160. Today in 1920s Turkey: 4 April 1928 (An Illustration of Poetry: A Life for a Kiss…)
Türkçe
Kadim şiirler medlullarından
Bir buse-i canbahşına ver nakd-i hayati. — NedimEnglish
From the insinuations of old poems
Give the offering of life for one soul-bestowing kiss. — Nedim
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The magazine Papağan (“Parrot”) often featured risqué or tantalizing pictures on its cover page. Both provocative and aesthetically alluring, today’s image consists of two people, a man and woman, kneeling in front of a black backdrop and framed within a large roundel. Rendered in profile, the couple is arranged in a symmetrical fashion by facing one another and creating a mirror image as their hands and forearms meet at the center while their faces draw near, as if about to kiss.
The two people clearly represent lovers and equally matched ones at that. The mirror image effect is enhanced by the two’s equal sizes and matching silhouettes. The contours of their clothes, headgear, and facial features are also quite similar at first glance. These overall parallels create a strong sense of androgyny between the figures. Despite such first impressions, the figure on the right is female while the one of the left is male. The male’s body bears the signs of musculature with added lines on his legs, abdomen, and arm. He also sports a faint mustache. The two figures are depicted in Orientalizing garb reminiscent of a fictitious, paradisaical dream world pulled from the Arabian Nights. The style of the composition, use of patterns, and subject matter also betrays an Art Nouveau flare.
While the imagery may be rich, the text is ever richer. The words above the frame serve as an introduction to both the image and text. Like the couple’s anachronistic clothing, it places the scene sometime in a past with the words “From the insinuations of old poems.” The “old” or “ancient” (kadim) poem in question is represented by the line located below the image. Hailing from the oeuvre of the famous 18th-century Ottoman poet Nedim, the line provides poetic context for the romantic coupling illustrated in the image. Ottoman Divan poetry, which had fallen out of vogue long before the 20th century, was full of puns, innuendo, double entendres and other word play. Romantic love was a common subject for the genre. Love never comes easy in this genre of poetry and the line included, “Give the offering of life for one soul-bestowing kiss” highlights the sacrifices the lover must make to garner even one tiny bit of affection from the beloved. Here, Nedim presents an unequal and thus, foolish trade of a life for a kiss (buse). Yet, the scales are set straight with the kiss as it also happens to be soul-bestowing (canbahş). The message of the poem being, that a sacrifice must be made for happiness and moreover, that love and life are cyclical and are bound between deaths and revivals. This “exchange” thread is emphasized with the inclusion of the words, nakit/cash (“offering”) and bahş/donation (“bestowing”), which also relate to trade and money.
The exchange of life for a kiss (and the kiss leading to life again) is represented visually in the graphic balance of the composition and the two figures therein. The artist cleverly paired the message and meaning of the poetic line with the content of his illustration, effectively mirroring the trade-off related in the text. Thus, in both form and content, the couple evokes the words of both Nedim and attitudes of a bygone era.
Originally published at https://steemit.com on April 5, 2019.
