Social and Pastoral Views in Oktay Rifat’s Poetry: Çobanıl Şiirler, Bir Cigara İçimi, Elifli

Oktay Rifat (1914-1988) is one of the productive poets of Turkish poetry. His poetics is based on change and renewal. For him, every poetic experience is a new poetical beginning. In this context, his poetry develops by changing and renewing. This development reflects a continuity without any breaks. In the changing and renewed poetics of Oktay Rifat, the place of Çobanıl Şiirler (1976), Bir Cigara İçimi (1979), and Elifli (1980) is very important. Oktay Rifat has been approaching nature since the beginning of his poetic experience as one of the elements that connecting human to the life. He have given a new dimension to the problem of nature in Çobanıl Şiirler (1976), Bir Cigara İçimi (1979), and Elifli (1980). In these books, he has begun to examine nature by centering on the relations between human himself and his/her social environment. The purpose of this work is to reveal the human-nature-society relations in the three books mentioned. In this respect, the poems in the books were examined by taking the concepts of nature, human and society as the focus. As a result of the examination, it has been seen that in this three books which have merged nature with pastoral and social, the relation between human, nature and society took place in three different ways. The first is seen in the poems that nature covers the rural life and the sociality in this life. The latter is seen in poems that nature covers human beings alone. The third is seen in poems in which the struggle of human to identify with nature. Some of the poems in Çobanıl Şiirler (1976), Bir Cigara İçimi (1979), and Elifli (1980) nature and poverty are seen together. This appearance is thought together with human and it is a hope to overcome the loneliness and pessimism of poverty.

Keywords

Poetry, Oktay Rifat, Çobanıl Şiirler, Bir Cigara İçimi, Elifli