Yahya Kemal Beyatlı şiirinde düzyazı ve dünyevilik

Abstract

In the studies on the poems of Yahya Kemal Beyatlı (1884 - 1958), poet’s intention is regarded as a literary criterion. This point of view gives rise to the contradictions, inconsistencies and deficiencies that are observable in the interpretations of Yahya Kemal’s poetry. In these studies Yahya Kemal’s arguments have been evaluated in piecemeal fashion, and no comprehensive examination has been conducted on their content as a whole. However, when Yahya Kemal’s arguments are considered as a whole, it emerges that although his poetic conception reflects the theoretical framework of “modern European lyric poetry”, his poems do not conform with this conception. Yahya Kemal’s poetic conception depends on certain binary oppositions such as “meaning / utterance,” “parable / lyricism” and “meter / internal rhythm.” In theory, the poet attributes privileged status to the latter terms in these binary oppositions. Yet, when the relationship between Yahya Kemal’s poetic conception and his poems are analyzed through a “deconstructive strategy”, it is revealed that in direct contrast to his poetic conception, privileged status is attached not to the latter but rather to the initial terms in these binary oppositions; namely, “meaning”, “parable” and “meter.” Yahya Kemal’s arguments on “internal rhythm” turn out to be inconsistent, and it is necessary therefore to ignore this concept in studying his poetry. Much more functional than this concept are the linguistic devices corresponding to the harmony between “meaning” and “utterance”. In this respect, a crucial detail peculiar to Yahya Kemal’s poetry requires attention: the cooperation found in his poems between “meter,” “phonetic spelling,” and imale. Đmale, as a kind of metrical defect, leads to deviations from ordinary language in poetry. Moreover, these deviations are meticulously displayed through “phonetic spelling” in the printed copies of Yahya Kemal’s poems. Accordingly, the cooperation between “meter,” “phonetic spelling” and imale provide a sort of musicality to Yahya Kemal’s poems, while this musicality does not impair the communicative function of language. Another aspect of the present study is that Yahya Kemal’s poems are interpreted by means of a text-bound method to reveal the feelings of “ressentiment” aroused by unexpressed desires, and also the constituents of a secular worldview. This study also attempts to demonstrate how “metered and unmetered sound patterns” reinforce the content of the poems in their function as linguistic devices. The thesis also places emphasis on the predominance of “metonymy” rather than “metaphor” in the figural pattern of Yahya Kemal’s poems.