İlhan Berk’in İstanbul’u ile Louis Aragon’un Paris’i: Şehrin kitabını yazmak

Berk’s Galata, just like Aragon’s Parisian Villager, is written about the city. In both works where intertextuality is prominent, the city is the subject of identification. In Berk’s poetics, Istanbul is narrated with images and verses that can be considered the poetry of the city. Berk, with an approach very close to Aragon, presents a monograph of Galata, one of the historical districts of Istanbul, in a symbolic language. He conveys the past and present of Galata as the source of its historicity and philosophy with a perspective that is a mixture of reality and fantasy. He attributes new meanings to the rich past and encompassing present of the district with the help of metaphorical aesthetic images. He talks about streets, shopkeepers, and urban culture, and makes them the subject of historical and emotional ties, the subject and object of identification. Berk is after what Aragon did with Parisian Villager. The aim is to create a book or poem of a city. Galata, just like the Parisian Peasant, is positioned between fantasy and reality, sadness and grief, fire and water, heaven and hell, legend and reality, mythology and history. In this article, we will try to understand the deep connection that these two writers have established with the city and discuss it in the context of their poetics.