People like Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (23 June 1901 – 24 January 1962) was a Turkish poet, novelist, literary scholar and essayist, widely regarded as one of the most important representatives of modernism in Turkish literature. In addition to his literary and academic career, Tanpınar was also a member of the Turkish Parliament between 1944 and 1946.

Tanpınar was born in Constantinople on 23 June 1901, the youngest of three children. His father, Hüseyin Fikri Efendi, was a judge. Hüseyin Fikri Efendi was of Georgian origin, his family having roots in the city of Maçahel. Tanpınar's mother, Nesime Bahriye Hanım, died of typhus in Mosul in 1915, when Tanpınar was thirteen.

Because his father's vocation required frequent relocation, Tanpınar continued his education in several different cities, including Istanbul, Sinop, Siirt, Kirkuk, and Antalya. After quitting veterinary college, he resumed his educational career at the Faculty of Literature at Istanbul University, which he completed in 1923.. During his time at the university, Tanpınar was tutored by Yahya Kemal, whose views deeply influenced the pupil's intellectual development and ideas about aesthetics, literature, Turkish history and culture. Between the years 1921 and 1923, Tanpınar published 11 poems in the literary publication Dergâh, which was founded by Yahya Kemal. He graduated from Istanbul University in 1923 after defending his thesis on Şeyhî's Hüsrev ü Şirin, a widely influential 15th-century masnavi frequently recomposed by various poets in subsequent periods, sometimes with the title Ferhad ü Şirin.