Ahmet Hâşim şiirlerinde zaman

Abstract

Poet and prose writer Ahmet Hâşim (1884-1933), a unique contributor to Modern Turkish Literature, penned down various great works. Although significant amount of scholarly research in the form of memoir and survey has been conducted on his life and unconventional individuality, little work has been done on his poetry. The works of Hâşim are usually associated with symbolism and impressionism. Indeed, most of the work done on his poetry also limit themselves with a similar deduction that his poems are either “symbolist” or “impressionist”. The lack of any profound analysis on how these two movements affected Hâşim’s poetry in the realm of language or what were their contributions to the content in terms of themes has led to a critical blockage. Although in his works he explains his poetics as “poems composed not to be understood but to be heard”, he has still succeeded to preserve his place in the realm of literary criticism as the composer of inconceivable poems. This work aims at analysing the matter of Time in Hâşim’s poetry and attempts to argue what has not been argued so far. It can be considered as a new step in the context of the interpretation of Hâşim’s poetry. Depending on the effects of symbolism and impressionism, two distinct concepts of time prevail in the poetry of Ahmet Hâşim. In symbolist poems the understanding of time is subjective, synchronic and immeasurable whereas in impressionist poems it is objective, measurable and progressive. In symbolist poems, through uncompleted meanings and a wide range of connotations of symbols, “Cyclical Time” is referred. Thus, the theoretical background of the thesis entails some explanation on the key concepts of Bergson’s philosophy of time such as “Durée” and “Memory”. In impressionist poems it can be observed that there are certain sections in which linear time is attempted to be frozen in one frame through the depiction of images and a cinematographic narration. Image as a visual element is a component in these poems with the notion of linear time. The place of image in language plane and its effect on the composition of themes will be analyzed in the context of time.