Impressions of Servet-i Fünûn In İsmet Özel's Poetry
Mustafa BalcıIn Turkish literature, after the Tanzimat, a new approach especially influenced by French literature, was formed. In this period, many literary texts imitating French literature in terms of forms and genres were written. Although the influence of the old literary tradition was seen in terms of expression, new genres and forms quickly became widespread and such reforms led to the Servet-i Fünûn, where competent poems and novels would be written in the 1890s. Poets and writers with a new literary perspective gathered around the Servet-i Fünûn journal became the pioneers and representatives of a literary movement that would later be mentioned with the name of the journal. İsmet Özel is one of the most influential poets of modern Turkish literature. He created his own style of poetry at a young age, and later became a guide for many poets. In his first poems that blended ideology and youth feelings, he draws attention with his expressions based on intense images. His books Geceleyin Bir Koşu, Evet İsyan, Cinayetler Kitabı ve Celladıma Gülümserken contain poems representing different periods of his poetry. This study sets out from the question of whether a parallelism can be established, or similarity can be sought between İsmet Özel (who has no connection with any community in terms of pronunciation, subject, harmony, or style), and the Servet-i Fünûn group who were representative of the new Turkish poetry that developed after the Tanzimat. The most significant aspect of Servet-i Fünûn literature is the frequent occurrence of the words related to hüzün (sadness). In Ismet Özel's poems, the word hüzün (sadness) is used in a remarkable way, although not very often. It has been determined that the word hüzün (sadness) which is used in the first three books mentioned above, is one of the common words found in İsmet Özel’s and Servet-i Fünûn poetry. In this study, it is discussed whether the poetry of Servet-i Fünûn and İsmet Özel will intersect in the common usage of the word hüzün (sadness).
İsmet Özel Şiirinde Servet-i Fünûn İzleri
Mustafa BalcıTürk edebiyatında Tanzimat’tan sonra başta Fransız edebiyatı olmak üzere Avrupai tarzda gelişen bir mecra oluşmuştur. Bu yolda şekil ve tür olarak Fransız edebiyatının taklidi birçok metin üretilmiştir. Anlatım bakımından eski geleneğin tesiri görülse de tür ve şekil bakımından yenilikler hızla yaygınlık kazanmış ve 1890’larda yetkin şiir ve romanların üretileceği Servet-i Fünûn çizgisine giden yol açılmıştır. Servet-i Fünûn mecmuası etrafında toplanan yeni edebiyat anlayışına sahip şair ve yazarlar adı aynı dergiyle anılacak bir edebî akımın öncüsü ve temsilcisi olmuşlardır. İsmet Özel, 1960 sonrası Türk edebiyatının en müessir şairlerindendir. Genç yaşta kendi şiir yatağını oluşturduğu gibi sonraki dönemlerde de birçok şair için yol gösterici olmuştur. İdeoloji ve gençlik duygularıyla harmanlanmış ilk şiirlerinde yoğun imgeye dayalı ifade şekilleriyle dikkati çeker. Geceleyin Bir Koşu, Evet İsyan, Cinayetler Kitabı ve Celladıma Gülümserken adlı kitapları şiirinin farklı dönemlerini temsil eden metinlerini barındırır. Bu çalışma, söyleyiş, konu, ahenk, üslup bakımından herhangi bir topluluk veya şahsiyetle bağlantısı olmayan İsmet Özel ile Tanzimat’tan sonra gelişen yeni Türk şiirinin temsilcisi olan Servet-i Fünûn şairleri arasında bir koşutluk veya benzerlik aranabilir mi sorusundan yola çıkmaktadır. Servet-i Fünûn edebiyatının en dikkate değer yönü hüzün ve anlam bakımından akraba kelimelere metinlerinde sıkça rastlanmasıdır. İsmet Özel’in şiirlerinde de hüzün kelimesi çok sık olmamakla birlikte dikkati çekecek bir tarzda kullanılmaktadır. Yukarıda zikredilen şiir kitaplarından ilk üçünde kullanıldığı görülen hüzün kelimesinin İsmet Özel şiiri ile Servet-i Fünûn şiirinin ortak kelimelerinden olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Bu çalışmada Servet-i Fünûn şiiri ve İsmet Özel şiirinin hüzün ortak paydasında birleşip birleşmeyeceği tartışılmaktadır.
