Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Dil virdim ise saña i cân böyle mi gerek
Her demde çeşmüñ eyleye ḳan böyle mi gerek
Terk itdüñ itmezem dir iken mübtelâñı âh
Ḫûblar içinde ‘ahd ü emân böyle mi gerek
Ḳavlüñ benümle göñlüm alınca mıdı i yâr
Döndüresin yüzüñi revân böyle mi gerek
Sen bî-vefâyı sevdüm ise kâfir olmadum
Nâz u ‘itâb u cevr hemân böyle mi gerek
Bî-çâre Mihr'e müşteri iken ḳamu ünâs
Bend'itdi ise saña zamân böyle mi gerek

In English

1. O soul, if I have given you my heart, should it be like this: that your eye sheds blood at every moment? (The beloved's eye wounds the lover with its glance, and the lover's eye weeps tears of blood. The line is open to both meanings.)

2. Ah, while you said "I will not leave you", you abandoned your devotee; among beauties, is this how a promise and a pledge of safety should be?

3. Was your word to me only until you won my heart, O beloved? As soon as you had it, should you turn your face away at once like this?

4. If I loved you, faithless as you are, I did not become an unbeliever; should coquetry, reproach and cruelty go on just like this?

5. While all people were suitors for poor Mihr, if time (fortune) has bound him to you, should (your treatment of me) be like this? (The pen name appears here in the shortened form "Mihr"; "mihr" means sun, and "müşteri" means both buyer and the planet Jupiter.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The eighty-sixth ghazal of the Divan has five couplets and is written in the muzari metre of the aruz, in the pattern "Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün". The redif of the ghazal is the question "böyle mi gerek" (should it be like this?) and every couplet ends with this question; the rhyme rests on the sound "-ân" (cân, ḳan, emân, revân, hemân, zamân). The poem is found in all four manuscripts used by Arslan (F, M, S, Ü). Nothing is known about whom it was written for.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal is a poem of reproach. The question in the redif, "should it be like this?", is a question whose answer is known, and it is repeated in each couplet to condemn another of the beloved's actions. Over five couplets the same question, tied to different wrongs, becomes a list of complaints: making one who gave her heart shed blood, leaving while saying "I will not leave", turning away once the heart is won, treating one who loves with coquetry and cruelty. The figure of question (istifham) here serves to express hurt and astonishment.

In the first couplet the words "dil" (heart), "cân" (soul) and "çeşm" (eye) come together. Sabiha Gemici cites this line among her examples of sentences in which the elements of a compound verb change places for the sake of the metre: "eyleye ḳan" is said in place of "ḳan eyleye". The beloved's eye "making blood" can be understood in two ways: the beloved wounds the lover with her glance and sheds her blood, or she makes the lover's eyes weep bloody tears. In the second couplet the promise the beloved gave and the path she took are set against each other; the words "itmezem dir iken terk itdüñ" (while saying "I will not", you left) show this contradiction openly through the repetition of "terk". "‘Ahd ü emân" also carries a legal association, giving a promise and granting safety to a life, and recalls that a given word should be a guarantee.

The third couplet implies that the beloved's word was given only to win the heart. The word "revân" here means "at once, immediately" and stresses the speed of the turning away. In the fourth couplet the lover admits that the one she loves is faithless, but says that this is no crime and that loving her did not make her an unbeliever. In divan poetry love for the beloved is often expressed in the language of religion or belief; here the words "kâfir olmadum" (I did not become an unbeliever) are a defense made against a beloved who punishes the lover's love as if it were a crime. The words "nâz", "‘itâb" (reproach) and "cevr" (cruelty) then list in succession the beloved's familiar attitudes.

The closing couplet is the most artful of the ghazal. The poet shortens her pen name to "Mihr" for the sake of the metre (Gemici cites this couplet among the examples in which the structure of a word is broken by the metre; in her text, based on the Ü manuscript, the second line begins "Bende etdiyise" and means "if he made [me] a slave") and places it beside the word "müşteri". "Mihr" is the sun, while "müşteri" means a buyer, a suitor, and is also the name of a planet, Jupiter. The meeting of the names of two heavenly bodies in the same line is a congruence of images (tenasüp), and the use of "müşteri" in both its meanings is a double entendre (tevriye). Gülşen Kaya says that in the Divan "müşteri" refers to the lover, and she draws attention to the fact that in this couplet Mihrî says that most people were once "müşteri", suitors, to her, but now she is "bend", bound, to the beloved. In this way the poet recalls that she too was once sought after, and ends her reproach with this pride: she cannot accept being treated like this, when she whom all people wanted has been bound to the beloved by time.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, pp. 96-97, Ghazal 86 (F 54a, M 75b, S 56a, Ü 48b). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 91-92. 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 89).

Online sources