Tarancı Sıtkı

Tarancı came of age during the first decades of the Turkish Republic, a period of profound political, social and cultural transformation. Following the establishment of the Republic in 1923, reforms in education, language and writing reshaped Turkish cultural life and had a major impact on literature. Poets increasingly moved away from the Ottoman literary tradition and experimented with simpler Turkish, syllabic metre and later free verse. Tarancı did not fully identify with a single literary movement and developed a relatively independent poetic voice, placing great importance on musicality and formal refinement. His education in French-language schools and his years in Paris brought him into direct contact with French literature, particularly Baudelaire. The influence can be felt in his recurring combination of beauty, melancholy, mortality and the desire to embrace life. The Second World War also entered his life directly, forcing him to leave Paris in 1940 during the German advance. Yet rather than becoming primarily a poet of political events, Tarancı turned toward the private human experience: the passing of time, loneliness, love, the pleasure of being alive and the knowledge that life must end.