Nâzım Hikmet

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Nâzım Hikmet Ran

Born 15 January 1902(1902-01-15)
Selânik, Ottoman Empire, today Thessaloniki, Greece1
Died 2 June 1963 (aged 61)
Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, USSR
Occupation poet, playwright, novelist, memoirist
Turkish
literature
By category
Epic tradition

Orhon
Dede Korkut · Köroğlu
Folk tradition

Folk literature
Folklore
Ottoman era

Poetry · Prose
Republican era

Poetry · Prose
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Nâzım Hikmet Ran (January 15, 1902 – June 2, 1963),[1][2] commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈnaːzɯm ˈhikmɛt]), was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements".[3] Described as a "romantic communist"[4] and "romantic revolutionary",[3] he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. His poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages.

Contents

[edit] Family

He came from a cosmopolitan and distinguished family of Turkish, Polish and Circassian ancestry, his father Hikmet Bey was son of Mehmet Nazım Pasha and her mother Celile Hanım was granddaughter of Mehmet Ali Pasha. His maternal grandfather was of Polish origin and later converted to Islam, Mustafa Celaleddin Pasha (former Konstantin Polzokic-Borzecki 1826-1876) in Ottoman Empire and authored "Les Turcs anciens et modernes” in Istanbul, 1869 which considered one of the first works of national Turkist political thoughts. His son Enver Celaleddin Pasha was a Ottoman Army General Staff.[citation needed]

[edit] Early life

Hikmet was born on January 15, 1902, in Selânik, the westernmost metropolis of the Ottoman Empire (today Thessaloniki in Greece), where his father served as a government official.[1][2] He attended the Taşmektep Primary School in the Göztepe district of Constantinople[5] [its name was Constantinople at that time, until it is renamed in 1930[6][7] as part of Atatürk's national reforms[8][9]], and later enrolled to the junior high school section of the prestigious Galatasaray Lisesi in the Beyoğlu district, where he began to learn French; but in 1913 he was transferred to the Numune Mektebi in the Nişantaşı district. In 1918 he graduated from the Turkish Naval Academy in Heybeliada, one of the Princes' Islands located in the Sea of Marmara, to the southeast of Istanbul. His school days coincided with a period of political upheaval as the Ottoman government entered the First World War allying itself with Germany. For a brief period he was assigned as a naval officer to the Ottoman Navy cruiser Hamidiye, but in 1919 he became seriously ill, and not being able to fully recover, was exempted from naval service in 1920.

In 1921, together with his friends Vala Nurettin (Va-Nu), Yusuf Ziya Ortaç and Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel, he went to İnebolu in Anatolia for joining the Turkish War of Independence; from where he (together with Vala Nurettin) walked to Ankara, where the Turkish liberation movement was headquartered. In Ankara they were introduced to Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) who wanted the two friends to write a poem that would invite and inspire the Turkish volunteers in Constantinople and elsewhere to join their struggle. This poem was much appreciated, and Muhittin Bey (Birgen) decided to appoint them as teachers to the Sultani (high school) in Bolu, rather than sending them to the front as soldiers. However, their communist views were not appreciated by the conservative officials in Bolu, and the two decided to go to Batumi in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic to experience in first person the results of the Russian Revolution of 1917, arriving there on September 30, 1921. In July 1922 the two friends went to Moscow, where Hikmet studied Economics and Sociology at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in the early 1920s. There, he was influenced by the artistic experiments of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold, as well as the ideological vision of Lenin.[4]

[edit] Style and achievements

Despite writing his first poems in syllabic meter, Nazım Hikmet distinguished himself from the "syllabic poets" in concept. With the development of his poetic conception, the narrow forms of syllabic verse became too limiting for his style and he set out to seek new forms for his poems.

He was affected by the young Soviet poets who advocated Futurism. On his return to Turkey, he became the charismatic leader of the Turkish avant-garde, producing streams of innovative poems, plays and film scripts.[4] Breaking the boundaries of the syllabic meter, he changed his form and preferred writing in free verse which harmonised with the rich vocal properties of the Turkish language.

