Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâ‘îlün Mefâ‘îlün Mefâ‘îlün Mefâ‘îlün

Ṣalaldan boynuma ḥalḳa kemend-i zülf-i müşgînüñ
Siyeh-baḫt olmaḳ oldı kâr u bârı cân-ı miskînüñ
Gözüm yaşını ḳan itdüñ beni bî-‘aḳl u cân itdüñ
Velî ben ḫasteden ey dost hergiz kesmedüñ kînüñ
Raḳîbâ beni men‘ itme nigâruñ ḫâk-i pâyinden
Eger men‘ ider iseñ bil ne dînüñ var ne âyînüñ
Ölince çünki el çekmez göñül dildâr mihrinden
Şifâ virmez baña hergiz senüñ ey şeyḫ telḳînüñ
Görelden Mihrî ḫaddüñle semen-sîmâñı ey meh-rû
Başından çıḳdı sevdâsı gül-i serv ile nesrînüñ

In English

1. Ever since the lasso of your musk-scented lock coiled around my neck in rings, being ill-fated has become the whole business of my poor soul. ("Miskîn" is understood both as "poor" and as "musk-scented"; "müşgîn" means both musk-scented and jet black.)

2. You turned my tears to blood, you left me without reason and life; yet, my friend, you never ceased your grudge against me, the sick one. (The M manuscript has "gitmedi" in place of "kesmedüñ": "your grudge never went away".)

3. O rival, do not keep me from the dust under my beloved's feet. If you do, know that you have neither religion nor way. ("Âyîn" means custom and rule; in the F manuscript the word is replaced by "îmânuñ", "your faith".)

4. Since the heart will not withdraw from love of the beloved until it dies, your telkin, O sheikh, will never bring me healing. ("Mihr" means love and calls to mind the poet's pen name Mihrî. "Telkin" means both giving counsel and the prayer recited at the graveside after the dead are buried.)

5. O moon-faced one, ever since Mihrî saw your cheek and your jasmine-white face, the passion for the rose, the cypress and the nesrîn (wild rose) has left her head. (The F and S manuscripts read "gül ü serv" in place of "gül-i serv"; in this reading the rose, the cypress and the nesrîn are counted as three separate flowers and trees.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The eighty-ninth ghazal of the Divan has five couplets and is written in the hezec metre of the aruz, in the pattern "Mefâ‘îlün Mefâ‘îlün Mefâ‘îlün Mefâ‘îlün". The ghazal is a verse form that treats love and beauty, whose first couplet has both lines rhymed, and whose last couplet carries the poet's pen name. The rhyme rests on the sound "-în" (müşgîn, miskîn, kîn, âyîn, telḳîn, nesrîn); the second-person possessive suffix "-üñ/-uñ" added to them serves as the redif. The repetition of the long "î" at the end of each line, joined with the four-equal-part flow of the hezec metre, determines the melody the ghazal leaves in the ear. The poem is found in all four manuscripts (F 53b, M 75a, S 56a, Ü 49a). There is no record of whom or on what occasion it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet joins two great images of hair in divan poetry: the lock is a lasso and the lock is black. The lasso (kemend) is a long rope with a loop at its end, the tool of the hunter or the warrior, and the beloved's lock has coiled around the lover's neck in the same way. The lock's musky scent and blackness pass to the lover's fortune, and the soul becomes "siyeh-baht", black-fortuned. Gülşen Kaya mentions this couplet in two places in her thesis. In one she shows that the soul in the Divan is thought of as "cân-ı miskîn" through the relation of the lock with musk; in the other she gives the couplet as an example of the objects most often mentioned in the Divan: rope, lasso, cord and ring. That "miskîn" can be understood on one side as poor and on the other as musk-scented adds a tevriye (use of a word so as to suggest two meanings at once) on top of the relation of sound and meaning set up with "müşgîn". In this way black hair, black fortune and the scent of musk are tied together in one couplet.

The second couplet expresses the beloved's cruelty with a plain reproach. The lover's tears have turned to blood and her reason and life are gone; despite this, the beloved's grudge has not subsided. The phrase "ben hasteden" (against me, the sick one) rests on the idea in divan poetry that the lover is always ill and the beloved is both the cause of the illness and its only cure.

In the third couplet the address turns to the rival. The rival is trying to keep the lover away from the "dust of the beloved's feet", that is, from the road the beloved walks and her threshold. Kaya, discussing how in the Divan the dust of the beloved's feet is of the greatest value to the lover, sums up with this couplet, which says that the rival who deprives the lover of it has "neither religion nor custom". The words religion and âyîn present the rules of love as an order of faith and of a dervish path; the rival who does not follow these rules is counted as without religion.

The fourth couplet turns to the sheikh, one of the familiar figures of divan poetry. The sheikh is the person who advises the lover to give up the beloved. Kaya, studying the figures of the sheikh and the ascetic in the Divan, cites this couplet and notes that the heart carries its love within it until death, and therefore does not find healing through the sheikh's telkin. The subtlety of the couplet lies in the juxtaposition of the words "ölince" (until death) and "telkin". Telkin is, besides giving counsel, the name of the prayer recited at the graveside after the dead are buried. The lover says, as it were, that even if she dies, the telkin will not work on her. The word "mihr" means both love and sun and calls to mind the pen name Mihrî; though the pen name does not occur in the couplet, the poet's name is heard through this word.

The closing couplet ends with garden images. The beloved's cheek has left the rose behind, her white face the jasmine, and her stature the cypress; for this reason the passion for rose, cypress and nesrîn has left Mihrî's head. In divan poetry the parts of beauty are compared with flowers, and the flowers are mostly defeated; here too the eye that has seen the true beauty no longer looks at its counterparts in the garden. Tenasüp builds a garden picture in this last couplet with the words gül, serv, nesrîn and semen (jasmine).

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 98, Ghazal 89 (F 53b, M 75a, S 56a, Ü 49a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 56, 187, 221, 287. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Books

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ğazeliyyāt-ı Mihrī, OTAP electronic edition, 2007 (transliteration published on the türkoloji-iran site, ghazal 92).

Online sources