“Perhaps the
courtyard will be knee-deep in sunlight and pigeons” - Nâzim Hikmet
Nâzim Hikmet
(1902-1963) is one of the most important figures in 20th century Turkish
literature and one of the first Turkish poets to use free verse. He became
during his lifetime the best-known Turkish poet in the West, and his works were
translated into several languages. However, in his home country, Hikmet was
condemned for his commitment to leftist ideals, and he remained a controversial
figure decades after his death. His writings were filled with social criticism
and he was the only major writer to speak out against the Armenian massacres in
1915 and 1922. Hikmet proclaimed in the early 1930s that, “the artist is the
engineer of the human soul”. He spent some 17 years in prisons and called
poetry “the bloodiest of the arts.” His poem ‘Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison’ reflected his
will to survive.
“To think of
roses and gardens inside is bad,
to think of seas
and mountains is good.
Read and write
without rest,
and I also
advise weaving
and making
mirrors.”
(from ‘Some
Advice’, 1949)
Hikmet was born
in Salonica in Greece and but grew up in Istanbul. His mother was an artist,
and his pasha grandfather wrote poetry; through their circle of friends Hikmet
was introduced to poetry early; publishing first poems at seventeen. This poem of his
I am very partial to:
ANGINA PECTORIS
If half my heart
is here, doctor,
the other half
is in China
with the army
flowing
toward the
Yellow River.
And, every
morning, doctor,
every morning at
sunrise my heart
is shot in
Greece.
And every night,
doctor,
when the
prisoners are asleep and the infirmary is deserted,
my heart stops
at a run-down old house
in Istanbul.
And then after
ten years
ALL I HAVE TO
OFFER MY POOR PEOPLE
IS THIS APPLE IN
MY HAND, DOCTOR,
ONE RED APPLE:
MY HEART.
AND THAT,
DOCTOR, THAT IS THE REASON
FOR THIS ANGINA
PECTORIS-
NOT NICOTINE,
PRISON, OR ARTERIOSCLEROSIS.
I look at the
night through the bars,
and despite the
weight on my chest
MY HEART STILL
BEATS WITH THE MOST DISTANT STARS.
Nâzim Hikmet (1948)
After the
disastrous events in Greece and Turkey in 1922, the poet went to Russia,
attracted by the Communist ideals. He returned to Turkey and was imprisoned
several times on trumped up charges. He went back to Russia, returned to Turkey
and between 1929 and 1936 he published nine books (five collections and four
long poems) that revolutionised Turkish poetry, flouting Ottoman literary
conventions and introducing free verse and colloquial diction. While these
poems established him as a new major poet, he also published several plays and
novels and worked as a bookbinder, proofreader, journalist, translator, and
screenwriter to support an extended family that included his second wife, her
two children, and his widowed mother.
PLEA
This country
shaped like the head of a mare
Coming full
gallop from far off Asia
To stretch into
the Mediterranean
THIS COUNTRY IS OURS.
Bloody wrists,
clenched teeth
bare feet,
Land like a
precious silk carpet
THIS HELL, THIS
PARADISE IS OURS.
Let the doors be
shut that belong to others
Let them never
open again
Do away with the
enslaving of man by man
THIS PLEA IS
OURS.
To live! Like a
tree alone and free
Like a forest in
brotherhood
THIS YEARNING IS
OURS.
In January 1938
he was arrested for inciting the Turkish armed forces to revolt and sentenced
to twenty-eight years in prison on the grounds that military cadets were reading
his poems, particularly ‘The Epic of
Sheikh Bedrettin’. Published in 1936, this long poem based on a
fifteenth-century peasant rebellion against Ottoman rule was his last book to
appear in Turkey during his lifetime.
In the late forties,
while still in prison, he divorced his second wife and married for a third
time. In 1949 an international committee, including Pablo Picasso, Paul
Robeson, and Jean Paul Sartre, was formed in Paris to campaign for Hikmet’s
release, and in 1950 he was awarded the World Peace Prize. The same year, he
went on an eighteen-day hunger strike, despite a recent heart attack, and when
Turkey’s first democratically elected government came to power, he was released
in a general amnesty. He managed to make his way to Moscow. During his exile
his poems were regularly printed abroad, his ‘Selected Poems’ was published in Bulgaria in 1954, and generous
translations of his work subsequently appeared there and in Greece, Germany,
Italy, and the USSR. He died of a heart attack in Moscow in June 1963.
THE BLUE-EYED
GIANT, THE MINIATURE WOMAN AND THE HONEYSUCKLE
He was a
blue-eyed giant,
He loved a
miniature woman.
The woman’s
dream was of a miniature house
with a garden
where honeysuckle grows
in a riot of
colours
that sort of
house.
The giant loved
like a giant,
and his hands
were used to such big things
that the giant
could not
make the
building,
could not knock
on the door
of the garden
where the honeysuckle grows
in a riot of
colours
at that house.
He was a
blue-eyed giant,
He loved a
miniature woman,
a mini miniature
woman.
The woman was
hungry for comfort
and tired of the
giant’s long strides.
And bye bye, off
she went to the embraces of a rich dwarf
with a garden
where the honeysuckle grows
in a riot of
colours
that sort of
house.
Now the
blue-eyed giant realises,
a giant isn’t
even a graveyard for love:
in the garden
where the honeysuckle grows
in a riot of
colours
that sort of
house...
