Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Görmedüm senden kerem ey bî-vefâ dildâr hey
Olmaduñ bir gün bu ben bî-çâre ile yâr hey
Eyledüñ cevrüñle ‘âlemde beni bîzâr hey
Ey cefâ-ḫû yâr senden vâz geldüm vâr hey
Var mıdur bir dem beni hecrüñle bîmâr itmedüñ
Raḥm idüp bir gün baña luṭfuñla tîmâr itmedüñ
Müdde‘înüñ sözine uyduñ beni yâr itmedüñ
Ey cefâ-ḫû yâr senden vâz geldüm vâr hey
Gülşen-i ḥüsnüñde bülbül gibi nâlân eyledüm
Degmedüm bir ġoncaña bunca ki efġân eyledüm
‘Āḳıbet ḫâr-ı cefâda baġrumı ḳan eyledüm
Ey cefâ-ḫû yâr senden vâz geldüm vâr hey
Uyduñ aġyâra benümle bir nefes yâr olmaduñ
Yoluña bunca zamândur cânı virdüm bilmedüñ
Dâmen-i vaṣluñla bir gün ḳanlu yaşum silmedüñ
Ey cefâ-ḫû yâr senden vâz geldüm vâr hey
Cân içinde ṣaḳladum mihrüñ elif gibi senüñ
Gitmedi bilmem nedür cürmüm senüñ benden kînüñ
Yoġıdı dînüñ bilürdüm şimdi gitmiş âyînüñ
Ey cefâ-ḫû yâr senden vâz geldüm vâr hey
Yalvarup biñ ‘öẕr ile cânum didükçe ben saña
Ḫışm ile yüzüñ çevürürdüñ hemân benden yaña
Luṭfuñı aġyâra eylerdüñ revân cevrüñ baña
Ey cefâ-ḫû yâr senden vâz geldüm vâr hey
Ḳomış idüm ‘aşḳuñuñ yolına ben cân u seri
Olmış idüm âsitânuñ bendesinüñ çâkeri
Bulasın var imdi sen de Mihrî gibi müşterî
Ey cefâ-ḫû yâr senden vâz geldüm vâr hey

In English

1. O faithless heart-taker, I have seen no kindness from you. Not for a single day have you been a friend to this helpless one. With your torment you have made me weary of everything in the world. O beloved of cruel nature, I have given you up; be gone, hey.

2. Is there a moment when you have not made me ill with your separation? Not for a day did you pity me and tend me with your kindness, or dress my wound. You listened to the words of the rival and did not make me your friend. O beloved of cruel nature, I have given you up; be gone, hey. ("Müddeî" is the claimant, the rival who slanders the lover to the beloved; "tîmâr" means to care for a sick person, to dress a wound.)

3. In the rose garden of your beauty I went on lamenting like a nightingale. Though I cried out so much, I could not touch even one of your buds. In the end, on the thorn of cruelty, I made my breast bleed. O beloved of cruel nature, I have given you up; be gone, hey. (The bud also recalls the beloved's lips.)

4. You listened to others; you were not a friend to me for even a breath. For so long now I have given my life on your path, and you did not notice. With the hem of union you never wiped my bloody tears, not for a day. O beloved of cruel nature, I have given you up; be gone, hey.

5. I kept my love for you, straight as an alif, inside my soul. I do not know what my offence is; your grudge against me has not gone. I knew you had no religion; now your manners and customs too are gone. O beloved of cruel nature, I have given you up; be gone, hey. (Alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, is drawn as an upright stroke and is a symbol of rectitude and oneness. Calling the beloved "faithless" in religion is a familiar expression in divan poetry, likening the merciless beauty to an infidel.)

6. Whenever I pleaded with you with a thousand apologies and said "my dear", in anger you would at once turn your face away from me. You made your kindness flow to the rival and your cruelty to me. O beloved of cruel nature, I have given you up; be gone, hey.

