The evolution of phoenix: Dramatic monologue in Edip Cansever

Edip Cansever (1928-1986), who is one of the most avant-garde and productive poets of modern Turkish poetry, published 17 books of poetry in his life time. In such books as Umutsuzlar Parkı (The Desperates? Park, 1958) Nerde Antigone (Where?s Antigone? 1961), Tragedyalar (The Tragedies, 1964), Çağrılmayan Yakup (Yakup the Unhailed, 1969), Ben Ruhi Bey Nasılım (I?m Mr. Ruhi, How Am I? 1976), Bezik Oynayan Kadınlar (Women Who Play Bezique, 1982) and Oteller Kenti (The City of Hotels, 1985), where long poems gain prominence or which make up a long poem, Cansever dealt with particular existentialist themes and adopted a ?dramatic? expression by creating many original characters. This dissertation analytically examines the long poems of Edip Cansever and considers these poems within the genre of ?dramatic monologue?. In order to reach a polyphonic poetry, Cansever adopted dramatic monologue based on the narration of one or more characters. He thought that, throughout his daily routine, modern man disguised himself and put on several masks. He also emphasized that we always live according to someone or something, consequently losing our personality. Cansever?s dividing up the single voice of poem into different narrative voices, namely his drawing near the form of a dramatic poem, enabled him to represent this divided man properly. Thus the dramatic monologues of Cansever are based on the fragmentation and self-contradictions of the modern man. Cansever?s characters, who are in conflict both within themselves and with others, are chosen from the public life of Istanbul, and mostly from the most marginal sections of the society. The image of the ?Phoenix? lies behind almost all the dramatic poems of Cansever. Seemingly a detail in the early poems, it evolves into a symbol of the continuity of life. Regenerating in every new book of the poet, the Phoenix is reduced to ashes repeatedly all through the cruel contradictions of life. But it rises from its ashes by dividing up into ever new narrators.