Preliminary Notes on the Use of Alcohol in Cemal Süreya’s Poems

The poetry of writers of the Second New movement (İkinci Yeni), which emerged in Turkey in the 1950s, is known for its special style of writing characterized by incomplete and inverted sentences, and for its focusing on the inner world of characters and authors whereby the reader is exposed to the frustration, depression and hopelessness evoked by the cruelty and injustice of the modern world. The characteristic feature of Cemal Süreya’s poetry, a prominent representative of this movement, lies in the frequent reference to alcoholic drinks aiming at representing the mood of his characters and of himself. The study contextualizes Süreya’s treatment of alcohol within a long literary tradition started by Divan poetry in the 13th century, where wine and meyhane (tavern) had been glorified and invested with a mystic metaphorical meaning. The connection between alcohol and meyhane in Cemal Süreya’s life is further investigated in order to explain the use and function of various traditional and modern drinks, such as rakı, bira and şarap, in some of his poems taken from the collections 999. Gün: Üstü Kalsın (Day 999: Keep the Change, 1991) and Sevda Sözleri: Bütün Şiirler (Love Sayings: All Poems, 2013).