"Taze can buldu cihan" : Osmanlı şiirinde bahar

Abstract

In Ottoman poetry, bahariyyeler are important since they show how phenomena in nature affect the poet’s imagination and indicate the extent to which nature and humanity interact with each other. In Ottoman society, the spring season affects poets ant artists both in their daily life and cultural life and plays an important role in forming the artist’s aesthetic sensibility and cultural activities. Spring, setting up a socio-cultural environment, is the favoured season with the Ottomans, since it produces sociological and psychological effects. The relationship that Ottoman poets establish with nature creates an independent aesthetic understanding rich in symbols. In addition to hinting at the personal world, these images include references to social life. In bahariyyeler, it is possible to see how poets transform what they perceive in the world of phenomena into poetic images and how they express these phenomena in an ideal understanding of beauty using the metaphorical connotations contained within their depictions of spring. Working with these conceptions based on their perceptions of nature, the poets form figurative representations and, as a result, create a metaphorical world in their poetry. The poet, carefully noticing every object in nature, turns poetry into a miniature microcosm virtually containing the larger macrocosm. In this microcosm, one can find the Ottoman State in its many guises from daily life to military life. Studing the depictions of spring in the Ottoman kasides can explicitly show how nature influences social and individual activities. Starting from nature, the Ottoman poet creates a different world and gives a different meaning to every object within the world. The depictions of springtime reveal the extent of interaction between the intellectual and creative powers of the poet, besides showing that nature exerts a dynamic and creative function on the poet’s images and works.