Dağlarca'nın Ölüsü
So my warmth stays mine forever.
The poem is
ÖLÜ
Hangi mahallede imam yok,
Ben orada öleceğim.
Kimse görmesin ne kadar güzel,
Ayaklarım, saçlarım ve her şeyim.
Ölüler namına, azade ve temiz,
Meçhul denizlerde balık;
Müslüman değil miyim, haşa,
Fakat istemiyorum, kalabalık.
Beyaz kefenler giydirmesinler,
Sızlamasın karanlığım havada.
Omuzlardan omuzlara geçerken sallanmayayım,
Ki bütün azalarım hülyada.
Hiçbir dua yerine getiremez,
Benim kainatlardan uzaklığımı.
Yıkamasınlar vücudumu, yıkamasınlar,
Çılgınca seviyorum sıcaklığımı...by Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca.
Dağlarca was a prolific poet of great versatility. He experimented with a diversity of older forms and rhythms, setting his early poems both in folkloric rhymes and in the elaborate musics of Ottoman palace poetry. [1] He ultimately converged on an independent style using clean, beautiful Turkish, and devoted his career to its purification of foreign words and grammars. He expanded the literary uses of modern Turkish without stretching it beyond its native sound and function, preferring revelations of its natural richness to inventions and distortions. His efforts established the new Turkish language as one suited to and deserving of skillful poetry, written without transgression against its tonal and national character.
Born in 1914, Dağlarca witnessed the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the strange, painful establishment of the Turkish Republic. After the First World War, the Ottoman Empire was partitioned to the possession of Allied forces. From the dregs of the defeated Ottoman military, a Turkish army was raised on the resources of civilians. [2] Young men died in droves at the front, pushing westward Greek units supported by the Allies. Their deaths bore victory in the War of Independence, drawing the borders of modern Türkiye.
The bloody price paid for the Republic did not guarantee loyalty from its citizens. Many remained discontent with the sweeping reforms instituted in its early days. The drive for secularization closed down many religious cults and secret orders, which had until then enjoyed explicit influence over matters of local and provincial government. [3] This decoupled Turkish identity from Islam. In the Ottoman Empire, people were classed and positioned not by nationality, but by religious affiliation. [4] In the secular Republic, such distinctions were removed. Any man could be a Turk; he need not be Muslim.
Many others were made to pay for the Republic’s initial success in different coin. A series of Kurdish rebellions were quelled in the southeastern provinces by the new military, which did not always discriminate between the rebels and their families. Fervent animosities sprung up among certain groups of ethnic Kurds and nationalized Turks, the latter of whom considered the Kurds Turkish, as residents and citizens of Türkiye. They resented the loss of Turkish soldiers to preserve the land they had fought so hard to win back. The former suffered under numerous measures taken to prevent further insurrections; some regions remained under martial law for almost a decade, and the use of Kurdish song and language was forbidden until 1991. [5]
Some ethnic Kurds consider themselves fully Turkish, in agreement with the Republic’s ideal of an undivided people with a broadly national Turkish identity. Others smart at such automatic inclusion, fearing assimilation and erasure of their pain. These fractures, some inherited from Ottoman policy, some opened and worried in Dağlarca’s lifetime, complicate the social and historical understanding of Turkishness.
Dağlarca thought that Turkish nationality revolved around its language. In formal Ottoman literature, Turkish was given little attention. The musical qualities of a palatial poem derive from its conformity to one of a set of poetic meters collectively called aruz. These meters stem from Arabic prosody and do not cooperate with blunt, short Turkish. Therefore the poetic works considered most elevated and respectable — those supported by the Ottoman palace and literary establishment — were for centuries written in a melange of Arabic, Turkish and Farsi, a composite language inaccessible to all but the most educated. The syllabic meters remained the meal of common poetry, traveling across Anatolia as folk songs, as legends of the oral tradition, and as the Godloving bards’ cries of longing love.
It was Dağlarca’s thesis that Turkish was a complete poetic treasure in itself, and that its correct and careful use was central to beautiful writing; that the beauty of writing was inseparable from sensitive use of the language it was written in. After 1953, he wrote only in purified Turkish, fulfilling a promise he had made to a physics teacher in high school: “It is impossible to write a good poem in Turkish,” his teacher had said. Dağlarca replied: “It is not the maniness of words that creates good poetry.” [6]
About fifty years before his death, close to the time of this commitment to the Turkish language, Dağlarca wrote the poem Ölü. The title translates literally to The dead [man] or equivalently to The dead [body]. The poem describes what Dağlarca wills done to this body:
The dead body
Whichever neighborhood has no imam,
I will die there.