7. I had laid both my life and my head on the road of your love; I had become the servant of the servant of your threshold. Go now, find yourself a buyer like Mihrî (if you can). O beloved of cruel nature, I have given you up; be gone, hey. ("Müşterî" means both a buyer, a suitor, and the planet Jupiter; since "mihr" also means the sun, a closeness is set up between the poet's name and this word.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem, which stands ninth and last among the murabbas in Mehmet Arslan's edition, consists of seven stanzas of four lines each and is written in the remel metre in the pattern "Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün". The murabba is a verse form of the musammat type in divan poetry, built of four-line stanzas. The first three lines of every stanza rhyme among themselves, and the fourth line is an unchanging refrain: "Ey cefâ-ḫû yâr senden vâz geldüm vâr hey." In the first stanza the rhyme joins the refrain (dildâr hey, yâr hey, bîzâr hey, vâr hey); the later stanzas set up their own sounds: "bîmâr itmedüñ / tîmâr itmedüñ / yâr itmedüñ", "nâlân eyledüm / efġân eyledüm / ḳan eyledüm", "senüñ / kînüñ / âyînüñ", "saña / yaña / baña", "seri / çâkeri / müşterî". That in most of the stanzas repeated verbs such as "itmedüñ", "eyledüm" and "olmaduñ" serve as redif gives the poem the rhythm of a reproach that counts off its grievances. The poem is found only in the Ü manuscript (75a). There is no record, and no clue in the poem, of whom it was written to.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The murabba is a letter of reproach from beginning to end. The lover counts off one by one all the faithlessness she has seen from the beloved: he has not been a friend for a day, has not dressed her wound in her illness, has listened to the rival's words, and has reserved his kindness for others and his cruelty for her. In divan poetry the lover is expected to bear all the beloved's torments; in this poem, however, at the end of every stanza the lover herself ends the relationship by saying "I have given you up". The call "vâr hey" (be gone) in the refrain sharpens this curt stance taken from colloquial speech.

The third stanza is built on the conceit of rose and nightingale. The lover laments like a nightingale in the beloved's garden of beauty but cannot touch even a bud; in the end the thorn of the rose stains her breast with blood. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words rose garden, nightingale, bud and thorn. In the fifth stanza love is likened to the letter alif: because the alif is upright and a single stroke, it expresses rectitude and devotion to only one person; the phrase "cân içinde ṣaklamak" (to keep inside the soul) also recalls the way the letter is written inside a word. In the same stanza there is closeness of both sound and meaning between "dîn" and "âyîn"; the beloved's irreligion, that is his mercilessness, was already known, and now his manners too are lost. The opposition of "luṭf" (kindness) and "cevr" (cruelty) in the sixth stanza, supported by the words "aġyâr" and "baña", forms an antithesis.

In the last stanza the poet uses her pen name in a mocking wish: "Bulasın var imdi sen de Mihrî gibi müşterî" (go now, find yourself a buyer like Mihrî). The word müşterî means both a purchaser, a suitor, and the star Jupiter; Mihr means the sun. The poet, naming herself as a "buyer" who has laid her life and head on the beloved's road, hints that the beloved will not find such a suitor again. The words "bende" (servant) and "çâker" (retainer) in this stanza show, through the phrase of being the servant of a servant, the degree of abasement in love.

There is one more poem in the divan very close to this murabba: the seventh murabba also ends with the refrain "Ben de senden vâz geldüm vâz geldüm vâr hey" and is written in the same metre. Gülşen Kaya describes the seventh murabba as a poem in which the poet says she has given up the beloved and in whose couplets reproach is seen; this description fits the ninth murabba exactly. The existence of the two poems shows that Mihrî tried this pattern more than once.

In his study comparing the shared-redif poems of Mihrî Hatun and her Amasya contemporary Tâcî-zâde Cafer Çelebi, Sıtkı Nazik places the first stanza of this murabba beside a murabba in Cafer Çelebi's divan. Cafer Çelebi's poem begins with the line "Bî-vefâ yârâ yüri sende kerem mi var hey" and its refrain is almost the same as Mihrî's: "Ey cefâ-hû yâr senden vaz geldüm var hey." According to Nazik, in both poets the beloved's cruelty, his wearying of the lover, and the address to the beloved of cruel nature with the renunciation of him are treated in the same order. Nazik says that no record is found in the Mecma‘u'n-Neẓâ’ir or the Pervâne Bey Mecmuası that one of the two poets wrote a nazire to the other, but that the degree of similarity in metre, rhyme, redif and wording suggests that the two poets knew one another's poems. In the introduction to his edition, Mehmet Arslan also mentions Cafer Çelebi's father Tâcî Bey together with Mihrî in the circle around Bayezid II's princely court at Amasya. Since it is not known which was written first, the relationship between the two murabbas remains an open question.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources