Abstract:

Telmih (allusion) has a lexical meaning of “saying things allusively, not speaking openly or saying things implicitly”; however, in literature it means making references to a famous person, a popular event, or a belief in history or rather to a common proverb. If it is used carelessly or off the track in literary works, this doesn’t make any contributions to them; furthermore, not only does it stand out as a technical mistake but it also weakens the work by disrupting the system of references that the reader creates in his mind. Yet, if it is used properly, it may as well enrich texts. For instance, Mehmet Akif Ersoy (18731936) frequently employed the art of telmih both in his books of poetry “Fatih Kürsüsünde” and “Süleymaniye Kürsüsünde” and in his work “Âsım”, which is composed of a single but rather long poem. While with the telmihs used in this work the historical sphere can be traced back to the foundation, the rise and the fall of the Ottoman Empire and even to the time when Muhammed and Moses lived, the geographical sphere covers the whole Ottoman and Arab domain especially as far as Egypt-, Persia, Middle Asia and Europe. In the creation of this sphere, it is certainly important to pay attention to what aspects of telmih are chosen. Still, rather than dealing with which telmihs Mehmet Akif Ersoy employed in his book “Âsım”, we will determine the functional uses of these telmihs and their technical and literary contributions to the work

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