He has been compared by Turkish and non-Turkish men of letters to such figures as Federico García Lorca, Louis Aragon, Mayakovsky and Pablo Neruda. Although his work bears resemblance to these poets and owes them occasional debts of form and stylistic device, his literary personality is unique in terms of the synthesis he made of iconoclasms and lyricism, of ideology and poetic diction.[3]:19

Many of his poems have been adapted into songs by the composer Zülfü Livaneli. A part of his work has been translated into Greek by Yiannis Ritsos, and some of these translations have been arranged by the Greek composers Manos Loizos and Thanos Mikroutsikos.

[edit] Later life and legacy

Nâzım Hikmet's gravestone at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow

Hikmet's imprisonment in the 1940s became a cause célèbre among intellectuals worldwide; a 1949 committee that included Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, and Jean Paul Sartre campaigned for Hikmet's release. In 1950, Hikmet went on an eighteen-day hunger strike, despite a heart attack. Later that year Hikmet was released from prison in a general amnesty, escaped from Turkey to Romania via the Black Sea and from there moved to the USSR.

In 1951 Nâzım Hikmet was awarded the International Peace Prize by the World Peace Council. When the upspring of the EOKA struggle took place in Cyprus, Hikmet believed that the population of Cyprus could live together peacefully and called on the Turkish minority to support the Greek Cypriots to achieve the demand of ending the British rule.[10] "[citation needed]),

Persecuted for decades by the Republic of Turkey during the Cold War for his communist views, Hikmet died of a heart attack in Moscow on June 3, 1963 at 6.30 am while picking up a morning newspaper at the door at his summer house in Peredelkino away from his beloved homeland.[11] He is buried in Moscow's famous Novodevichy Cemetery, where his imposing tombstone is even today a place for pilgrimage by Turks and communists from around the world. His final will was to be buried under a plane-tree (platanus) in any village cemetery in Anatolia, which was never realized.

Despite his persecution by the Turkish state, Nâzım Hikmet was always revered by the Turkish nation. His poems depicting the people of the countryside, villages, towns and cities of his homeland (Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları, i.e. Human Landscape from my Country) as well as the Turkish War of Independence (Kurtuluş Savaşı Destanı, i.e. The Epic of the War of Independence) and the Turkish revolutionaries (Kuvâyi Milliye, i.e. Force of the Nation) are considered among the greatest patriotic literary works in Turkey.

Nazim has Polish and Turkish citizenship. The latter was revoked in 1959, and restored in 2009.[12][13] His family has been asked if they want his remains repatriated from Russia.[14]

[edit] Selected works

The poem (titled as "Ölü Kızcağız" on the photo) typewritten by Nâzım Hikmet himself and the letter of Japanese children to him presenting their thanks

Nâzım's poem Kız Çocuğu (The Little Girl) conveys a plea for peace from a seven-year-old girl, ten years after she has perished in the atomic bomb attack at Hiroshima. It has achieved popularity as an anti-war message and has been performed as a song by a number of singers and musicians worldwide.

Zülfü Livaneli (on Nazım Türküsü) has performed a version of the original Turkish poem. A loose English translation of Kız Çocuğu known as I Come And Stand At Every Door has been performed by The Byrds (on the album Fifth Dimension), Pete Seeger (on the album Headlines & Footnotes), This Mortal Coil (on the album Blood), The Misunderstood (as 'I Unseen' on the album Before The Dream Faded) and The Fall on their 1997 album Levitate, albeit omitting the last verse and wrongly attributing writing credits to anon/J Nagle. Fazil Say included the poem in his "Nazım" oratorio.[15] "In 2005, famed Shima-Uta singer Chitose Hajime collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto by translating Kız Çocuğu into Japanese (retitled 'Shinda Onna no Ko' [死んだ女の子]). It was performed live at the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima on the eve of the 60th Anniversary (August the 5th, 2005). The song later appeared as a bonus track on Chitose's Hanadairo album in 2006.

He also opposed the Korean War, in which Turkey participated. After the Senate address of John Foster Dulles, where he valued Turkish soldiers at 23 cents a month[16] (compared with the lowest echelon U.S. soldiers at $70[17]), Nazım Hikmet wrote a protest poem criticising the policies of the United States. This poem is titled "23 Sentlik Askere Dair" (On the soldier worth 23 cents).