Let no one see how beautiful
[are] my feet, my hair and my everything.
In the name of the dead, free and clean,
A fish in unknown seas; [a]
Am I not Muslim? Far from it, [b]
But I do not want a crowd. [c]
Let them not dress me in white shrouds, [d]
Let my darkness not ache in the air. [e]
Let me not be jostled from shoulder to shoulder,
For all my limbs are in a dream.
No prayer can bring into its place [f]
My distance from creation. [g]
Let them not wash my body, let them not wash it,
I madly love the warmth of me... [h]reads a literal translation. To smooth its clumsiness, certain complications must be examined.
A fish in unknown seas; [a]The word meçhul easily translates to “unknown”, but can include meanings like “uncertain” — if the particular object is not indicated — or “unexplored”, if the character of the object is obscure. The continuum of adjectives from “free” to “clean” implies this line may also describe the dead for whom he speaks. If so, these dead are like fish in uncertain seas; they are outside knowledge.
Am I not Muslim? Far from it, [b]This line is posed as if he is receiving a question from outside: “Are you not Muslim?” someone has asked. An overwhelming majority of Turks are Muslim, so the question reads as somewhat hostile, perhaps indignant, certainly touched by unpleasant surprise. The speaker responds “Haşa!” — “Never!” — a particle used for things so unacceptable they can hardly be conceived as true.
But I do not want a crowd. [c]A more elegant phrasing would be But I want no crowd [around me]. The speaker claims to be Muslim, but avoids its rituals simply to avoid other believers. The unlikeliness of this casts his response — “Haşa!” — as false, even ironic. The man to die refuses the ministry of men of religion; he refuses to be prayed over; he refuses to be carried by his brothers in religion. He is therefore likely not religious. To so violently reject this obvious conclusion is to criticize the assumption it defies: why should Dağlarca be assumed Muslim? Why should one accused of a lack of faith need deny it? Why does one conventionally reply to such an accusation with an assertion that its very premise is unthinkable?
Let them not dress me in white shrouds, [d]These lines continue the litany of rejected Islamic funeral practices. Muslims are taken to the mosque to be washed, then clothed in a white shroud. The shrouded body is placed in a coffin, which is hoisted onto the shoulders of those closest to the dead. At the grave, the coffin is opened and the body lowered into the earth by a subset of its bearers. The imam prays over the grave until it is time for the mourners to disperse. The coffin then returns to the mosque to await its next journey.
Let my darkness not ache in the air. [e]Though it is not immediately apparent what his aching darkness is, one might imagine that the void left behind by the departed soul, the departed self is dark. It is this wound of separation which he wishes left undisturbed, as the site of a separated limb would ache in a carried body.
No prayer can bring into its place [f]“Bringing into its place” in Turkish — yerine getirmek — means “to restore” or, in a sense, “to return”; alternately, “to make right”. In this case, what is “brought into its place” is
My distance from creation. [g] What is translated here as “creation” is the word kainat, which may refer to “the universe,” or “everything that exists.” An alternate definition indicates “all things in the sky,” lending it a heavenly connotation. In some Islamic theology, man is held as equal to kainat — to the whole of creation — because everything in creation is also in man; man is the essence of all created things.
The statement “No prayer can restore my distance from creation,” is complicated. It implies that prayer intends to restore distance, to reestablish distance between man and creation. In this case, the line may imply that the original and preferable state of his soul is one separate from all created things, essentially exalted. This is a theologically difficult implication, since the only uncreated thing is God, and in Islam there can never be an equal to God. The Muslim believer has no Christ. No man has ever also been God.
However, many Islamic mystics have sought annihilation in God. The soul lost entirely in Allah would also be Allah, if not in entirety, then in some part. It would also cease to be a soul, achieving distance from creation. This is a heretical interpretation of the concept of annihilation, one for which the famed mystic Mansour el-Hallaj was ultimately executed. According to the story, el-Hallaj sprang from deep meditation into the streets and the crowds, crying in ecstasy, “Ana’l Haqq!" — “I am the Truth!”
