Abstract
FOOD DERIVES FROM ROOT: COMPOSITION PROCESS AND MYTHOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OF TANPINAR’S POEM ‘EVENING’
Composition of literary texts-although not attracting much attention from the reader-is completed through a long and challenging process. Determining factors such as the artist’s working style, character, resourcefulness, meticulousness and perfectionism define the length of the process as well.
This long process certainly requires a great effort. Bringing the form of the poem to the desired consistency on one hand, and fusing the form with style and the style with the meaning on the other needs hard work. Tanpınar, maybe in part under his teacher Yahya Kemal's influence, is an artist who is extremely sensitive to and who spares no effort in completing and introducing a poem. Such sensitivity prolonged his poems’ completion process. This is clearly indicated by the fact that although he intended to publish a book of poems in 1937, he was able to realize this intention only in 1961, and that it took more than six months to complete the composition process of the poem ‘Evening’ covered in this essay.
‘Evening’ is an important poem which Tanpınar himself stated that it can be taken as an example to assess his poetry. The poet, who is picky, and willing to wait for a long time to consider ‘done’ a poem which he thinks is uncompleted, believed that his poetry did not attract due attention, and resented; however he did not refrain from saying that one day he will be turned to, for he knew the importance of what he did. Articles, books, book sections, theses etc. written about him show that Tanpınar, especially in recent years, has been a center of attention for researchers from every circle.
Keywords
Tanpınar, evening, mythology, Kervankıran, the pleiades, the bosphorus.