Reading Valéry through Tanpınar: the analysis of an influence

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1307383 (Table of Contents)

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar has expressed his admiration for the French poet and thinker Paul Valéry on various occasions. From his diaries to the collection of his articles, or to his lectures on literature, one can find the affirmation that his poetics are inspired from Valéry's. However, although the relation between Tanpınar and Valéry has been analyzed on the level of poetics, Valéry's persona or 'System', which is an amalgam of texts that treats different facets of Valéry's poetics such as the concepts of perfection, clarity, constant consciousness and the sovereignty of the intellect in the process of writing, has often been dismissed as an elucidatory element for understanding Tanpınar and his works. This thesis explores Paul Valéry's 'System' through the texts that Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar has discussed in his elaborations on Valéry and the affinity that Tanpınar felt for Valéry's poetics, in order to understand the reasons as to why the poetical influence of Valéry has gained a deeper and a more personal aspect.