Cemal Süreya şiirinde bedenin yazınsallaşması

Abstract

Cemal Süreya (1931-1990), one of Turkey’s major poets, explores the female body in his works. The bodies in Süreya’s poetry can be studied under three headings: Poems about the “other body” where the narrator is constructed as a libertine, about the idealized “perfect body” which is in love with the narrator and about the “imperfect body” which is not sexualized and thus can be depicted as imperfect. Different bodies are mentioned in almost all of Cemal Süreya’s early poems. Sometimes more than one body is encountered in the same poem. This issue has led us to explore the system of libertinism. The female body is represented as a perfect form in most of Cemal Süreya’s love poems, even if their focus is not on eroticism. This approach has similarities with the aesthetic ideal of ancient Greek art. The imperfect body represents the poor and oppressed woman in Cemal Süreya’s poetry. Physical imperfection also symbolizes the political views of the narrator. Eroticism has always been considered the distinctive feature of Cemal Süreya’s poetry. It can be argued that the literary body in Cemal Süreya’s poetry has four different dimensions: Allegorical, metaphorical, hidden and priapic. Nonetheless poems with the above characteristics have always existed side by side with naive, social and sentimental poems as well as with verses where a submissive poet expresses his dedication to one particular woman. Hence one cannot speak of a linear evolution in Cemal Süreya’s poetic discourse on eroticism. Even so, his discourse on libertinism has gradually changed and become marginal in his later work. Cemal Süreya’s poetry includes various discourses that include opposite and contrary elements.