Did Yahya Kemal understand 'Fetes Galentes' correctly?

Abstract

Mallarmé said of Verlaine’s ‘Fetes Galantes’ that ‘if French youth want to learn the art of poetry they should memorize Paul Verlaine’s ‘Fetes Galantes’. In this study Kemal Özmen dwells on Yahya Kemal’s differing, even wrong interpretation of this statement. He underlines that what Mallarmé wanted to stress with these words differs from what Yahya Kemal wished to do. According to the author, Mallermé, in suggesting that French youth read ‘Fetes Galantes’ did not want to revert to old French poetry, but wanted to draw attention to the magnificence of the language of the poetry. Under the impression that Verlaine reverted to the language of the previous century and wrote poetry in a then non-existant XVIIIth century French, Yahya Kemal learned Arabic and Persian and studied Divan poetry and aspired to write in that style. This view based on a simple misunderstanding paradoxically brought an innovation to Yahya Kemal’s poetry and allowed him to feed off of our traditional poetry.