Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtün Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtün

Ḫaṭṭuñ ḫadüñ yüzini ṭutdı nitekim ey cân
Zeyn itdi gülsitânı irişdi tâze reyḥân

In English

1. O dear one, as soon as the down of your beard covered your cheek, it adorned the rose garden; fresh basil has arrived. (Ḫaṭ is the first fine down that appears on a young beloved's cheek. The cheek is likened to a rose garden and the greenish down to basil that has newly sprung up in the garden.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is the second couplet of the müfred section in Arslan's edition and is found only in the Ü manuscript (76b). A müfred, being a single couplet, is not required to rhyme between its lines, but in this couplet the two lines do rhyme, on "cân" and "reyḥân", so it is built like the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal. The metre is the muzâri pattern "Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtün Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtün". By Arslan's count this pattern is used in only four poems of the divan; its rhythm, which divides into two equal halves, gives the couplet a flowing delivery. To whom it was addressed, or on what occasion, is not known.

The couplet has an interesting twin in the edition. The fifth couplet of the müfred section (Ü 77a) is the same as this one, except that the first three words of its first line have been rearranged: "Ḫadüñ yüzini ḫaṭṭuñ ṭutdı nitekim ey cân / Zeyn itdi gülsitânı irişdi tâze reyḥân." Arslan notes this in a footnote. The couplet is thus written twice in the same manuscript with a different word order. Whether this is a repetition by the copyist or the trace of the poet's own play with the same couplet cannot be known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is devoted to one of the most frequently treated subjects of divan poetry, the appearance of the first down on the beloved's face. The word "ḫaṭ" means both writing and the fine dark hairs that appear on the cheek and at the edge of the lip of a young male beloved. Poets sometimes decry the growth of this down as the end of beauty and sometimes praise it as a new ornament added to beauty. Mihrî takes the second course: the down has not spoiled the beauty of the cheek but has adorned it.

The simile on which the couplet rests is built without being stated openly. The cheek is called "gülsitân" (rose garden) and the down "tâze reyḥân" (fresh basil); since the thing compared is not named and the thing it is compared to is used directly, this is a metaphor (istiare). Basil, with its scent and greenish colour, is the best-known counterpart of the beloved's down in divan poetry. The arrival of a new plant in a rose garden is described like news of spring that makes the garden more beautiful still. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among rose, rose garden and basil. Between "ḫaṭ" in the first line and "ḫad" (cheek) there is also a difference of only one letter, and placing the two words side by side produces a pleasing sound repetition and a pun (cinas). "Nitekim" here carries the temporal sense of "as soon as": the garden is adorned as soon as the down covers the cheek.

The address "ey cân" turns the couplet into a compliment spoken directly to the beloved. That a woman poet should praise a young male beauty by way of his down is a couplet written in the shared language of divan poetry, and Mihrî uses the conventional patterns here without altering them.

Bibliography

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 185, Müfred 2 (Ü 76b) and the footnote to Müfred 5; introduction p. 11. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr