CAHİT SITKI TARANCI: ÖLÜMÜN BOŞLUĞUNDA HAYATA TUTUNMA ÇABASININ ŞAİRİ
CAHİT SITKI TARANCI: POETRY OF THE STRUGGLE TO CLING TO LIFE IN THE VOID OF DEATH

Summary/Abstract: The sense of emptiness that arises from the phenomenon of death in Cahit Sıtkı’s poetry does not appear as a state of temporary emotional disturbance. On the contrary, his entire poetic experience unfolds within the framework of this sense. This condition is neither a psychological disorder nor—even though he doubts it enough to name one of his poems as “Obsession”— an obsession. If emptiness lies at one end of this tension, at the other end is a joy of life he does not want to lose, even that he clings to tightly. The poet, who does not attempt to confront the sense of emptiness at the negative end of the pendulum, tries to create an escape for himself with the joy of life at the other end. All the beauties of life to which he turns in his poetry become tools he clings to in order to cope with this feeling. His dilemma begins precisely at this point: These beauties, which he clings to with a helpless and hopeless effort, cause the poet even greater torment with their impermanence and with their tendency to fade away in his hands. The poet does not attempt to hide this state, which he turns into a problem of meaning and does not discuss openly in his poetry. Rather, he speaks of his situation as if it were a mistake, an error that should not exist. Although Cahit Sıtkı occasionally brings the issue to the level of faith, he does not attempt to give it religious or philosophical depth. Epicurus, who established a philosophical doctrine against the horror created by the feeling of death, or Hayyam and similar thinkers and poets who tried to suppress the same meaninglessness with humour and joie de vivre, seem to have had no influence on him. When his poems are examined from the perspective of death and the sense of emptiness (meaninglessness) it creates, it becomes clear that he is a poet who experiences death. This study argues that the most accurate way to understand Cahit Sıtkı's poetry, which flourishes in the shadow of death, is to read it in the shadow of death.

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