Me and the other in the Divan of Hayretî

Since the day it existed, human beings have tried to find a meaning for their existence by questioning who they are in order to base their existence in the world on a meaningful basis. The question "Who am I?", which one asks with the desire to know and define oneself, is actually a deep question that contains the answer to who I am not.The individual acts through similarity and comparison when defining himself. This syllogism creates both me and the other who is not me. The other that the self refers to when defining itself is an existential necessity for the self. This necessity constitutes the construction of both self and other. Being a social being, human beings experience this state of self and otherness with the people they are in contact with at every stage of their lives.As literature and the poet serve as the mirror of society, the 16th century poet Hayretî included a sociological reading of the period in which he lived in his divan and explained the self/we other polarization and conflict of that period through various types such as minstrel, rind, ascetic and rival in his poems. It has been tried to determine who the others are in the eyes of the poet and those who see him as other, what characteristics they have, and with what elements of comparison they are given.The texts were examined mostly according to discourse and content analysis. In this study, it is seen that in Hayretî's Divan, the poet describes his self mostly through the types of rind, ârif, minstrel and dervish, while there are types and elements such as rival, ascetic, self/ego. With this study, it was tried to reveal how the poet sees himself, his characteristics in the eyes of others, and the poet's thoughts towards this situation, based on the poems, thus the traces of the other were sought in divan poetry. Based on the traces of this other, it has been seen that divan poetry is not disconnected from the public, on the contrary, it allows many readings related to social life. In addition, with this study, it has been seen that the traces of the concept of the other, which emerged with modernity, can be traced in divan poetry, and an example of how divan poetry can be examined with today's methods and approaches has been presented.