Tevfik Fikret

Tevfik Fikret
Born	Mehmed Tevfik (1867-12-26)December 26, 1867 Istanbul, Ottoman Empire
Died	August 19, 1915(1915-08-19) (aged 47) Istanbul
Resting place	Aşiyan Asri Cemetery
Nationality	Turkish
Alma mater	Galatasaray High School
Known for	Founder of the modern school of Turkish poetry.
Spouse	Nazime (married 1890)
Children	Haluk (1895-1965)
Parent(s)	Hüseyin Efendi (father), Hatice Refia Hanım (mother)

Tevfik Fikret (December 26, 1867 – August 19, 1915) (توفیق فکرت, born Mehmed Tevfik) was the pseudonym of Turkish poet Mehmed Tevfik who is considered the founder of the modern school of Turkish poetry.

Biography

Mehmed Tevfik was born in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) Ottoman Empire, on December 26, 1867. His father (Hüseyin Efendi), originally from the district of Çerkeş in the sanjak of Çankırı, was mostly absent, as he was exiled for being a political foe of the ruling regime; while his mother (Hatice Refia Hanım), a Greek Muslim convert from the Ottoman island of Sakız (Chios), died when he was very young.

File:Tevfik Fikret - GS Museum.JPG

Portrait of Tevfik Fikret at Galatasaray Museum

He received his education at the prestigious Galatasaray Lisesi and graduated in 1888 as the valedictorian with the highest grades. He later became the school's principal. His sister suffered a tragic early death. In 1890 he married his cousin Nazime, and the couple had a son named Haluk in 1895. He left Galatasaray in 1894 and started teaching at another prestigious institution on the Bosphorus, Robert College, in 1896, where he kept working until his death. In 1906, he built a house inside the Robert College campus for his wife and son. Named Aşiyan, the house is now a museum.

He was investigated by the Ottoman police numerous times because of his political views and writings, and his association with known political opponents of Sultan Abdülhamid II.

Fikret's first poem, executed in the divan style, was published on December 31 st 1883, in the paper Tercüman-i Hakikat . He kept publishing poems until 1885. In 1891, the periodical Mirsat published his poem Bahar. As other newspapers and periodicals followed suit, he became one of the better-known poets of his age. Fikret enjoys a privileged status in Turkish literature, as he was responsible for the demystification of the act of composing poetry. Unlike many of his predecessors and contemporaries, he openly stated that poetic composition involved knowledge, aesthetics and philosophy rather than divine inspiration. This was deemed the aesthetic miracle that Fikret offered to Turkish poetry; once seen as a divine chosen by God as his voice, the poet became an ordinary person. Hence the idea that composing poems was a matter of discipline and aesthetics took hold in Turkish literary circles. What the poet needed was a sound literary background, an insight fed by sensibility, a natural aptitude for perception, and aesthetic awareness. Hence, Turkish poetry would no longer be seen to appeal to a small elite group. Even though this influence is not directly perceptible in Fikret's poems, due to the spread and acceptance of this new concept, he nevertheless is seen as a pioneer, breaking path for future poetic movements. Fikret spent a long time composing his poems, and he painstakingly revised them many times until he deemed them perfect. Although Fikret was influenced by French poetry, he always remained open to variety in verse forms. Just like other poets of the era, he had profound knowledge of Turkish music, and while composing his poems he utilized sonic and musical harmony consciously. He would pick vowel and consonant sounds in accordance with the subject matter of the poem, and he made ample use of sonic techniques such as alliteration and assonance. However, in order to make this possible, he frequently resorted to Persian and Arabic words in his poems, making his work quite difficult to understand for the average reader. As a result of this, ironically, Fikret took his place among the poets who appealed to an elite crowd.

In 1894 he published the literary magazine Malûmat. In 1896 he became the chief editor of the famous Servet-i Fünun magazine where he worked with other Ottoman literary lumineries such as Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, İsmail Safa, Mehmet Rauf, Samipaşazade Sezai and Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın. In 1908, after the Young Turk Revolution, he began publishing the newspaper Tanin, which became a strong supporter of the ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti). He was eventually disappointed with their politics too, and returned to Galatasaray Lisesi as the principal. During the 31 March Incident (31 Mart Vakası) of 1909, he chained himself to the school gates as a protest and resigned the same day.

He had projects for a new school and magazines, however, due to complications from diabetes he refused to treat, he died in 1915 and was buried in the family plot at Eyüp. Along with many of his avant-garde contemporaries, he contributed to the literary magazine Servet-i Fünun ("The Wealth of Knowledge") until it was censored by the Ottoman government in 1901. Fikret's volumes of verse include Rubab-ı Şikeste ("The Broken Lute") from 1900, and Haluk'un Defteri ("Haluk's Notebook") from 1911. Because of his very fiery writings and poetry in which he criticised the Ottoman regime of Abdülhamid II, he was immortalized as the "freedom poet".

Bibliography

• "Rubab-ı Şikeste" (1900)
• "Tarih-i Kadim" (1905)
• "Haluk'un Defteri" (1911)
• "Rubabın Cevabı" (1911)
• "Şermin" (1914)
• "Son Şiirler" (1952)

See also

• List of contemporary Turkish poets
• Galatasaray High School
• Robert College

References

• Kuiper, Kathleen. Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Merriam-Webster, 1995.
• Biyografi.info - Biography of Tevfik Fikret Template:Tr icon

External links

• Tevfik Fikret - On his life and poetry