Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Cürmüm nedür ki dilbere bizden ṣafâsı yoḳ
Ben bendesine ẕerrece meyl ü vefâsı yoḳ
Her bir ḫabîs̱ ile ṣalınur nice ölmeyem
Gördükçe beni yüz çevürür merḥabâsı yoḳ
‘Aşḳuñ esîri derd ile dermânda kim begüm
Alsañ bizüm de göñlümüz ele ḫaṭâsı yoḳ
Her bî-nevâya vaṣlı nevâsın ‘atâ ider
Ben bî-nevâya ẕerrece vaṣlı ‘aṭâsı yoḳ
Bu nev-bahâra bir gün olur kim ḫazân irer
Ġırr'olma ḥüsne sevdügüm âḫir beḳâsı yoḳ
Her mâh-rûy ‘âşıḳuñ âhı duḫânile
Hiç görmedük ki ṣoñra yüzinüñ ḳarası yoḳ
Atma Ḫalîl-veş beni odlara ey raḳîb
‘Āşıḳ bu yolda yanmaġa ṣanma rıżâsı yoḳ
Mihrî gerekse yolına cân vir gerek cihân
Oynar güler raḳîb ile senden ṣafâsı yoḳ
Ey dil hemîşe cevr ü cefâya taḥammül it
Ṣanma cihânda her kişinüñ bir belâsı yoḳ

In English

1. What is my offence, that the beloved has no goodwill toward us? She has not an atom of inclination or fidelity toward me, her servant.

2. She goes swaying about with every wretch; how should I not die? Whenever she sees me she turns her face away; she has not even a greeting.

3. O my lord, the captive of your love is caught between pain and remedy; if you took our heart too and got it into your hand, there would be no fault in that. (The couplet can be read in two ways: it can also be understood as a question, "who is the captive of your love, the one who is in both pain and remedy?")

4. To every destitute person she grants the bounty of her union; to me, the destitute, she grants not an atom of the gift of union.

5. One day autumn will come to this new spring; do not be deceived by beauty, my love, for in the end it has no permanence.

6. We have never seen a moon-faced beauty who met the smoke of a lover's sigh and afterwards had no black mark on her face. (The smoke of a sigh blackens the face with soot; "yüz karası" (blackness of face) also means shame, disgrace.)

7. Do not cast me into the fire like Abraham the Friend of God (Halîl), O rival; do not suppose that the lover has no consent to burn on this path. (That is, the lover is already willing to burn on the path of love.)

8. Mihrî, give your life for her path if you must, give the world too; she plays and laughs with the rival, and has no goodwill toward you.

9. O heart, always bear cruelty and torment; do not suppose that in this world everyone does not have a calamity of his own (everyone has some trouble).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The seventy-sixth ghazal (gazel) of the divan stands in the section Ḥarfü'l-Ḳâf and consists of nine couplets (beyit). It is written in the muzâri‘ foot of aruz (quantitative metre) in the pattern "Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün." The redif (refrain word) is "yoḳ" (there is not), and the rhyme, together with the possessive suffix, is the sound "-âsı" (ṣafâsı, vefâsı, merḥabâsı, ḫaṭâsı, ‘aṭâsı, beḳâsı, ḳarası, rıżâsı, belâsı). The ghazal is found in all four manuscripts (F 52b, M 73b, S 54b, Ü 44b), but the manuscripts differ in the order of the couplets: the fourth couplet is missing in the Ü manuscript, and the eighth and ninth couplets have exchanged places in the F and S manuscripts. In Arslan's text the couplet containing the pen name (mahlas) stands second from the end; in the F and S manuscripts, in keeping with the usual arrangement, the ghazal ends with the couplet containing the pen name. Havlioğlu's electronic text also follows this second order. Nothing is known about whom it was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal lines up the lover's complaint at the beloved's indifference in a series of "there is not": no goodwill, no fidelity, no greeting, no bounty of union. The opening couplet begins this complaint with a question: "What is my offence?" Where she describes being banned from the threshold of the beloved who is a king, Gülşen Kaya says that the lover, who is a servant, does not know her offence, while the beloved has not an atom of inclination or fidelity toward the lover. The beloved is thought of as a sultan and the lover as a "bende," a servant; the weight of the complaint comes from this inequality.

The third couplet rests on a conception on which Kaya also dwells: the lover who is a captive of love is always between pain and remedy, and both pain and remedy are the beloved. In the fourth couplet there is a word play between "bî-nevâ" (destitute) and "nevâ" (share, provision); the use side by side of words from the same root comes close to the figure of ishtiqaq (derivation). The repetition of the words "‘atâ" and "‘aṭâ" (gift) in both lines also sharpens the contrast in the couplet: what is given to everyone is withheld from the lover.

The fifth couplet adds a note of advice to the ghazal. The beloved's beauty is a new spring, but at the end of every spring autumn comes. Kaya notes that although beauty belongs to the beloved, it is transient, and that for this reason the beloved is advised not to be proud; she cites this couplet as an example. The contrast between spring and autumn is the figure of antithesis (tezat). In the sixth couplet the phrase "yüz karası" is a double entendre (tevriye): the smoke of the lover's sigh blackens the face with soot, and the same phrase also means shame and disgrace.

In the seventh couplet there is an allusion (telmih). Abraham was thrown into the fire by Nimrod because he did not worship idols, and the fire did not burn him. Kaya notes that in the divan Abraham is called by the name Halîl, that the lover is likened to Halîl and the rival to Nimrod, and she cites this couplet as an example. The lover says to the rival, do not throw me into the fire; but the second line turns this plea around: the lover is already willing to burn on the path of love. Thus the couplet expresses at once the rival's cruelty and the lover's submission.

The ghazal ends with a bitter observation about the beloved's playing and laughing with the rival, and with advice to the heart to be patient. The thought in the last couplet that "everyone has a calamity" takes the complaint out of being a personal grief and ties it to a general knowledge of life.

In his paper comparing the common refrains in the divans of Mihrî and her Amasya contemporary Tâcîzâde Ca‘fer Çelebi, Sıtkı Nazik shows that the refrain "-sı yoḳ" is found in both poets: in Mihrî in this ghazal, and in Ca‘fer Çelebi in four ghazals. Nazik prepared this table to investigate whether the two poets influenced each other; for this ghazal he makes no separate comparison.

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. 91-92, Ghazal 76 (F 52b, M 73b, S 54b, Ü 44b).
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral dissertation, Uludağ University, Balıkesir 1990, pp. 509-510 (ghazal 78 in Gemici).

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat University Institute of Social Sciences, Elazığ 2010, pp. 18, 121, 199. 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 poems with similar refrains, p. 140).

Books

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ġazeliyyât-ı Mihrî-i Ḥaḳîre, OTAP electronic edition, ghazal 78 (text published on the türkoloji-iran page, 2007).

Online sources