On the Meaning of the Singing of the Nightingale According to the Anonymous Biography

Abstract

Human being has always been in relationship with nature and the beings other than himself differentiating according to the time he lives, the cultural environment he belongs to and the degree of his knowledge and perception. The organisms that human knows closely of distantly, afraids of or lives with and the literary products and approaches and related with them also show difference. The meanings he attributes to the nature can be determining for the literary outputs so far as his world of belief. This study purposes to state how the nightingale was handled, the basis of the meanings and the meaning differences that the two effective representatives of Istanbul, who had the personality of creating literary characters especially of the XIX. and XX. century oral literary environments, attribute to the singing of the nightingale which is one of the most mentioned birds in Turkish literature. In this sense, we will try to evaluate the life stories, which can be called as anonymous biography, of the Ottoman fire brigades, whose main job was fire fighting but known with their performances of punned minis, and watchman fathers, whose main job was guarding the neighborhood but organized mini meetings and told minis, standing to the sociocultural basis and basing on the sample texts from the minis of Istanbul. The reflection of the artist's bond with the literary tradition, the life environment and life style of him/her will be handled within this framework. Literature'a being a "mirror" reflecting society is a repeated and generally accepted view. Is society one type? Aren't there cultural layers in the society? Does every cultural layer meet us as a reflection that is the same and in tune with the society? Our starting point is the idea that answering these questions by analyzing the relation of literature with the society, which is not at all homogeneous, by also making use of the information from sociology of literature and handling the text and the field of cultural interaction together can be useful. It has been seen that the fire brigades and the watchman fathers, whose sense of life, life style and literary and cultural performance environments are different, form meaning zones according to their anonymous biographies.