Folklor/Edebiyat (Feb 2023)
Folklore Symbols in the 20th Century Azerbaijani Poetry / XX. Yüzyıl Azerbaycan Şiirinde Folklor Sembolleri
Abstract
One cannot imagine culture without symbols. Mythological plots and folklore images, which come from ethno memory in national-cultural thought and are modeled in a new form of artistic thought through folklore thinking, do not remain stable in terms of ideas and forms in poetic thought. Mountain, fairy, hunter, deer, crane, firebird (phoenix), spring, pigeon, violet, tulip, and other immortal symbols which are active in folklore, are depicted in 20th-century Azerbaijani poetry with new ideas and different transformations, along with the symbolic features that exist in the tradition. In the process of becoming a source of new ideas, artistic symbols tend to lose their stability in terms of function and different possibilities of expression appear. In our research, to follow the symbolic purpose of these images from mythological memory and folklore with reference to the research of both Azerbaijani and Turkish scientists, we analyzed the existing scientific and theoretical literature in this field by applying artistic examples and presenting active symbols with new interpretations, which is of particular importance. In this paper, reference is made to the scientific-theoretical views of such theorists as A.Potebnya, G.N.Pospelov, Y.M.Lotman, A.V.Korpenko, and others on the problem of symbols, and is applied to investigating the works of Omur Ceylan, Bahiye Koksel, and others, who have conducted research pertaining to the symbolic purpose(s) of leading images in Turkish folklore. One of the factors determining the scientific novelty of the work is the analysis of the imagery features of the image-symbols coming from folklore from Soviet-era Azerbaijani poetry where specific symbolic purpose of the symbols are emphasized, both in terms of statehood and ideology. In this research, by using the historicalcomparative method to analyze new imagery qualities of the fairy, crane, hunter, deer, and other images in the poems of A.Shaig, A.Javad, J.Jabbarli, A.Yildirim, H.Sanili, S.Rustam, H.Huseynzadeh, and others, the historical-semantic function of images and color symbols in the traditional, national-ideological, political context are revealed through symbolic representation. In his poems, new figurative qualities of the fairy, crane, hunter, deer, etc. are revealed by symbolizing the historical-semantic function of images and color symbols in the traditional, national-ideological, political context. In the transformation of folklore symbols, symbols once stabilized in national thought underwent a change of ideas during the Soviet era, and the loss of the symbolic meanings of red and gold symbols, which were the central image of Soviet society, is set forth by analyzing the given examples. One of the characteristic features of the symbol, within the context of literary texts, is not the repetition of the traditional image-symbol, but rather its renewal in accordance with historical and ideological conditions while preserving its meaning.
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