Yet heterodox theology is easily found in Anatolian mystical traditions, which produced the most astonishing works of syllabic poetry. These are the poems which Dağlarca would have studied in an effort to perfect his Turkish poeticisms. [9] Such poetry has almost universal appeal, having come far enough from mainstream Islam to count as heresy. It is tempting to imagine Dağlarca referring to this interpretation: distance from kainat, from creation, would be desirable for the man who wishes to lose himself in God. And “no prayer can restore this distance,” which ties in with Dağlarca’s demonstrated lack of faith in Muslim religion: religious means are not sufficient to achieve religious ends.
The idea that Dağlarca is referencing the mystical concepts of tasavvuf — known in the West as Sufism — is supported by the image of the fish in the sea. In the poetry of dervish lodges, the sea is often referent to the eternal, undivided One, the waves upon which seem to be separate entities, but really are only momentary shapes against the enduring unity in which they quickly dissolve. [7] As in Ölü, entrance into the sea is transition into an unknown universe. [8] In Rumi’s Mathnawi, a fish playing dead in the sea represents the creature which knows that to accede to true life, it must die to its own body, moving as one with the water. [9] Rumi calls the prophets fish in the sea of Hakk — of Truth, and so of God. [10]
These symmetries suggest that Dağlarca chose the metaphors in Ölü under the conscious or unconscious influence of Sufi poetry. However, the poem is written in defiance of mainstream Sunni Muslim practices. It would not be right to present a Sufi reading as if Dağlarca had sectarian devotions which inclined him to reject Sunni rites. Much more likely is that he is voicing a general dissatisfaction with the demands of Islam, and that the manner of his complaint is generally informed by certain Sufi symbols and concepts. These are symbols and concepts which he could easily have come to independently and used entirely without mystical affiliations.
Such a general dissatisfaction would also fit in with a different understanding of the lines
No prayer can bring into its place
my distance from creation.as “No prayer can set right my distance from creation.” In this case, the speaker would be at an unwanted distance from the whole of creation, expressing a lack of faith that prayer could restore the rift between himself and the rest of the beautiful world. Another alternative within the theme of faithlessness is “No prayer can set right my distance from the heavens.” Then again, Dağlarca would be saying: nothing I could ask from my God has the power to bring me eternal happiness. No prayer could give me what this religion promises.
This prayer is that which would be said over him by the imam he rejects. One reason for him to reject it is that the prayer is usually said in Arabic, ignoring alternative translations into Turkish. In the early days of the Republic, various such alternatives came into use; the prayer call was sung in Turkish. Adaptation of this call back into Arabic was seen by many as an affront against the Turkish language and a step back towards theocracy.
Another reason for its rejection is disagreement with its contents. The funeral prayer for men calls, “O God! Let those of us who live, live for Islam; and those of us who die, kill them for their faith.” Perhaps Dağlarca did not want to be killed for a faith he did not have — or a faith he could not accept in such a form.
I madly love the warmth of me... [h]This line speaks of the only thing left to the faithless: the life of the living body. In death, the trace heat of his life is all he will have. He refuses his mourners the rite of burial, wishing to cling for as long as possible to what remains of his own essence. The funeral is for the sake of others; it requires only his passive absence. Dağlarca does not wish to give them anything, including the weight of his flesh degraded. So he says,
I will die where no imam can sing.
I want no one to see my feet,
my hair or the things of my body.
In the name of the dead, free and clean,
of the nameless fish in the sea,
I refuse the crowds that will come
to question my beliefs.
The white shroud will squeeze
pain into my darkness.
I do not want the shoulders of others
to rouse my limbs from this dream.
No prayer can bring me closer
to heaven. Let them not wash me
so my warmth can stay mine forever.In the novel social context of the secular Republic, Dağlarca can ask to be excused of religion. So he asks to be excused, to lie in the final flames of his old being, refusing what cannot deliver him to heaven, which may not be waiting for him.
[1] Uluçay, Melike. “Destan Şairi Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca’nın Söz Varlığı.” Turkish Studies, 2014.
[2] Shaw, Stanford J. and Ezel Kural Shaw. “The Turkish War for Independence, 1918–1923.” History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. pp. 340–372.
[3] Kara, Mustafa. Tekkeler ve Zaviyeler. İstanbul, 1980.
[4] Dokuyan, Sabit. “Tekkelerin Kapatılması ve Tasfiye Süreci (1925-1938).” Türk Kültürü ve Hacı Bektaş Veli Araştırma Dergisi, 2021.
[5] Baser, Bahar. Diasporas and Homeland Conflicts: A Comparative Perspective. Ashland Publishing, 2015.
[6] Kuzu, Sevil. Kendini Okuyan Sair: Fazil Husnu Daglarca.
