This article is about the most important Turkish Sufi poet and, more specifically, about the presence and the pragmatics of ‘the Feminine’ in his experience—inasmuch as the latter is reflected in his work. To be sure, this is a case study, in the sense that it aspires to provide only an idea as to how ‘the Feminine’ pervades Sufi hierophanics/religion, and also in the sense that it does not assume to be a comprehensive and exhaustive discussion—not even of Yunus Emre himself. Select(ed) poems of Yunus Emre are explored in the methodological light of what Mircea Eliade has dubbed ‘hierophanic dialectics’, and what Catherine Clément and Julia Kristeva regard as ‘the Feminine’ in relation to the sacred/religious from the perspective of social anthropology and psychoanalysis. In the poetry of Yunus Emre ‘the Feminine’ turns out to be the subtle yet decisive challenge, opposition, and subversion that, on the one hand, negates symbolic Islam and, on the other, affirms imaginary Islam in the name of the Islamic real—to evoke the terminology of Jacques Lacan.
The Feminine in the Poetry of Yunus Emre: A Case Study in the Hierophanic Dialectics of Mystical Islamic Experience