Uses of The Art of Contrast in Ibrahim Gülşeni’s Divan

Abstract

The art of contrast is a literary art that is used to express the idea more effectively by beautifying the meaning. In the field of rhetoric, it is evaluated within the arts of meaning. The art of contrast is also called tıbak, tatbik, mutabakat, mütezad.

Contrasts have an important place in the Qur’an and religious texts. As a reflection of this, the use of the art of contrast has developed as a natural process on the basis of the conceptual world of the religiousmystical poems, and the art of contrast has been used intensively and with a rich vocabulary in verse works with a religious-mystical theme.

It is seen that the information about the art of contrast is included in the works of rhetoric in the classical period. Today, this information is in the books written about the science of literature and literary arts. The number of independent studies on direct contrast is very few.

İbrahim Gülşenî is a sufi who is the leader of the Gülşenî order, which was established after his death. He was loved very much by the people and received attention and respect from the ruling class of the geographies he lived in. He is also a prolific poet. Along with his Turkish and Arabic Divans, he has a work called Manevi, which was written in Persian, consisting of approximately 40 thousand couplets. Apart from these, there are Turkish works named Pend-nâme, Çobannâme, Tahkikat-ı Gülşenî, Makâmât-ı İlâhî and Kıdem-nâme. Only in his Divan there are 1280 ghazals, 1 masnavi, 5 tuyuğs and 1 murabba. İbrahim Gülşenî, who stands out with his Sufi identity, deals with the subjects of Sufism in his works. In his poems in his Divan, he generally approaches Yunus Emre’s lyrical and simple expression. It is seen that he wrote some of his poems with the classical mazmuns of Divan Literature and in a relatively thick language. He used his poems as a tool to express his thoughts, to convey his state and enthusiasm.

Within the scope of this study, the information about the art of contrast and the use of the art of contrast in literary texts with Sufi content are evaluated. After the information about İbrahim Gülşenî and his works, the examples of contrast art that İbrahim Gülşenî used in his poems in his Divan were examined. As a result of this examination, data has been revealed in order to determine the semantic world of Gülşenî’s poems. It has been determined that the opposite concepts such as first-final, exoteric- esoteric, kill-awake, unity- multitude, good and evil, which take place in the verses and religious-mystical terminology, overlap with the poems in Gülşenî’s Divan. The diversity of usage of the frequently used contrasts in the Divan is explained with examples, and the identified contrasts are presented together with the number of usages. Considering the contrasts and their frequency of use, Gülşenî’s world of thought was researched, and it was revealed that the art of contrast was used as one of the ways of explaining thought with the use of Classical Literature metaphors in the world of mystical meaning.