[7] Açıkgöz, Cenk. “Tasavvufi bir remiz olarak balık: menkıbelerde balık ve tekke şiirinde balık metaforu.” RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2022.
[8] From Açıkgöz:
Deniz hayret ve hayranlık uyandırır. Bilinmeyen bir âleme geçişin simgesidir. Denizin derinlikleri sürpriz ve heyecanlara gebedir. Denizde neyle karşılaşılacağı bilinmez. Derinlere dalan, korkuya kapılır. İnsan bilmediğinden korkar ama bilmediğini merak da eder. Bilmediğini öğrenmek, keşfetmek ister. Tehlikeleri göze alan ve cesaretini toplayan salik beden gemisinden kurtulur. Ruhunu özgür bırakır ve vahdet deryasına dalar. Denizi keşfeder ve sırlar hazinesini bulur. Deniz temizlik ve arınmayı da temsil eder. Günahlardan ve dünyanın kirinden arınmanın yolu rahmet denizini boylamaktır. Yanmaktan kurtulmanın yolu yunmaktır. Ummana gark olanın yeri nâr değil, nur olur.[9] From Açıkgöz:
Mevlânâ’nın Mesnevî-i Maʽnevî’sinde geçen üç balık hikâyesinde avlanma tehlikesiyle karşılaşan üç balığın aynı olay karşısındaki farklı tutumları üzerinden nasihat verilir. Hikâye kısaca şu şekildedir: Biri akıllı, biri yarım akıllı, biri de aptal ve mağrur olan üç balık vardır. Bu üç büyük balık bir gölde yaşar. Sonunda birkaç balıkçı gölün içini görür ve göle ağ germek için harekete geçer. Balıklar durumu görünce bir çare düşünmeye başlar. Akıllı balık vakit kaybetmeden, bütün gücüyle yola koyulur. Diğer balıklara danışmaz çünkü “Bunlar gücümü zayıflatır, vatan sevgisini yanlış yorumlayıp tembellik ve cahilliklerini bana da bulaştırır, beni yolumdan alıkoyarlar.” diye düşünür. Gizlice gölden denize doğru yol alır. Göğsünü ayak eder, arkasında tazı olan bir ceylan son damarına kadar nasıl koşarsa öyle canla başla tehlikeden kaçar. Sıkıntılar çeker ama bu uçsuz bucaksız yolun sonunda güvenli, derin denize atar kendini. Yarım akıllı balık ise avcıların ağını görünce umutsuzluğa düşer. Keşke o kılavuza ben de yoldaş olsaydım, akıllı balığın peşine takılsaydım.” düşüncesine kapılır ama nafile. Derken “Giden geri gelmez, o kendini kurtardı. Şimdi ben de bir çare bulmalıyım.” diye düşünüp ölü taklidi yapmaya karar verir. Zira kişiyi azaptan kurtaran, ölmeden önce ölmektir. Balık da ölü olup kendini suyun akışına bırakıverir. Karnını üste, sırtını aşağıya verir; suyun yüzeyinde bir çöp gibi bir aşağı bir yukarı gider. Bunu gören balıkçılar güzelim balık öldü diye çok üzülürler. Oysa kılıçtan kurtulan balık içten içe sevinmektedir. Bir balıkçı onu tutar, sonra tükürerek yere fırlatır. Öldüğü sanılan yarım akıllı balık hemen gizlice suya girer ve kaybolur. Geriye bir tek aptal balık kalmıştır. Aptal balık paçasını nasıl kurtaracağını bilemez, sağa sola sıçrayıp saf saf çırpınmaya başlar. Sonunda ağın içinde kalakalır. Bu aptallığı onu ateş üstündeki bir tavaya düşürür. Alevler arasında kaynarken “Bu durumdan kurtulursam bir daha asla göle yerleşmem, uçsuz bucaksız olan denizi yurt edinip güven içinde yaşar giderim.” diye düşünür. Balık ağa girdikten sonra aklı başına gelir ama son pişmanlık fayda vermez. [10] From Açıkgöz:
Mevlânâ Celâleddîn-i Rûmî (ö. 1273), Mesnevî’sinde balık metaforundan sık sık yararlanmış ve balık üzerinden başka öğütler de vermiştir. Balık metaforunu zaman zaman olumsuz anlamda kullansa da daha ziyade olumlu anlamda kullanmıştır. Mesela peygamberler, Hak deryasının balıklarına benzetilir.