FROM HARMONY TO ATONALITY: THE DISSONANT DIALOGUE OF MUSIC AND LANGUAGE IN MODERN TURKISH POETRY

This article examines the transformation of the structural relationship between music, rhythm, and language in Republican-era Turkish poetry, tracing a poetic fault line extending From Harmony to Atonality through the focus of the Garip and İkinci Yeni movements. The primary aim of the research is to reveal how musical harmony in poetry was redefined across aesthetic, cognitive, and poetic power dimensions. The study is framed by theoretical perspectives such as Lerdahl's cognitive music theory and Adorno’s dissonance aesthetic. The Garip movement rejected traditional musical molds, meter, and rhyme, developing a simple, direct, and meaning-centered understanding of rhythm. Through this rhythmic reduction, Garip opened poetry to everyday language and established a conscious distance from music. In contrast, the İkinci Yeni movement, via unconventional syntax and word deformation, shifted the musical experience onto an abstract, multi-layered, and intuitive plane, proposing a new structural aesthetic through formal intermediality and the search for an atonal language. Findings from qualitative analysis and comparative evaluation indicate that Garip's simplicity provided cognitive consistency, while İkinci Yeni created a new poetic harmony through formal dissonance. In conclusion, this aesthetic transformation, extending from harmony to atonality in modern Turkish poetry, is assessed not only as an artistic break but also as a structural intervention that redefines the aesthetic and ideological power of language. © 2025, Tolga Karaca. All rights reserved.