Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Gel gel ey dilber ki sensin tende cânı kendümüñ
Senüñ ile şâd olur rûḥ-ı revânı kendümüñ
Yidigüm derd içdigüm ġamdur enîsüm ġuṣṣa yâr
Sensüzin nice geçer gör bu zamânı kendümüñ
Dil ne çekmişdür Zelîḫâ-veş belâ-yı hecr ile
Eline girince sen Yûsuf-ı s̱ânî kendümüñ
Ḳâmetüm çeng oldı ten bir ḳıla döndi râstî
Eyleyince âh sen mûy-ı miyânı kendümüñ
Dost Mecnûn olalı Leylî ṣaçuñ sevdâsına
Gör ne çıḳdı ‘âleme nâm u nişânı kendümüñ
Gördügine meyl ider dil ebsem olmaz nidem âh
Kendü kendümden gelür baña ziyânı kendümüñ
Cân vire hecrüñde Mihrî mihrüñi terk itmeye
Çüriyüp ger ḫâk olursa üstüḫânı kendümüñ

In English

1. Come, come, O beloved, for you are the soul in my body; with you my flowing spirit is glad.

2. What I eat is grief, what I drink is sorrow; my companion is anguish, my friend is care. Just see how my time passes without you.

3. What has the heart not suffered from the affliction of separation, like Zulaykha, until you came into its hands, my second Joseph. (In the masnavis based on the Quranic story of Joseph, Zulaykha loves the prophet Joseph for years and reaches him only after growing old; in divan poetry the beloved is likened to Joseph and the lover to Zulaykha.)

4. O hair-waisted beloved of mine, as you make me cry "ah", my stature has bent like a chang (harp) and my body has truly become a hair. (The couplet can be read in two ways: "mûy-ı miyân", the waist fine as a hair, can be taken as an address to the beloved, and the second line can also be understood "as you make my waist like a hair". The chang is a stringed instrument with a curved body; "râstî" means both "truly" and recalls the Rast maqam.)

5. My friend, since the heart became a Majnun for the passion of your Layla-like hair, see how my name and fame have spread through the world. ("Leylî" calls to mind both the name Layla and the Arabic word for "night", leyl; hair black as night is likened to the Layla who drove Majnun into the desert.)

6. The heart inclines to everything it sees and, though I am silent, it does not keep still; ah, what can I do. The harm that comes to me comes from myself.

7. Even if Mihrî gives up her life in your separation, she will not abandon your love, even if my bones rot and turn to earth. ("Mihr" means love and plays on the poet's pen name.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ninety-first ghazal of the Divan has seven couplets and is written in the remel metre of the aruz, in the pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". 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 "-ânı" (cânı, revânı, zamânı, s̱ânî, miyânı, nişânı, ziyânı, üstüḫânı); the redif is the word "kendümüñ", meaning "my own". This redif places an emphasis of ownership at the end of every couplet: my soul, my time, my name and fame, my bones. The poem is found in all four manuscripts (F 54b, M 76a, S 56b, Ü 49a).

A Nazire Answering Necâtî

A nazire is a response poem in which a poet answers a poem she admires with the same metre, rhyme and redif. Metin Hakverdioğlu identified twenty nazires that Mihrî wrote to Necâtî by going through the divans of the two poets, and he included this ghazal among them. The ghazal of Necâtî that she answers is written in the same remel pattern and with the same rhyme and redif "-ânı kendümüñ"; its opening couplet begins "İtmeyince sen boyı serv-i revânı kendümüñ / Ey yüzi gül bilmedüm vallâhi cânı kendümüñ". When the two ghazals are placed side by side, the shared words are immediately noticeable. One couplet of Necâtî ends with "nâm u nişân" and another with "ziyân"; Mihrî also uses the same rhyme words in her fifth and sixth couplets, but places her own scenes in them. The closing couplet of Necâtî recalls the beloved's fine waist, "Ortada nesne görinmez ey Necâtî yine hiç / İdemedüm gibi ol nâzig miyânı kendümüñ"; Mihrî in her fourth couplet, with the words "mûy-ı miyân", sets the same fine-waist image beside her own bending stature and her body turned to a hair.

Hakverdioğlu says that Mihrî stays loyal to her master in her nazires, while in poems other than nazires she looks for voices far from him, and he writes that he finds in Mihrî's "timid, shy" lines a lyricism that Necâtî does not catch in some of his ghazals. The place where Mihrî's voice is clearest in this ghazal is the sixth couplet, in which she admits her own fault: the heart inclines toward whatever it sees and does not stay quiet, and the harm comes from oneself. In Sıtkı Nazik's comparison of refrains, the redif "kendümüñ" is seen in Mihrî's Divan only in this ghazal.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens with the lover in separation calling the beloved to her. In the first couplet the beloved is called "the soul in the body" and "rûḥ-ı revân", the flowing, moving spirit; the beloved's absence is thus thought of as the body being left without life. In the second couplet the lover's daily life is described in the language of eating and drinking: what she eats is grief, what she drinks is sorrow, her companion is anguish, her friend is care. Gülşen Kaya, drawing the general portrait of the lover in the Divan, gives this couplet as an example of the lover whose heart has been burned since he fell into the fire of love, whose eye is moist, and whose food is grief, drink is sorrow, and companion is anguish.

In the third and fifth couplets allusion (telmih, a reference to a known story, event or person) is made to two great love stories. In the third couplet the heart is likened to Zulaykha and the beloved to a "second Joseph". Kaya says that Joseph and Zulaykha are among the love heroes most often mentioned in the Divan, that the beloved is likened to Joseph and the lover to Zulaykha, and she gives this couplet as an example. In the fifth couplet the poem moves on to Majnun and Layla. Kaya says that in the Divan the name Layla is used with double entendre (tevriye), that "Leylî" means both Layla and the beloved's night-black hair, and she cites the same couplet twice, in the sections on hair and on the lover. As Majnun's name spread through the world, so the lover's "nâm u nişân", her name and trace, has become known to the world.

The fourth couplet is the densest place of the ghazal in respect of congruence of images (tenasüp). The chang is a stringed instrument with a curved body; the hair can be associated with the instrument's string; and "râstî", though used in the sense of "truly", calls to mind the Rast maqam in music. The bending stature is like the chang, the thinning body like the hair, and the "âh" in the middle of the couplet is heard like the instrument's lament.

In the closing couplet Mihrî says that even if she gives her life in separation, she will not abandon love. Kaya gives this couplet among the examples in the Divan showing that the lover does not give up love even if she dies of the pain of separation. The expression "Mihrî mihrüñi" places the poet's pen name beside the word "mihr", meaning love, and sets up a cinas (wordplay on similar-sounding words in different senses). The rotting of the bones and their turning to earth ties the idea that love continues after death to a concrete image.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 99, Ghazal 91 (F 54b, M 76a, S 56b, Ü 49a). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Metin Hakverdioğlu, "Mihrî Hâtun'un Necâtî Bey'in Şiirlerine Nazîreleri", Turkish Studies 4/2 (Winter 2009), pp. 522-551 (general assessment pp. 526-527; comparison: Necâtî CCLXXXVII / Mihrî XCIV, numbering in the author's own edition, pp. 534-535), doi:10.7827/TurkishStudies.638.
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 74, 147, 189, 196, 233. 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 (refrain tables, pp. 136-137).

Books

  • Didem Havlioğlu (ed.), Ğazeliyyāt-ı Mihrī, OTAP electronic edition, 2007 (transliteration published on the türkoloji-iran site, ghazal 94).

Online sources