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“We separated and also we died
Some of us at one edge of the map, and some at the other.” 15
The woman in Cemal Süreya’s poetry moves around a geography
which seems to be ambiguous, faceless and without belonging
to anything. In the poem, the features of the wild world come
together with the subject. These attributes of the subject are
clarified through the workings of the inner-world of the narrator.
This situation exemplified in the poem called “Fugitive” clarifies
the communication between the woman and the wild world,
and in the following stage the narrator and the woman become
integrated:
“Her little daughters and her face besiege the face
First her little daughters then her demise
She would put down the load in her mouth
As I kiss her
The mountains and the plains ride in the saddle of a horse
First the mountains and then the plains in the saddle of a horse
I would embrace the bandit and sing a ballad
In the form of a woman in pure white” 16
In the poem called “I Won’t Write a Love Poem Anymore”, the
narrator who comes to the local geography from a far away
one likens the hair of the woman to Rumelia, which embraces
Istanbul’s surroundings. The connection made by the poet
between Rumelia and the most beautiful woman in the world
indicates that his spatial level is not a fixed one, and it may
sometimes become narrow or expanded. Again in the shrunken
location the speed of the woman’s love accelerates. The woman
seems to be a reality with her attributes of being full of life,
liveable as well as her being a so-called “blood woman” living as
fast as the wind of the horses.
“She was the most beautiful woman in the world
Rumelia from top to bottom if she combs her hair
If only she sits down yet she wouldn’t, would she
Blood woman was the wind of the horses
I always celebrated how livable she was” 17
15 Süreya, Love Words, Come On Come Here 280.
16 Süreya, Love Words, Fugitive 55.
17 Süreya, Love Words, I Won’t Write a Love Poem Anymore 43.
The narrator looks to be in a dynamic location in the poem of “Hey
Traveler, Make Love”. The scene alternating in every line drags the
reader and the subject of the poem to various geographies. Here
the lines of time and life are parallel:
“You are in the middle of a city, and you are winding your watch continually
As if your life would cease in case it would stop” 18
The narrator who gets around from houses to the streets, and
rides on the Taurus express train as well as passing through the
parks and the bridges, emphasizes the necessity of maintaining
the love which seems to be at the center of this movement.
Again the narrator, taking up his wise man manner, speeds up
the “traveler” who goes for love or an adventure. Although the
speeds of the continuously changing location and life seem to be
entangled, the narrator here makes an effort to combine life with
the unsteady element:
“Houses are to be the hushed sewages of an ancient civilization
After all the streets fight and clean one another
Remember you disembarked from the Taurus Express
Our identities were no more than our tickets
Pass through the orchards, the parks and the bridges
Loves also require some maintenance that I did not come to know
Hey traveler! Make love, talk big and leave soon
The cliffs would unite the high hills” 19
By talking about going to the West and living in a foreign land, in
his own value paradigm he tries to present the philosophy hidden
in his poem. These two words derived from the GRB (foreign
land) root hide the idea of being “strange”. In this way the verbal
relationship between the West and the foreign land invoke the
implied idea of strangeness. This approach at the same time points
at the “Western culture”. Cemal Süreya characterizes the impact
of the Western culture on him differently than in his other poems
to the woman.
“Oh baby, living far from home means to be far from home” 20
18 Süreya, Love Words, Hey Traveler, Make Love 136.
19 Süreya, Love Words, Hey Traveler, Make Love 136.
20 Süreya, Love Words, Hey Traveler, Make Love 136.
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