Anxiety of influence in Behçet Necatigil's early poems

Behçet Necatigil (1916-1979) was active in every field of literature throughout his literary career, which spanned nearly half a century, through his poetry, literary criticism, and translations. He began his career as a poet in the second quarter of the 20th century. It is possible to say that Necatigil did not belong directly to any movement within modern Turkish poetry, but created a unique poetic world. It is also noteworthy that Necatigil transformed his poetry while preserving its originality, in parallel with the changing understandings of poetry within this originality. The concept of "anxiety of influence," introduced by American literary critic Harold Bloom (1930-2019) in the mid-1970s and which he worked on until the end of his life, serves as a guide in understanding the path Necatigil followed in establishing himself as a poet. Harold Bloom explains the history of poetry through what he calls the phenomenon of inter-poetic influence. According to his approach, every poet adopts a particular attitude toward the poetry around them while establishing their own poetical identity. The poet creates his original poetry by following certain paths in order to overcome the sense of anxiety that other poems surrounding him. These paths result from a series of misreadings of other poems, and the poet, passing through a series of processes called "revisionary ratios", seeks his own original poetry by overcoming this poetic anxiety until the end of his life. This study also examines a text-oriented approach by analyzing the poems in Necatigil's first three poetry books. In these first three poetry books, compiled from poems written by Behçet Necatigil between 1941 and 1952, it is possible to observe the presence of the "anxiety of influence" theorized by Harold Bloom and the "revisionary ratios" Necatigil underwent to overcome this poetic anxiety.