Since the Tanzimat era, there have been authors in the Turkish literature who were producing European style works. Many literary works have been translated from European languages (predominantly French), into Turkish. The first European style examples of stories and novels also belong to this era. Newspapers in various periods as well as journals begun to be published, new literary forms by a variety of authors, and new books were produced. Poetry is the first genre that underwent changes within the framework of the new literary mindset. It went through changes in content and thereafter continued to do so in its structure along with each literary movement. We understand that the generation (of authors) that would leave their signature on the developed European-style works had been brought up in the 1890s. The writers and poets who gathered around the journal titled Servet-i Fünûn were going to have a profound influence on the upcoming generations through the literary works they had written.
Having written his works in a time and understanding that were quite different from Servet-i Fünûn, İsmet Özel as a beloved poet has succeeded in having a huge audience by virtue of his poems in the last fifty years, and in addition, he has had an undeniable influence on upcoming poets. He has also contributed to intellectual and literary areas starting from the mid-1970s through his essays, a genre that began to develop in the Turkish literature from the 1960s. İsmet Özel gained an authentic place in the literary world, as a sui generis person with his understanding of poetry, wording, expression, vocabulary, and themes. This study aims to investigate possible similarities between the poems of the poets who laid the foundations of a new and authentic literature in the late 19th centure and those of İsmet Özel, who took his place in the literary world in the second half the 20th century.
In this article, we will firstly tackle the common attitude in the formation of the new Turkish literature in the context of parallels and similarities between İsmet Özel and Servet-i Fünûn poets, and we will discuss whether there is any inherent relation between the poetry of the era in question and the aforementioned poet with reference to his writings on the poetry.
Thereafter, we will discuss the issue of closeness between Servet-i Fünûn and İsmet Özel on the basis of the word hüzün (sadness). This word and the ones that have semantic affinity with it such as lahid (tomb), makber (grave), kabir (grave/tomb), mezar (burial place/grave), çukur (pit); mükedder (mornful), kederli (mournful/dreary), müteverrim (tuberculous), kırık (broken), mustarib (the one who is suffering from something), efsürde, sönük (faded/pale), bî-mecal (dead on one’s feet), öksüz (orphan), münkesir (offended/vexed), şikeste (resentful/ broken) were frequently used in 1st Constitutional Period Turkish poetry, especially in the texts related to the era of the New Literature, and many subjects that might causally be relevant to hüzün (sadness) found their place. We also come across this word in İsmet Özel’s poems. Moreover, we will also tackle the question of whether we can take the concept of hüzün (sadness) as a common ground between İsmet Özel and Servet-i Fünûn.
İsmet Özel’s book titled Erbain, a collection of all of his poems, consists of the books of poems Geceleyin Bir Koşu, Evet İsyan, Cinayetler Kitabı and Celladıma Gülümserken, along with the poems that he had not included in these books. Having an extensive range of use along with the terms that has semantic proximity with it in Servet-i Fünûn tradition, the term hüzün (sadness) was only used ten times in İsmet Özel’s Erbain. The word hüzün (sadness) occurred in the poems Waterloo’da Bir Dişi Kedi (two times), Ölü Asker İçin İlk Türkü, Geceleyin Bir Korku and Davun, which are included in his first book of poems, namely Geceleyin Bir Koşu. By virtue of its semantic affinity to hüzün (sadness), the term üzgün (sad) that is used in Ölü Asker İçin İlk Türkü is also included in this examination. We come across the term hüzün (sadness) in the poems Çağdaş Bir Ürperti (two times), Yaşamak Umrumdadır, Aynı Adam ve Yaşatan, contained in his second book of poems Evet İsyan; as well as in the poems Karlı Bir Gece Vakti Bir Dostu Uyandırmak, Akdeniz’in Ufka Doğru Mora Çalan Mavisi (one instance of hüzün (sadness) in each of them) that were included in the third book of poems, which he named Cinayetler Kitabı. In the first poem, we also see the word mahzun (sad) along with hüzün (sadness), and we picked out thirteen instances of hüzün (sadness) and hüzün-related words in total, if we take mahzun (sad) into account as well. We realized that the common ground between Servet-i Fünûn and İsmet Özel in the use of the concept of hüzün (sadness) remains nothing more than an appearence considering İsmet Özel’s negative attitude toward the word and the emotion that it brings forth. We will discuss in detail the contexts in which İsmet Özel integrates the word hüzün (sadness) into his poetry, his attitude toward hüzün-related emotions, and its meaning and connotations in his poems in a comparative analysis with Servet-i Fünûn poetry.
As well as hüzün (sadness), we also examined the meaning and connotations of the word üzünç (sorrow) which is derived from the same root as üzüntü (grief/sadness), and discussed its place in poems and evaulated its proximity with Servet-i Fünûn.
