Author :
Abstract
Baskın tekçiliğiyle ekoeleştiri, faydalandığı veya paylaşım içinde olduğu doğal bilimler gibi, önsel fenomene bağlı kalarak genelde doğaüstünü bir kenara iter. Ancak, doğa ile doğaüstünü çelişkili görmeyen bu çalışma, bilim tarafından “doğanın devamlılığına” sahip olmadığı için reddedilmesine rağmen, doğaüstünün doğal veya fiziksel fenomenle bağlantılı olduğu ve dolayısıyla ekoeleştirinin kapsamına girdiği tezini öne sürmekte; kanıt olarak da dediklerine göre 12/21/25/28 Ağustos 1915’te, Gelibolu’da “sırra kadem basan tabur”u göstermektedir. O gün, Çanakkale Savaşı’nın en kanlı çarpışmalarından biri yaşandığı sırada bir İngiliz taburu, alışılmadık derecede alçakta duran bir bulutun içine doğru yürür ve bir daha ortaya çıkmamak üzere kaybolur. Görgü tanıkları bunu ilahî bir müdahale olarak yorumlar, yazarlar ve zaman içinde, Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nın kıyısında olmakla birlikte, adı tam olarak konamayan olay, hem Türk hem Müttefik tarafın ortak (çevresel) belleği ile edebî ekolojisinin ayrılmaz bir parçası konumundaki bir mite dönüşür. Bu çalışmanın amacı, anlaşılması zor söz konusu olayı, “Bulutlar insan yutmaz, Gelibolu’da ‘sırra kadem basan tabur’ vakası hariç” gibi ikicil bir bakış açısıyla, birçok kişi tarafından hâlâ anlatılan ve hakkında yazılan bir mit olarak yorumlamaktır. Çalışma – bulut oluşumuna yol açan atmosferik koşullar ve farklı bulut türlerinin özellikleri gibi meteorolojik konular ile savaş alanının topoğrafik özelliklerine değinmek suretiyle – olayın maddeselliğini göz ardı etmeden, Gelibolu askerlerinin anlattıklarını ve daha sonraki türev anlatıları temel alarak ekolojik açıdan gizemli olayın deneyüstü boyutunu vurgulamakta; bunu yaparken de doğal ve doğaüstü unsurların iç içe geçerek birbirini tamamlıyor ve Tanrı’nın kendisini özdeksel doğa aracılığıyla açığa vuruyor olabileceğine dikkat çekmektedir ki bu yaklaşıma “panteistik ekoeleştiri” adı verilebilir.
Keywords
Abstract
With its overwhelmingly monistic viewpoint, ecocriticism, like the natural sciences it benefits from or shares with, adheres to a priori phenomena, marginalising, for the most part, the supernatural. Yet this study which does not conceptualise the natural and supernatural in contradictory terms postulates that – though rejected by science because it lacks the “regularities of nature” – the supra-physical correlates with natural or physical phenomena and therefore can be considered within the scope of ecocriticism, referring as proof to “the battalion that vanished” at Gallipoli, Turkey, reportedly on 12/21/25/28 August 1915. That day, during one of the bloodiest battles of the Dardanelles Campaign, a British troop marches into an unusually low-slung cloud and disappears forever. Eyewitnesses interpret and document what they saw as divine intervention, and in time, albeit on the periphery of World War I, the nebulous event turns into a myth inseparable from the literary ecology, as well as the collective (environmental) memory, of both the Turkish and Allied sides. This study is intended to ruminate on the mentioned hard-to-comprehend event as a myth once and still being verbalised and written about by the many, adopting a dualistic approach like “Clouds do not swallow men, the case of ‘the battalion that vanished’ excepted.” While not downplaying the materiality of the happening – by touching upon such meteorological issues as the atmospheric conditions conducive to the formation of clouds and the features of different types of clouds alongside the topography of the battlefield – the study, using as its base the Gallipoli soldiers’ accounts and subsequent derivative narratives, highlights the metaphysical dimension of the ecologically mysterious event, calling attention to the likelihood that the natural and the supernatural may segue into and complement each other and the Divine may manifest Himself through material nature, a course conceivable to call “pantheistic ecocriticism.”
Keywords
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