The poem “Monolog”

“Monolog” was written in 1933. The title means one person’s speech to himself or to everyone. At the start the lyric hero speaks about love: who has not tasted from its sweet tongue, whose heart has its pain not wounded? Then he recalls famous poets and literary heroes who knew the pain of love: Petrarch (an Italian poet of the 14th century), Sappho (a poetess of ancient Greece), Tasso (an Italian poet of the 16th century), Dante and Beatrice, Hamlet and Ophelia, Othello and Desdemona. All of them suffered from love; if there were no betrayal and tragedy did not crush the heart, he says, Shakespeare would not be needed. After this the tone changes: he suffers over “what cruelty” and says one must “not fail to resist” love. The textbook stresses that the poet is not rising against love itself but against an era that humiliated people’s delicate feelings: the age is ruining not only the person but his feelings too, so this is not a reproach but resistance. The poet understands that the question is complex and finding the guilty is not easy (the textbook asks whom one can blame in Kumushbibi’s tragedy). At the end he says he has taken a great task upon himself and may not be able to finish it. The poem treats the theme of love from a new point of view, so young people still remember it.