[edit] Selected Poems

 This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (January 2009)
Take out the dress i first saw you in
look your best,
look like spring trees
Wear in your hair
the carnation i sent you in a letter from prison,
raise your kissable, lined, broad white forehead.
Today, not broken and sad-
no way!
today Nazim Hikmet's woman must be beautiful
like a rebel flag...

4 December 1945, Letters from Prison.

Source: Romantic Communist, the Life and Works of Nazım Hikmet, Saime Göksu and Edward Timms.

This world will grow cold,
a star among stars,
one of the smallest,
this great world of ours
a gilded mote on blue velvet.
This world will grow cold one day,
not like a ball of ice,
or even a lifeless cloud -
but like an empty walnut it will roll around and around
in pitch dark space for ever.
You must grieve for it right now,
and endure the sadness,
for you must love the world this much
if you are to say,
'I have lived'.

February 1948
[Letters to Kemal Tahir from Prison]
Source: Beyond the Walls: Selected Poems by Nazım Hikmet, Richard McKane, and Ruth Christie

[edit] Invitation

Nazım Hikmet's Davet ("Invitation") is one of his best known poems. Nazım tells what he wants, and what life should be like, in the poem's last lines about living "alone and free like a tree" and "in brotherly love like a forest".

Davet Invitation
Dörtnala gelip Uzak Asya'dan Galloping from Far Asia and jutting out
Akdeniz'e bir kısrak başı gibi uzanan into the Mediterranean like a mare's head
bu memleket bizim. this country is ours.

Bilekler kan içinde, dişler kenetli, ayaklar çıplak Wrists in blood, teeth clenched, feet bare
ve ipek bir halıya benzeyen toprak, and this soil spreading like a silk carpet,
bu cehennem, bu cennet bizim. this hell, this paradise is ours.

Kapansın el kapıları, bir daha açılmasın, Shut the gates of plutocracy, don't let them open again,
yok edin insanın insana kulluğunu, annihilate man's servitude to man,
bu dâvet bizim. this invitation is ours.

Yaşamak bir ağaç gibi tek ve hür To live like a tree single and at liberty
ve bir orman gibi kardeşçesine, and brotherly like the trees of a forest,
bu hasret bizim. this yearning is ours.


Nazım Hikmet (1902-1963)[18]

[edit] In popular culture

  • Tale of Tales is a Russian film partially inspired by Hikmet's poem of the same name.
  • Le Fate Ignoranti is an Italian film, in which a book by Hikmet plays a central plot role.
  • Mavi Gözlü Dev ("Blue eyed giant") is a 2007 Turkish biographical film about Nazım Hikmet.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Plays

  • Kafatası (1932, The Skull)
  • Unutulan Adam (1935, The Forgotten Man)
  • Ferhad ile Şirin 1965 (Ferhad and Şirin)
  • Lüküs Hayat - Luxurious Living (under someoneelse' account)

[edit] Novels

  • Yaşamak Güzel Şey be Kardeşim (1967, It's great to be alive, brother)

[edit] Poems

  • Taranta-Babu'ya Mektuplar (1935, Letters to Taranta-Babu)
  • Şeyh Bedrettin Destanına Zeyl (1935, The Epic of Sheikh Bedreddin)
  • Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları (1966-67, Human Landscapes from My Country)
  • Kurtuluş Savaşı Destanı (1965, The Epic of the War of Independence)

[edit] Poetry

  • İlk şiirler / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : Yapı Kredi, 2002. ISBN 9750803809
  • 835 satır / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002. ISBN 9750803736
  • Benerci kendini niçin öldürdü? / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002. ISBN 9750803744
  • Kuvâyi Milliye / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002. ISBN 9750803752
  • Yatar Bursa Kalesinde / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002. ISBN 9750803760
  • Memleketimden insan manzaraları : (insan manzaraları) / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002. ISBN 9750803779
  • Yeni şiirler : (1951-1959) / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2002. ISBN 9750803787
  • Son şiirleri : (1959-1963) / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2002. ISBN 9750803795

