Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’in Şiirlerinde Devamlilik Düşüncesi Thought Of Continuity In The Poems Of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
Thought of Continuity in the Poems of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Summary/Abstract: While Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar sees the men of letters’ taking the Western Literature as an example inevitable in the process of choosing a new lifestyle in the path to the Westernization with the Tanzimat, he opposes to the poets’ falling to the position of being follower and imitator of French Poetry with losing their ties with their own poetical roots. Tanpınar suggests that the Turkish poetry should head back to its roots that comprise divan and folk poetry. Tanpınar states that Turkish people and their language lived in the divan poetry until the works of Yahya Kemal despite its all deficiency. And also it was given importance not only because of it supplied an habitat to Turks and their languages but also literary works that can be labelled as Turkish classics are produced in this genre. He credits many poets, being in the lead Fuzuli, Baki, Galip, Nef’i and Neşati, or divan poems as the Turkish classics. Though Tanpınar sees folk poetry as one of the sources, he also underlines the restrictive and delimitative sides of it. He defends that Turkish poetry should change in accordance with the continuity. Actually Tanpınar’s idea of “continuity in poetry and culture” is a continuation of Yahya Kemal’s idea of “imtidâd.” Tanpınar’s idea of continuation with change and change with continuation proceeds in Hilmi Yavuz’s writing as finding the changeless among the changing, the essence among the signs and conveying it to today. Though Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar does not object the idea of being open to the Western poetry, thinks the Turkish poetry that does not maintain ties with its own poetic tradition cannot keep its, in Henry Bergson’s words, “élan vital or creative evolution.” Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar thinks that the poets should maintain their tie with their own poetic tradition without leaving themselves by escaping the imitation of the West through selection and sorting out.

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