Heves-name'de aşk oyunu : Taci-Zade Cafer Çelebi'nin özgünlük ideali

Abstract

Tâcî-zâde Cafer Çelebi, the later “nişancı” of Bayezid II, fourty years after the conquest of Istanbul by Ottomans, wrote a mesnevi called Heves-nâme (The Book of Zeal). In his mesnevi, he posed a direct criticism of Ottoman literature’s canonical poets, like Şeyhî and Ahmed Paşa to stress a specific type of “originality”. His peculiar notion of “originality” leads to an ideal, or a project of composing a mesnevi which consists of different narrative pieces that are put together by a sense of coherence. These pieces are three in number. One of them is an iconic depiction of Istanbul’s main places and buildings in the 15th century, and has an interesting connection to the further flourishing genre, that is “şehrengiz”. The second narrative part is distinguished by the scientifically motivated discourse which can be seen in “Acâibü’l-Mahlukat” genre, that is in the popular books of a very general kind of cosmological knowledge. And the last is a certain kind of dictionary which depicts the parts of the beloved’s beauty. Cafer Çelebi’s mesnevi is a product of this ideal of originality, which we can name as “the eclectic wholeness”. Çelebi, in order to place his ideal in a firm basis uses the concepts of “hakikî” (real) and “mecazî” (metaphorical) love, both of which are nothing but parts of a more general discourse of universal and mundane love. The game of love is literal and legal byproduct of this discourse.