[edit] Partial list of translated works in English

  • The day before tomorrow : poems / done into English by Taner Baybars. [South Hinksey, Eng.] : Carcanet Press, 1972. ISBN 0902145436
  • Human landscapes / by Nazim Hikmet ; translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk ; foreword by Denise Levertov, New York : Persea Books, c1982. ISBN 0892550686
  • Beyond the walls : selected poems / Nâzim Hikmet ; translated by Ruth Christie, Richard McKane, Talât Sait Halman ; introduction by Talât Sait Halman, London : Anvil Press Poetry, 2002. ISBN 0856463299
  • Selected poetry / Nazim Hikmet ; translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, New York : Persea Books, c1986. ISBN 0892551011
  • Nâzım Hikmet, That Wall / illustrations [by] Maureen Scott, London : League of Socialist Artists, [1973]. ISBN 0950297623

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Search Wikiquote Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Nâzım Hikmet
  1. ^ a b Encyclopædia Britannica: Nazım Hikmet (Turkish author)
  2. ^ a b Nazım Hikmet Kültür ve Sanat Vakfı
  3. ^ a b c Selected poems, Nazim Hikmet translated by Ruth Christie, Richard McKane, Talat Sait Halman, Anvil press Poetry, 2002, p.9 ISBN 0 85646 329 9
  4. ^ a b c Saime Goksu, Edward Timms, Romantic Communist: The Life and Work of Nazim Hikmet, St. Martin's Press, New York ISBN 0-312-22247-5[page needed]
  5. ^ Finkel, Caroline, Osman's Dream, (Basic Books, 2005), 57; "Istanbul was only adopted as the city's official name in 1930..".
  6. ^ BBC - Timeline: Turkey.
  7. ^ Room, Adrian, (1993), Place Name changes 1900-1991, Metuchen, N.J., & London:The Scarecrow Press, Inc., ISBN 0-8108-2600-3 pp. 46, 86.
  8. ^ Britannica, Istanbul.
  9. ^ Lexicorient, Istanbul.
  10. ^ Greek newspaper Avgi, 17/1/1955 and Phileleftheros, 31/3/2007:

    Hikmet sent a message to the Turks of Cyprus, emphasizing that Cyprus was always Greek. [...] (The Turkish Cypriots) must support Greek Cypriots to achieve the liberation from British imperialism. [...] Only when the British imperialists leave the island the Turkish residents of the island will live truly free. [...] Those who try to make Turks oppose Greeks, actually only support the interest of the foreign ruler.

  11. ^ Nazim Hikmet
  12. ^ "Nazım'la ilgili girişim iade-i itibar değil" (in Turkish). CNN Turk. 2009-01-10. http://www.cnnturk.com/2009/turkiye/01/10/nazimla.ilgili.girisim.iadeiitibar.degil/508426.0/index.html. Retrieved 2009-01-11. 
  13. ^ Başbakanlık Mevzuatı Geliştirme ve Yayın Genel Müdürlüğü (2009-01-10). "Nazım Hikmet Ran’ın Türk Vatandaşlığından Çıkarılmasına İlişkin 25/7/1951 Tarihli ve 3/13401 Sayılı Bakanlar Kurulu Kararının Yürürlükten Kaldırılması Hakkında Karar" (in Turkish). Press release. http://rega.basbakanlik.gov.tr/eskiler/2009/01/20090110-5.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-11. 
  14. ^ "Nazım yeniden Türk vatandaşı oluyor" (in Turkish). Radikal. 2009-01-05. http://www.radikal.com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalDetay&ArticleID=915651&Date=05.01.2009&CategoryID=78. Retrieved 2009-01-05. 
  15. ^ Fazil Say: Kız Cocuğu at YouTube (requires Adobe Flash)
  16. ^ United States Congress. Senate Committee on Appropriations (1955). Legislative-judiciary Appropriations. U.S. Govt. Print. Off.. pp. 87. http://books.google.com/books?id=0nw0AAAAIAAJ&q=%2223+cents+a+month%22&dq=%2223+cents+a+month%22&lr=&client=firefox-a&pgis=1. 
  17. ^ United States Congress, Committee on Foreign Relations (1951). Mutual Security Act of 1951. U.S. Govt. Print. Off.. pp. 60. http://books.google.com/books?id=vek0AAAAIAAJ&q=%2223+cents+a+month%22&dq=%2223+cents+a+month%22&lr=&client=firefox-a&pgis=1. 
  18. ^ Davet, Nâzım Hikmet

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