Sylvia Plath and Nilgün Marmara… Two female poets of distinct geographies, cultures, societies and periods followed a life with distinct sufferings and scars, but they produced similar poetries with the same wish and outcry for death. And in the end, both poets said their last words in the face of life through suicide. Indeed, there is this passionate bridge between these two poets since Marmara was a keen admirer of Plath’s poetry and art.

And today, standing on this very bridge, this book renders a detailed comparative reading and analysis on their poetry within the context of the psychoanalytical perspectives to death and self-destruction. Through the psychoanalysis of their poetical lines that are intermingled with pains and traumas centered around the obsession of death and self-destruction, this book traces and unearths the mutual poetical mechanisms of the unconscious and the human psyche that turn the poetry of both poets into ‘art of dying’ as in the wording of Plath and ‘swan songs’ as in the wording of Marmara. Psychoanalyzing their poetic personas in their ‘art of dying’, this book highlights how Plath and Marmara became both the victims and the victors of their ‘swans songs’ via various psychological scars and existential dilemmas.

THE translations given in this volume, with the exception of the stormscene from Tolstoy in the First Lecture, are my own. The reader will please bear in mind that these Lectures, printed here exactly as delivered, were written with a view to addressing the ear as well as the eye, otherwise the book would have been entirely different from what it now is. When delivering the Sixth Lecture, I read extracts from Tolstoy’s “My Religion” and “What to Do,” illustrating every position of his I there commend; but for reasons it is needless to state, I omit them in the book. I can only hope that the reader will all the more readily go to the books themselves.

1889. P. GRAFTON, MASS., 1 July, 1889.

Osmanlı döneminde Girit üç sancağa ayrılmıştır: Hanya, Kandiye, Resmo.

Girit’in tamamının fethedildiği 1669’dan zamandan beri siyasî ve sosyal hayatımızda olduğu gibi edebî hayatımızda da önemli bir yeri olmuştur. Osmanlı şehirlerinde cami, tekke ve medreseler Osmanlı kültürünün temelini oluşturmaktadır. Girit’te de edebî ve kültürel ortamı cami, medrese ve tekkeler şekillendirmiştir.  Bunun neticesi olarak Girit’te şair sayısı hızla artmış, zengin bir edebî ve kültürel ortam oluşmuştur.

Yaklaşık 250 yıl Osmanlı-Türk hâkimiyetinde kalan Girit’in bu kadar zaman içerisinde çok şair yetiştirmesinden dolayı bir şiir adası olarak değerlendirilmiştir.

Kâmî, Girit’in Hanya sancağında yaşamış, döneminin medrese ilimlerini tahsil etmiş, uzun yıllar Suda kalesinde gümrük kâtipliği yapmıştır. 1217/1802 tarihinde İstanbul’a göç etmiş, altı ay sonra İstanbul’da vefat etmiştir.

Hanyalı Kâmî,  Adalar, Girit ve Hanya’daki Türk kültürü, edebiyatı ve sosyal hayatı için önemli bir şairdir.