Turgut Uyar's discontents

Turgut Uyar?s earlier understanding of poetry goes through a sudden changewith Dünyanın En Güzel Arabistanı [The Most Beautiful Arabia of the World]. In hisearlier style, the influence of ?Garip Poetry? can be detected, but in Dünyanın EnGüzel Arabistanı, Uyar approaches poetry with a new concept, similar to those of theother kinci Yeni [The Second New] poets?, in which meaning is pushed to thebackground and figures of speech are brough to the fore.Dünyanın En Güzel Arabistanı is a modern work of art. The basic motivationthat leads Uyar to write this book is the emotional pressures of modernity on theindividual. Here, the poet focuses on two problems: First comes the pressure on theindividual caused by religious morality, traditional ethics, and the social institutionswhich enforce these concepts. Second is the shock experience and discontents causedby modern civilization, urbanization, and the life style in urban the setting. Adverseaffects of these experiences on the individual is not only the main theme of book, butit also determines the construction its whole design, the formal characteristics of thepoems, and the dynamics of the imagery. In Dünyanın En Güzel Arabistanı, verses arenot logically continuous, the narrative lacks the commonly expected form of linearity,and the construction that makes the book a whole is rather fragmented.Although these poems are meant to be read as independent pieces, they areconnected to one another and constitute a coherent whole, because they areconstructed within the framework of a common universe of symbols or fictionalcharacters. The narrative events taking place in the poems do not display achronological linearity. The poet/author hides himself behind the narrator of theindividual poems and leaves the reader alone with the narrator. He employs varioustechniques of dramatic writing and story telling, which are not all that common inTurkish poetry. He backgrounds the meaning and expects the reader to bring togetherthe pieces of the fragmented narrative by using various ambiguous relations betweenthe imagery of the individual poems. The aesthetic choice of Turgut Uyar in this bookis not Apollonian, but Dionysian, to refer to Nietzsche?s well-know dichotomy, onethat the poet himself conceptualizes as ?clumsiness?, something that makes the readerfeel a sense of incompleteness before the whole work.Keywords: poetry, modern, city, religion, society