this ghazal.

The second couplet is a picture of a game loved in divan poetry. The curved tip of the beloved's hair is likened to the çevgân, the lover's head to the ball, and the space before the beloved to the playing field. Gülşen Kaya notes that the çevgân, likened to hair by its length and the curl of its tip, is also mentioned for the comparison of the lover's head to the ball, and she cites this couplet as an example. The words çevgân, ball and field form a congruence of images (tenasüp); and the idiom of putting one's head on the field also carries the meaning of risking one's life.

In the third couplet the heart is a house, and the beloved's image is the guest of that house. The drink offered to the guest is a cup filled with the lover's liver blood. Kaya notes that the guest (misafir) is generally used for the image of the beloved who is a guest in the lover's house of the heart, that the guest is treated well, and that in this couplet the hospitality is a cup filled with liver blood. Here "tekellüf" plainly means hospitality.

The fourth couplet is the harshest and the closest to popular speech in the ghazal. The rival is a dog roaming in the beloved's quarter; it is possible to hang him by the throat, but it is a pity for the rope. Kaya cites this couplet when describing how the rival is called a dog because of his being seen as worthless, and how stoning the accursed dog and tying their necks with a rope are mentioned. The contempt for the rival reaches the flavour of a satire (hiciv) by saying that he is not even worth hanging.

In the closing couplet Mihrî sets her own generosity against the beloved's stinginess: she is ready to give a thousand lives, and what she asks in return is only a kiss. The word "rindâne" describes an unpretentious, relaxed and generous manner. Gemici notes that in this line the verb "vire" is shortened for the metre and that the sentence should be thought of in the form "viresin"; and "send'aña" is the fused form of the words "sen de aña" for the sake of the metre.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publications (Cultural Works Series 576), 2018, p. 91, Ghazal 75 (F 50a, M 70a, S 52a, Ü 44a).
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral dissertation, Uludağ University, Balıkesir 1990, pp. 25-26, 336, 508-509 (ghazal 77 in Gemici).

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat University Institute of Social Sciences, Elazığ 2010, pp. 102, 141, 280. 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. 133-148 (table of refrains).

Books

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ġazeliyyât-ı Mihrî-i Ḥaḳîre, OTAP electronic edition, ghazal 77 (text published on the türkoloji-iran page, 2007).

Online sources