Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Oldı hengâm-ı bahâr irdi demi gülzâruñ
İmdi dil bülbüli artur demidür gel zâruñ
Varalum ṣaḥn-ı gülistânda temâşâ idelüm
Serv reftârını ṣalınduġını dil-dâruñ
Degeyüz şâyed ola bir ruḫı gül ġonca lebe
Çekmişüz cevr ü cefâsını hezârân ḫâruñ
Sînemüz def ḳıluban ḳâmetimüz çeng idelüm
Diñlesün yâr maḳâmâtı nedür edvâruñ
Müdde‘î olsa cihân ḫalḳı ḳamu bize ne ġam
Ger bizümle ola bir ẕerre vefâsı yâruñ
Dâmen-i vaṣlı ḥabîbüñ hele girsün elime
Ṭutmışam tîġ-ı belâsına boyun aġyâruñ
Gerçi noḳṣân ġazelsin leb-i yâri añıcaḳ
Ṭûṭiyi mât ider ey Mihrî şirîn-güftâruñ

In English

1. The season of spring has come, the time of the rose garden has arrived; O nightingale of the heart, now is exactly the moment to increase your wailing, come.

2. Let us go to the open ground of the rose garden and watch the beloved's cypress-like walk, her swaying gait.

3. Perhaps we deserve to reach someone with a rose-like cheek and a bud-like lip, for we have suffered the torment and cruelty of thousands of thorns. (The thorn guards the rose and wounds whoever wants it; here it stands for the hardships endured in order to reach the beloved.)

4. Let us make our breast a daf (frame drum) and our stature a chang (harp), (beating our breast like a drum and turning our bent bodies into a harp, let us lament); let the beloved listen and hear what the maqams and cycles are.

5. What grief is it to us if all the people of the world turn adversary and claimants against us, provided the beloved has even an atom of faithfulness toward us.

6. Let the hem of the beloved's union come into my hand at last; I have stretched my neck out to the sword of the rivals' affliction (I have risked every danger).

7. O Mihrî, although your ghazal is lacking when it recalls the beloved's lip, your sweet speech puts even the parrot in check. (The parrot, with its fondness for sugar and its talk, is the symbol of sweet speech. The line can also be read "you are a lacking ghazal"; the sense is again that words are not enough to describe the beloved's lip.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The eighty-second ghazal of the Divan has seven couplets and is written in the remel metre of the aruz, in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün". Its redif is the genitive suffix "-uñ" (-ın); the rhyme rests on the sound "-âr" (gülzâr, zâr, dil-dâr, ḫâr, edvâr, yâr, aġyâr, güftâr). The poem is found only in the Ü manuscript. Nothing is known about whom or on what occasion it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens as a spring poem. In divan poetry the arrival of spring, the opening of the rose garden and the increase of the nightingale's lament are parts of one scene; Mihrî sets this scene in the first couplet and likens the heart to the nightingale. Gülşen Kaya notes that the nightingale is the foremost of the similes used for the heart in the Divan, and that the heart-nightingale increases its lament with the coming of spring, and she cites this couplet. The sound play of the couplet is also notable: "gülzâruñ" at the end of the first line and "gel zâruñ" at the end of the second carry almost the same sounds. The words "demi" and "demidür" are also repeated across the two lines and strengthen the feeling that the time has come. Sound similarity of this kind approaches the figure of cinas (wordplay on similar-sounding words).

In the second and third couplets the speaker invites us on a spring walk: we will go to the rose garden and watch the cypress-tall beloved sway. The cypress is the familiar counterpart in divan poetry of a tall, straight stature; together with the word "reftâr" (gait) it describes the beloved's movement. The contrast in the third couplet between "rose cheek, bud lip" and "thousands of thorns" conveys, through the old relation between rose and thorn, the idea that union is won through suffering.

The fourth couplet is the richest of the ghazal. The breast will be a daf and the stature a chang, and the beloved will listen to find out what "maḳâmât" and "edvâr" are. Daf and chang are names of instruments, while maqam and edvar are terms describing the melodic and rhythmic order of music. Because the words are all chosen from the field of music, the couplet has a marked congruence of images (tenasüp). At the same time, beating the breast like a drum expresses the gesture of mourning and pain, and bending the stature like a harp expresses being bent double with grief; thus the terms of music become the sound of the lover's suffering. Kaya also notes that Mihrî's ghazal 150, which describes the princely gathering at Eğribük, contains a description of a gathering woven with musical terms; in this ghazal, however, music is built not in a gathering but in the lover's own body.

The fifth and sixth couplets describe the lover's determination. Even if all the people of the world oppose her, an atom of the beloved's faithfulness is enough. Kaya takes the sixth couplet as an example of union being thought of as holding the beloved's hem: so that the "dâmen-i vaṣl" (hem of union) may come into the hand, the lover is ready to stretch her neck to the rivals' sword.

The closing couplet turns to the poet's own words. The ghazal falls short in describing the beloved's lip, but Mihrî's "şirîn-güftâr", her sweet speech, puts even the parrot in check. In divan poetry the parrot is the bird that is fed sugar and talks; Kaya records that in another couplet of Mihrî the heart is likened to a parrot and it is said that recalling the beloved's lip suffices as its sugar. In this ghazal too, as the lip is mentioned, the parrot and the word "şirîn" (sweet) meet in the same field. In the text published by Didem Havlioğlu the beginning of the line reads "noḳṣān-ı ġazelsün"; this reading brings forward the sense that the deficiency lies in the ghazal that describes the beloved. The poet on one hand says her words are inadequate and on the other boasts of the sweetness of her speech; this boasting is a form of praise of the poet that is frequent in the closing couplets of divan poetry.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 95, Ghazal 82 (Ü 47a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 79, 212, 238, 293. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Books

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ğazeliyyāt-ı Mihrī, OTAP electronic edition, 2007 (transliteration published on the türkoloji-iran site, ghazal 84).

Online sources