Nostalgia in Ziya Osman Saba’s Poems

Abstract

In the poems of Ziya Osman Saba, one of the important poets of Turkish poetry of the Republican period, readers observe longing for home, family, and childhood. Even if this situation does not cause Saba’s poems to constantly wander in the past, it should be noted that the founding subject of his poems is nostalgia. With his nostalgic view, the poet establishes the present and the future in both discourse/telling and intellectual time in his poems. Therefore, the nostalgia that dominates his poems does not turn into a melancholic view that dulls the present and the future by endlessly talking about the past and that drags the person into pessimism. However, nostalgia is a concept that carries the risk of turning into melancholy very quickly because it has the potential to lead people into a tendency to remember images full of illusions by idealizing the past images. This study examines the nostalgic view that dominates Ziya Osman Saba’s poems in both the conceptual features and the perception of the present and future in the poems. In his poems, nostalgia sometimes goes beyond its conceptual features and confronts the reader with its feature of being the founding subject, unique to poetry. Saba, who invites his readers to join his nostalgic adventure with poetry, does not neglect to carry nostalgia into the future. In addition to the holistic images of the past in Saba’s poems, the loneliness and sadness felt about the present turn into acceptance and taking refuge in God.