Between image and essence: a sufi literary reading of metaphysical love in time to love

Abstract

This thesis explores the metaphysical dimensions of love through a Sufi literary lens, focusing on Metin Erksan’s 1965 film Time to Love (Sevmek Zamanı). It examines the protagonist Halil’s refusal of lived love in favour of an idealised image, situating this narrative choice within a broader Sufi metaphysics of form (surat) and meaning (maʿna), and the transformative journey from ‘ishq majazi to ‘ishq haqiqi. By weaving together Turkish Sufi poetry with close cinematic analysis, the study reveals how Time to Love both echoes and critiques a native tradition where love is not possession but unveiling. Through comparative readings of Turkish literary and folk motifs of image-based longing, this work argues that Halil’s love remains stalled, suspended in stillness, and thus becomes a cautionary tale about modernity’s spiritual inertia. The thesis ultimately proposes a poetics of cinematic ontology: a visual language of silence, repetition, and longing that gestures toward the Real but never fully arrives.