Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilâtün Mefâ‘ilün Fe‘ilün

Depele ey raḳîb gel beni dek
Dâmeninden ḥabîbimüñ el çek
Ḳapusından ḳaçan gidesin âh
Meger Allâh ala seni tîzcek
Beni öldür raḳîbe raḥm it yâr
Bu mıdur ‘âdetüñ eyü gökçek
Kime ḥâlüm didümse ḥaḳḳuñda
Bî-vefâ dirler idi hep gerçek
Mihrî'yi ġamzeñ itdi ḳanına ġarḳ
Dostum yâresine gel nemek ek

In English

1. O rival, come, kick me (but) take your hand off my beloved's hem. (The word at the end of the first line differs among the manuscripts: the edition reads "dek", the Ü manuscript "tek" and the F manuscript "dög"; in Sabiha Gemici's text, which follows the Ü manuscript, the word is also "tek". With the reading "tek" the line means "come, kick only me", with "dög" "come, beat me"; "dek" has the old Turkish sense of "quietly, at ease" and permits the line to be read "come, kick me and then keep still".)

2. Ah, when will you go from her door? Unless God takes your life quickly, then you may go. (It is said that the rival will leave the beloved's door only through death; the second line is a curse formula.)

3. O beloved, kill me, but show mercy to the rival; is this your custom, O good and beautiful one? (The address "eyü gökçek", good and beautiful, is spoken with bitter mockery.)

4. Whomever I told of my state concerning you, they all used to say "She is faithless"; it was true.

5. Your coquettish glance has drowned Mihrî in her blood; my friend, come and add some salt to her wound. (Rubbing salt in a wound increases the pain; the lover asks the beloved to complete the pain.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The eighty-fifth ghazal of the Divan has five couplets and is written in the hafif metre of the aruz, in the pattern "Fe‘ilâtün Mefâ‘ilün Fe‘ilün". This pattern makes the lines short and quick; the ghazal accordingly moves with firm sentences close to speech, in keeping with this brevity. There is no redif; the rhyme rests on the sounds "-ek / -çek" (dek, el çek, tîzcek, gökçek, gerçek, nemek ek). Turkish words such as "tîzcek" (quickly) in the second couplet, "gökçek" (beautiful) in the third and "gerçek" (true) in the fourth carry the rhyme, while in the first and last couplets the rhyme is formed by two-word phrases such as "el çek" and "nemek ek". The poem is found in all four manuscripts used by Arslan (F, M, S, Ü). It is not known whom it was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the rival. In divan poetry the rival is the person who comes between the lover and the beloved, never leaves the beloved's door, and is held to be the cause of all the lover's troubles. Mihrî begins by addressing this figure directly: "O rival, come, kick me, but take your hand off my beloved's hem." The lover counts her own life as nothing, as long as the rival keeps away from the beloved. Clinging to the hem and withdrawing the hand from the hem are familiar expressions in divan poetry for closeness to and distance from the beloved.

In the second couplet the voice hardens and becomes a curse formula. The lover asks when the rival will leave the beloved's door and answers herself: when God takes his life quickly. Gülşen Kaya says that in the Divan the rival is seen as the lover's nightmare and as a strife that spoils the relation with the beloved, and that the lover always speaks of him in negative words, and she cites this couplet.

In the third couplet the address turns to the beloved. The beloved kills the lover but shows mercy to the rival; the lover asks, "Is this your custom, O good beauty?" Addressing the beloved as "eyü gökçek" (good, beautiful) is a bitter reproach made with a praise she does not deserve; this manner of speaking is an example of tarîz, the barbed use of a word in the opposite of its real sense. The fourth couplet ties this reproach to the testimony of others: to whomever the lover opened her grief, that person said the beloved was faithless, and now it has turned out to be true.

In the closing couplet the beloved's ghamze (sidelong glance) has drowned Mihrî in her blood. The ghamze is the beloved's sidelong look and in divan poetry is thought of as a weapon that wounds the lover. The lover does not ask for a balm for this wound; she addresses the beloved as "my friend" and asks her to add salt to her wound. Kaya notes that among the remedies for troubles in the Divan, rubbing salt in the wound is also mentioned in this couplet. The idiom "yaraya tuz basmak" expresses increasing pain; that the lover asks for it herself expresses a conception of love that accepts everything from the beloved, even pain. The juxtaposition of blood and salt creates a congruence of images (tenasüp) in the couplet.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 96, Ghazal 85 (F 55a, M 76b, S 57a, Ü 48a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 99, 246. openaccess.firat.edu.tr
  • Sabiha Gemici, Mihrî Hatun Divanı: Karşılaştırmalı Metin, Cümle Yapısı ve Cümle Türleri, doctoral thesis, Uludağ Üniversitesi, Balıkesir 1990 (comparative text of the ghazal, poem 88).

Online sources