Orhan Veli and Being Human

To me, the most beautiful and most delightful way of trying to understand people is through art, literature and poetry. Today, on Orhan Veli's birthday, I felt like remembering him and jotting down a few thoughts on Garip poetry. I'd like us to take a look at the mirror Veli held up to people through his poems, because these poems stand very close to people and to ordinary life. The Garip movement chose to describe people as they are, and by breaking some of poetry's established forms and rules, I think it started a liberation, a revolution, a kind of rebellion. Of course, such a change brought plenty of criticism; Veli and his friends were even accused of betraying the poetic tradition. Writing these works, so often seen as simple or ordinary and so widely criticised, is to me a case of sehl-i mümteni: something that looks easy but cannot be imitated. Beyond the criticism of the poems' form and language, their characters also became a subject of debate: 'So you won't use ornate techniques, figures of speech or a florid language, and on top of that, instead of describing the noble feelings of the upper classes, you'll make the "ordinary person" the hero of the poem? Where is the poetry in that, where is the art, my friend?' When you look, the number of people who said this was far from small. Behçet Necatigil, for example, described Garip poetry as 'the poetry of idle, aimless people with superficial sensibilities, who carry no great passions or dreams, who grieve over small things, and who have had neither the time nor the ability to enrich their inner worlds.' I thought about this a little; even if you're just a character in a poem, being human always comes with categories and labels, doesn't it? But from where I stand, the characters look somewhat different.

Take the matter of great dreams and passions. In Garip poetry we do indeed meet characters who get by on their own, who don't aim high, and whose dreams are usually simple and plain. Süleyman Efendi, the driver's wife, the working women, the first violinist of a Gypsy orchestra, a drunk acquaintance or a granny: none of them sets great goals or feeds on intense emotions like ambition. Even of himself, Orhan Veli says "I am a poor Orhan Veli", showing that he carries no great expectations or claims. We could also look at it from a different angle. Perhaps Orhan Veli and his friends are far from a view that loads the word "dream" with great meaning and ambition. For them, rather than creating something called a 'dream' up high, existing in an alternative universe and almost impossible to reach, and struggling for it, it is more meaningful and natural to feed on the gifts and beauty of the world and the joys of everyday life. Considering that they also saw language as a shackle, we may not be able to expect them to take every word literally.

So do the characters really have superficial sensibilities? What superficial sensibility means is somewhat open to interpretation: not dealing with social issues, for example, or human, personal troubles not being found deep enough? These poems may not necessarily set out from social or systemic troubles, but they ask "Does it long for something, I wonder, in a tank's dream?" and say "Have rifles no mercy, at least as much as us humans?" They hold human values and sensitivities. The poem "Efkarlanırım" (I Grow Melancholy), for instance, is far from superficial. Take the line "I set out on the road and grow melancholy": linking the road with melancholy seems to belong not to a superficial person but to someone melancholic who often sinks into deep thought. Growing melancholy over a sad folk song also involves feeling the emotion in it, sharing the pain of the song's character and showing sensitivity. With these lines Orhan Veli may be showing us that simple, ordinary people can also have sensibilities and deep feelings.

To offer a more radical reading, I can say I can't even bring myself to call these characters 'ordinary' or 'simple'. The ordinary person (made ordinary, estranged from themselves) has grown used to their surroundings. They don't care for details; since they tend to accept what's around them as it is, they lack the awareness that would let them notice the stimuli around them. In this sense, the person in Orhan Veli's poems is not so much an "ordinary" person as someone from among the people who has not been made uniform and who has merits of their own. The poem "İstanbul'u Dinliyorum" (I Am Listening to Istanbul) may be one of the finest examples of this. Let's look from a slightly different place: who's to say the "ordinary" isn't life itself? Even if it isn't a question of to be or not to be, Süleyman Efendi tasted death too. That person, heart crushed by empty years, wouldn't he have wanted to sing one more folk song before all the suns set?

Let's come to the matter of the characters being idle and aimless. There are certainly poems that confirm this judgement. In the poem "Sakal" (Beard), for example, we meet a character who boasts of making lanterns out of watermelons and of knowing how to lie down and get up. But the label idle and aimless seems to come less from the characters being unemployed or loafing about than from their being deemed empty people. In other words, we face the judgement that the simple, ordinary person is empty. On the other hand, I can't say I agree that the characters are people who have had neither the time nor the ability to enrich their inner worlds. It could be said that they haven't developed themselves intellectually, but when we talk about an inner world, feelings, emotions, imagination and creativity come into play. Veli's characters are in touch with their emotions; they play with words with a child's appetite for play; they ask "If I cried, would you hear my voice in my lines?"; they see the sea and feel freedom. I ask you: could someone without a rich inner world know, without ever looking out of the window of their room by the sea, that the boats passing outside are loaded with watermelons?

Just as the characters can be happy about small things, they can also be saddened by small things. Perhaps we can see both in the line "These lovely days have ruined me". On the other hand, not every one of the characters' troubles is "small". Making ends meet, for example, is the small person's trouble, but it is not a small trouble. In fact, the line "Weren't we of this world?" in the poem "Giderayak" (On the Way Out) expresses failing to adapt to society or to the existing order, perhaps failing to hold on, and this is not a small trouble; on the contrary, it is a problem intellectuals often live with. I think that in Orhan Veli's poetry the characters, whoever they are, take on different qualities when they meet the meaning in the poem, and seem to make the meanings that ordinary things express more important.

Perhaps Orhan Veli was not considered "poetic enough" or "deep enough" because, rather than addressing the people from ivory towers, he gave voice from right inside the people, poverty, hardship and life itself.

And yet, what could be more meaningful than life itself?

And it is Orhan Veli, again, who describes life's deepest, truest joy, with birdsong and songs, in "Baharın İlk Sabahları" (The First Mornings of Spring) and "Deli Eder İnsanı" (It Drives One Mad).

Not growing used to life as it flows by, not staying indifferent to it, looking at the fine details of ordinary things, listening closely, enjoying being alive, describing people humanely: that is how I would describe Orhan Veli…

Bonus: you can listen to 'İstanbul'u Dinliyorum' and 'Efkarlanırım' from Fazıl Say's album "İlk Şarkılar":

https://youtu.be/uWn1aidjUHk?si=5NdAZcm1zFxuneV5

https://youtu.be/YGKNJrO1Ddk?si=l6pQgnqsQwIV95Eu

And you can listen to Orhan Veli's poems read by Müşfik Kenter:

https://youtu.be/xGN6mF9KHRo?feature=shared

Enjoy listening…

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