Original Persian Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün

Sarāy-ı sīne k’ey dil şod be-‘ışḳ-ı dil-sitān ḫāne
Be-derd ü miḥnet ü ġam şod derūnem mīhmān-ḫāne
Be-fikr-i ebruvet pür şod derūn-ı sīne der-vey dil
Mis̱āl-i ān kemān-keş şod ki bāşed der-kemān ḫāne
Be-ṣaḥn-ı gül-şen-i kūyet kesī k’ū ḫāne’ī sāzed
Behişt-i heşt-rā erzed be-ma‘nī ey dil ān ḫāne
Be-sūy-ı mey-gede īn dil ez-īn-rū mī-keşed mā-rā
K’ez-ān ma‘mūrter hergiz ne-bīned der-cihān ḫāne
Münīrī der-ġazel-gūyī ḥadīs̱-i ān miyān goften
Sürūd-ı ‘ışḳ-rā gerded be-ḳavl-i mā miyān-ḫāne

In English

1. O heart, the palace of my breast has become a home through love of the heart-stealing beloved; and my inner self has turned into a guesthouse where pain, trouble and grief lodge.

2. The inside of my breast has filled with thoughts of your eyebrows; the heart there has come to resemble a kemankeş (archer) standing in the kemanhane, the archers' training ground.

3. O heart, the house of one who builds a home in the middle of your quarter, which is like a rose garden, is worth the eight paradises in meaning.

4. This heart draws us toward the tavern for this reason: in the world it never sees a house more flourishing than that.

5. When Münîrî, composing ghazals, speaks of that waist, our words become the miyanhane of the song of love. (The miyanhane, as Ersoy explains it, is the middle section of vocal pieces where the modulation is made.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet ghazal (gazel) written in Persian; in the edition it is the hundred and thirty-eighth of the Persian ghazals (fg 138). The metre is "mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün". The refrain (redif) is the word "ḫāne" (house), and it is given thus in Ersoy's list of refrains too. The rhyme is the sound "-ān": dil-sitān, mīhmān, kemān, ān, cihān, miyān. The poem is found only in the Vatican manuscript (VT 94b). To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The most striking feature of the ghazal is the use of its refrain. In some couplets the word "ḫāne" stays on its own in the sense of "house", while in others it joins the rhyme word to form a new compound: "mīhmān-ḫāne" (guesthouse), "kemān-ḫāne" (archers' ground) and "miyān-ḫāne" (middle section of a song). The same refrain thus turns into a different structure, a different house, in each couplet. This usage is our own observation.

In the opening couplet (matla) the breast is a palace and becomes a home through love; its inside, however, is a guesthouse full of guests such as pain, trouble and grief. The passage from palace to home and from home to guesthouse shows the heart as a place belonging to the beloved. In the second couplet the eyebrows are likened to bows. Seeing the eyebrow as a bow is one of the most common comparisons in divan poetry. When the breast fills with thoughts of the eyebrows it turns into a kemanhane, the place where archers draw their bows and practise; the heart there is an archer drawing the bow. Ersoy explains the word as "kamanhane".

In the third couplet the beloved's quarter is a rose garden. The house of one who builds a home there is worth the eight paradises; "heşt behişt", in its dictionary sense, is the eight paradises of Islamic belief. In the fourth couplet there is a reversal. In divan poetry the tavern is usually called "ḫarābāt", a ruined place; here, however, the heart turns to it because it sees no house more "ma‘mūr", that is, flourishing, than the tavern. This contrast between ruin and prosperity reflects the rind's (the free-spirited drinker's) view of the tavern as the merriest place in the world; this reading is our own inference.

The pen-name couplet (mahlas) closes with a term taken from music. According to Ersoy's explanation, the miyanhane in music is the middle register, the third section of vocal pieces where the modulation is made. The word "miyān", in its dictionary sense, means both "waist" and "middle". While describing the beloved's slender waist, the poet makes his words the miyanhane of the song of love; there is a pun (cinas) between "miyān" (waist) and "miyān-ḫāne" (the middle section of the song). This couplet shows that Münîrî also brought musical terms into his wordplay.

Bibliography

Online sources