Melih Cevdet Anday şiirinde zaman

Critics have often pointed out that a conception of Time occupies an important place in the poetry of Melih Cevdet Anday (1915-2002), but a comprehensive study has not been undertaken on this subject until the present study. In this thesis, we attempt to analyze the different conceptions of Time employed in Anday’s poetry. The Time conception in his so-called “socialist poems,” which he wrote after the “Garip” [Stranger] period can be clearly observed in the poem “Olsun da Gör” (“Just Wait and See”). The Time conception in this poem is determined with reference to a “golden age utopia” and with it the negative aspects of the existing order are eradicated. In Kolları Bağlı Odysseus (Odysseus Bound), Anday takes as his model the times when human beings used to live in harmony with nature, and he expresses a longing for the understanding of “continuous time,” a characteristic of that period. In this conception of “continuous time,” the concept of ‘history’ is left outside, but the subject cannot rid itself of the logic of history; therefore the conception of Time in the book is transient. The “subject” in the poem “Göçebe Denizin Üstünde” [“On The Nomadic Sea”], expresses the desire to free itself from the idea of the past and the future, and to live in a “continuous present time”. In the poem “Troya Önünde Atlar” [“Horses Before Troy”], which is a continuation of the same perception, the “subject” wants to free itself from the “future”. Anyhow, the “subject” in these poems is aware of the passing time outside itself and feels disturbed about this situation. The conception of Time in these poems is an impossibility, simply because it disregards the memory, by which the past is preserved, and because it makes the future indispensable. Anday, in his novel Raziye, creates a character named “Raziye”, who neither has a memory nor any anxiety of the future. Thus, Anday renders this impossible conception of Time possible through Raziye’s character in a fictional universe. The “subject” in the prose poem “Öğle Uykusundan Uyanırken” [“Waking from the Afternoon Nap”] believes that he gets rid of Time and lives in eternity. Unlike the “subjects” in his other poems, the “subject” in the poem “Güneşte” [“Under the Sun”] accepts the existence of the flowing Time outside itself and is not disturbed by this situation.