Author(s): Kenan BOZKURT
Fame of one of the greatest poets of Turkish literature, Bâkî, who is regarded as " sultans of poets" during his period, also continues today. Because of this fame that the poet has, today a special place has been reserved for himself both in literary history and in independent studies. However, in many studies on Bâkî, the provisions given about the poet repeated each other, causing many points of the poet to remain in the shadow. One of the aspects of poetry that remains in the shadow is the mystical dimension that lies in his poems. The poet has generally considered this dimension through love and beauty. But with Tanzimat, change in our world caused change in the meaning of love and beauty. This has caused the poet to deal with love, and a semantic breakthrough between love and beauty we have dealt with. This disconnect, unwillingly, prevented the poet’s poetry to be understood correctly. The quality and the source love that is used today to meet the great love that the opposite gender feels with each other has been a subject of constant debate throughout history. Love is handled entirely as a human emotion, and also it is handled as a part of divine blowing. Especially advocates of esoteric thinking accepted love as a part of blowing. Those who work on the works of Bâkî, who is considered the greatest poet of classical poetry, have generally dealt with the love of the poet’s poetry in human dimension and ignored its connection with Sufism. However, in the poet’s poetry, love is handled both with its everyday meaning and with a dimension of transcendence that transcends humanity. Especially in some of his poems, love is an emotion that begins with creation and is sensed to the divine power that transcends existence, and an eternal character appears, and it is seen that the love occurs before material existence. The poet’s handling the love with this aspect is also a sign that he has a lofty meaning. In this sense, the poet treats love as an ontological and epistemological phenomenon, not just as a feeling. Because the eternal dimension that the poet attributes to love and the transformation of love into the real objective of existence makes it possible for love to become a method of acquiring information. And this is composed of an outbreak of the idea ‘‘Man can only reach God by love’’. Bâkî sees beauty as a fundamental element in the process of acquiring information by treating beauty as a part of love. The poet accepts recognition as love through the hadith of "I was a secret treasure", which is often repeated in mysticism, and defines beauty as the God’s beauty which enables this love to emerge. Bâkî regards every kind of beauty in the world as a part of the beauty of God acting with the thought that God created man from his own image and man received his beauty from him through manifestation. According to the poet, people who are aware of this beauty are possible to reach the whole from part by contemplating this beauty. However, although human beings were tempted by love through contemplating the divine beauty before descending into the earth, they forgot this love in the material world. Also, even if they do not fully remember this beauty in the material aspect now, the beauty image that they own cause them to tend to every beauty. That is why people are attracted by and get addicted to every beauty. In this sense, the part is an obstacle to reach the whole for the unfamiliar lovers. In order to get rid of the part, in other words, to be aware of the divine dimension hidden behind the material dimension, the lover must see through his hearth. Because being cautious is only possible with love, love shows up in an epistemological and ontological dimension and becomes a friend to man from "eternity" in reaching the absoluteness in Bâkî’s poetry. Considering the ontological and epistemological meaning that the poet imbues in love and beauty, the love and beauty he referred in his council is seen to have mystical dimension rather than being away from Sufism in a material dimension as claimed before. This study will examine the issues of love and beauty that Bâkî deals with and explain them in the divine dimension.
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