Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Vezin: Feʻilātün feʻilātün feʻilātün feʻilün

Ṣafha-i sīneme ol dil-ber-i raꜤnā gelmez
Dām-ı āġūşuma ol beççe-i ꜤAnḳā gelmez
Böyle bī-raḥmıñ elinden nice āh itmeyeyim
VaꜤd ider gelmesin āġūşuma ammā gelmez
Derd-i Ꜥaşḳ ile olursam da eger künc-i ġama
Ḫāṭırım ṣormaḳ içün ol gül-i ḥamrā gelmez
Ben nice Ꜥarż ideyim derd-i dilim yāra Ꜥaceb
Yanıma gelse de her dem yine tenhā gelmez
Yüz sürüp pāyına Mihrī nice dem āh itsem
Ṣafha-i sīneme ol dil-ber-i raꜤnā gelmez

In English

1. That graceful, beautiful beloved does not come to the page of my breast; that fledgling of the Anka bird does not come into the snare of my embrace. (The Anka is a legendary bird whose name is known but who is never seen, and who cannot be hunted; the beloved is likened to its young to express her unattainability.)

2. How could I not sigh at the hand of one so pitiless? The beloved promises to come into my embrace, but does not come. ("Gelmesin" in Old Anatolian Turkish means "that she come.")

3. Even if I fall into the corner of grief through the pain of love, that red rose (the beloved) does not come to ask after my state.

4. How shall I present the pain of my heart to the beloved, strange as it is; even when the beloved comes to my side, she never comes alone. (There are always others, that is, rivals, beside the beloved.)

5. Mihrî, though for so long I have rubbed my face on her foot and sighed, that graceful beauty does not come to the page of my breast.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This ghazal is not found in Mihrî Hatun's divan. It appears on folio 51b of the poetry miscellany numbered 43 Va 2871 in the Kütahya Vahid Paşa Provincial Public Library, whose compiler is unknown, and it is the fifth of the twenty ghazals under the pen name Mihrî that Mutlu Muhammet Aktaş published in 2023. Aktaş regards it as a strong possibility that these ghazals belong to Mihrî Hatun; however, he admits that the evidence at hand does not suffice for a firm judgment and that other poets too may have used the same pen name. The poem should be read with this reservation. It is not known for whom it was written.

The ghazal has five couplets and is written in the remel metre, in the pattern "feʻilātün feʻilātün feʻilātün feʻilün". The refrain is "gelmez" and the rhyme is the "-â" sound: raꜤnā, ꜤAnḳā, ammā, ḥamrā, tenhā. The second line of the last couplet is a verbatim repetition of the first line. Aktaş marks this as "redd-i matla": the opening line of the ghazal is said again at the end, turning the poem back to where it began. The ghazal thus ends like a closed circle in which the awaited beloved never comes.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is the beloved's not coming, and each couplet shows another face of this not coming. In the first couplet the beloved does not come to the breast and the embrace; in the second she does not come though she has promised; in the third she does not come to ask after him when the lover has fallen into the corner of grief; in the fourth, even if she comes, she does not come alone. This ordering shows that the refrain alone can build a story.

In the first couplet two similes stand side by side. The breast is likened to a page (ṣafḥa), and the beloved is like a figure that is not written on it, that does not come and settle. In the second line the embrace is likened to a snare (dām) and the beloved to the young of the Anka bird. İskender Pala states that in divan literature the Anka is used to express matters very hard to reach, because it lives on Mount Qâf, flies at great heights and cannot easily be hunted, and that the beloved is likened to it because her name is known but she is not seen. The congruence of images (tenasüp) between snare and bird makes concrete the idea that the embrace is not enough to catch the beloved. That the beloved is called "beççe", a young one, also gives her youth and freshness.

The expression "künc-i ġam" (corner of grief) in the third couplet is a detail to which Aktaş draws attention: according to the researcher, this compound occurs often in Mihrî Hatun's divan and also appears in the miscellany ghazals. This commonality is one of the clues that bring the ghazals closer to Mihrî in the attribution debate. In the same couplet the beloved is called "gül-i ḥamrā" (red rose); Aktaş says that, as in the divan, in the miscellany ghazals too the beloved's beauty is described with rose-garden imagery.

The fourth couplet complains that the beloved always has others with her. In divan poetry these persons who come between beloved and lover are rivals; Gülşen Kaya notes that in Mihrî's divan too the rival is thought of as a thorn beside the rose. Here the rival is not named, but the words "yine tenhā gelmez" point to him plainly. In the last couplet the lover rubs his face on the beloved's foot, that is, he is in complete submission; yet through the repetition of the first line it is said that nothing has changed.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Mutlu Muhammet Aktaş, "Mihrî Hatun'un Yayımlanmamış Gazelleri", Hikmet-Akademik Edebiyat Dergisi 9/18 (Spring 2023), pp. 105-126, doi:10.28981/hikmet.1200789; ghazal 5 (Kütahya Vahid Paşa Provincial Public Library 43 Va 2871, fol. 51b), p. 115; evaluation pp. 110-112, 123-124.
  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat University Institute of Social Sciences, Elazığ 2010, p. 134. openaccess.firat.edu.tr

Books

Online sources