Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün

Mûr üşdi ṣanki şekkerî pâlûde üstine
Ḫaṭṭuñ ki ṭutdı la‘l-i nebâtuñ kenârını

In English

1. When the down of your beard covers the edge of your lip, red and sweet as candied sugar, it is as if ants had swarmed over a sugared pâlûde. (Pâlûde is a dessert resembling a jelly, made with starch and fruit juice and sweetened with honey and sugar. La‘l is the red precious stone, ruby, which in divan poetry stands for the lip; nebât is rock sugar.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is the third couplet of the müfred section in Arslan's edition and is found only in the Ü manuscript (76b). In this single-couplet poem the lines do not rhyme: one ends in "üstine" and the other in "kenârını". The metre is the muzâri pattern "Mef‘ûlü Fâ‘ilâtü Mefâ‘îlü Fâ‘ilün". By Arslan's count this pattern is used in thirty-five poems of the divan and ranks third in frequency. To whom the couplet was addressed, or on what occasion, is not known.

The sentence order is striking: the result is in the second line and the cause in the first. The image of the comparison (ants swarming over a sugared sweet) is given first, and only then is it explained what the image describes (the down along the edge of the lip). The reader first meets a kitchen scene and resolves its meaning only in the second line.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet treats the same subject as the previous müfred, the first down on the beloved's face, but this time the place where the down appears is the edge of the lip. Gülşen Kaya, in her thesis on the animal imagery in Mihrî's divan, cites this couplet as an example: the ant (mûr) is used to describe the down covering the face, because of its black colour and its habit of swarming over sugary things. Kaya also recalls that the ant is mentioned in poetry together with Solomon and the seal because of the story of Solomon. In this couplet, however, it is the ant's fondness for sweetness that comes to the fore.

The sugared pâlûde is the beloved's lip. In divan poetry the sweetness of the lip is often described with sugar, honey and sweets. Gökçehan Aysel Yılmaz, in her article on ghazals with the refrain "lezîz", reports that pâlûde is one of the sweets often used in such comparisons and that dictionaries define it as "a kind of dessert, a jelly, made from starch and fruit juices." Kaya likewise notes that pâlûde is among the sweets served at feasts and festivals and that in Mihrî it describes the beloved's lips and words. Two similes are thus nested in the couplet: the lip is a sugared dessert, and the fine dark hairs along its edge are the ants that have swarmed over that dessert.

The compound "la‘l-i nebât" in the second line is itself a simile. La‘l describes the lip by its colour and nebât (rock sugar) describes the lip by its taste, so colour and taste are joined in one compound. Among the words mûr, şeker, pâlûde and nebât there is a strong congruence of images (tenasüp) built around sweetness. "Ṣanki" in the first line states the comparison openly, and in this respect the couplet is an example of simile (teşbih). The verb "üşdi" (swarmed) makes visible how densely and suddenly the down covers the edge of the lip. Among Mihrî's müfreds this couplet holds the most concrete image, drawn from everyday life: an Ottoman kitchen dessert and an ant from the garden are set side by side to describe the beloved's face.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Arslan (ed.), Mihrî Hâtun Dîvânı, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları (Kültür Eserleri Dizisi 576), 2018, p. 185, Müfred 3 (Ü 76b); introduction p. 11. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Gülşen Kaya, Mihrî Hâtun Divânı'nın Tahlili, master's thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2010, pp. 281-282. openaccess.firat.edu.tr
  • Gökçehan Aysel Yılmaz, "'Lezîz' Redifli Gazellerde Sevgilinin Dudağının Tatlı Yiyeceklerle İlişkisi", Uluslararası Türkçe Edebiyat Kültür Eğitim Dergisi 10/3 (2021), pp. 926-942.

Online sources