Nâbî'nin 'orta insan tipi'nin Hersekli Ârif Hikmet'teki değişimi

Abstract

The Treaty of Karlofça, signed in 1699, is the first documentation of the territory loss in Ottoman Empire. With the signing of this treaty, the Ottoman Empire came to acknowledge Europe's prevalence, and hence to turn her attention toward the West. In this period, certain reforms were put into practice that had reflections not only on the empire's overall policy, but also in the world of literature. Nâbî (1642- 1712)’s mathnavi, Hayriyye (1701), which he wrote for his son, stands as a document that reveals the then-present state of the empire, specifically, the conditions of the governing in the periphery. In Hayriyye, Nâbî aims to portrait the ideal image for an individual by giving advice to his son on how to live his life. In this thesis, the subject-matter ideal image, “orta insan tipi” [“prototype of common man”], is examined and Nâbî's proposals for solving the problems caused by the corruption he observes in his time. In this context, the poet proposes and idealizes the image of a passivist for his son, who is advised to stay rather disconnected from the outer world, to keep discreet regarding the socio-political issues, to act as a conservative rather than a reformist, merely to aim to live his life in “peace”. In the course of this project, how Nâbî's conception of the ideal individual relate to the medieval thinking and the social structure, which boils down to the idea of “community”, in the Ottoman Empire is taken into consideration. In the line of thought where these aspects of Nâbî's poetry lead, the image drawn in the poems in Ârif Hikmet of Herzegovina (1839-1903)'s Dîvân of an ideal individual, “yeni aydın insan tipi” vi [“prototype of modern intellectual”], is emphasized to take a reformist stance, to stand for freedom of thought rather than discretion, to be concerned for the society beyond the merely egoistic worries, and to question the government policy. In this thesis, with respect to this specific context, the images of the ideal individual in Nâbî's and Ârif Hikmet of Herzegovina's poems are compared in order to see how the Ottoman intellectual stance has been transformed from the former poet to the latter. Through this line of transformation, it is observed that “status quo” is replaced by “reform”, “the known-world” by “the changing-world”, “sharia” by “sharia and political democracy”, “community” by “individuality”.