THE UNDERSTANDING OF DEATH IN SABAHATTIN ALI'S POEMS

Abstract

Sabah al-Din Ali is considered one of the most important writers of Turkish literature in the twentieth century. Although he wrote important works in many fields such as novels and stories; yet, he wrote some very important poems in Turkish literature. Sabah al-Din Ali was born on 25th of February, 1907 in the city of Egridra, in the province of Adirnah in western Turkey. His family was wealthy and he was a government employee. He died on the 2nd of April, 1948, at the age of 41 leaving many original works. He was a victim of a murder crime on the Turkish-Bulgarian border by a person named Ali Artkin, his body was found and identified at a later time. But the place of burial is unknown. Sabah al-Din Ali is the author of very important works of Turkish literature, such as "Madonna in a Fur Coat", "Sirca Koşek", "The Devil Within and Koyu Teshkli Yusuf", which are well known and adopted by the entire Turkish society. Sabah Al-Din Ali has a poetic identity and personality. All of his poems are very simple, understandable, amazing, shocking and comprehensive. He is considered an easy-to-understand poet and at the same time difficult to understand. His poems are so few that they can be collected in a book of 150 pages. Although he did not write volumes of poems, his poems reflect the simplicity of Turkish poetry. He used, very effectively, the syllabic meter, which is the national poetic unit of the Turks. In his introduction, his poems deal with issues such as pain, grief, death, and separation, and similarly, many poems have been written. As we know, death is a surrender of one’s soul, and as a result, the body is no more able to perform its functions. The body decomposes after death. The journey which starts with death differs according to beliefs. Whether there is life after death has been debated throughout human history, as a result there is no position to confirm or falsify this idea. Although the body decomposes, the artifacts left by the person remain alive and from this we can conclude that death has many dimensions. Throughout history scientists, poets and thinkers have expressed their opinions about this issue and contributed to the examination of death from many aspects. Poets, in particular have done this. In fact, due to the nature of poetry, spirituality comes at the forefront. Although death is material, its effects and depth are spiritual. Sabah al-Din Ali is one of the poets who touched upon this poetic aspect in many poems. This paper starts with this comprehensive abstract, then the poet's personal and literary life are handled. The concept of death will be treated with reference to the poet poems..