Turkish communist poet, playwright and novelist (1902–1963) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mehmed Nâzım Ran (17 January 1902– 3 June 1963),[3][4] commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet (Turkish:[naːˈzɯmhicˈmet]ⓘ), was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director, and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements".[5][pageneeded] Described as a "romantic communist"[6][pageneeded] and a "romantic revolutionary",[5][pageneeded] 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 50 languages.
According to Nâzım Hikmet, he was of paternal Turkish and maternal German, Polish ,French and Georgian descent.[7][8][9] His mother came from a distinguished cosmopolitan family with predominantly-Circassian (Adyghe) roots,[10][11] along with high social position and relations to the Polish nobility. From his father's side, he had Turkish heritage.[12] His father, Hikmet Bey, was the son of Mehmet Nâzım Pasha, after whom Nâzım Hikmet was named.
Nazım’s maternal grandfather, Hasan Enver Pasha, was the son of the Polish-born Mustafa Celalettin Pasha and Saffet Hanım, the daughter, Omar Pasha, a Serbian, and Adviye Hanım, a Circassian who was the daughter of Çerkes Hafız Pasha.
Mustafa Celalettin Pasha (born Konstanty Borzęcki herbu Półkozic) wrote Les Turcs anciens et modernes ("The Ancient and Modern Turks") in Istanbul in 1869. That is considered one of the first works of Turkish nationalist political thought.[11]
Nâzım Hikmet's maternal grandmother, Leyla Hanım, was the daughter of Mehmet Ali Pasha, of French Huguenot and German origin, and Ayşe Sıdıka Hanım, a daughter of Çerkes Hafız Paşa.[13] Nâzım Hikmet and Celile Hanım's cousins included Oktay Rifat Horozcu, a leading Turkish poet, and the statesman Ali Fuat Cebesoy.[14]
Nâzım was born on 15 January 1902, in Selânik (Salonica), where his father was serving as an Ottoman government official.[3][4] He attended the Taşmektep Primary School in the Göztepe district of Istanbul and later enrolled in the junior high school section of the prestigious Galatasaray High School in the Beyoğlu district, where he began to learn French. However, in 1913, he was transferred to the Numune Mektebi, in the Nişantaşı district. In 1918, he graduated from the Ottoman Naval School on Heybeliada, one of the Princes' Islands, in the Sea of Marmara. His school days coincided with a period of political upheaval, during which the Ottoman government entered the First World War and was allied with Germany. For a brief period, he was assigned as a naval officer to the Ottoman NavycruiserHamidiye, but in 1919 he became seriously ill and was not able to fully recover. That got him exempted from naval service in 1920.
In 1921, together with his friends Vâlâ Nureddin (Vâ-Nû), Yusuf Ziya Ortaç and Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel, he went to İnebolu in Anatolia to join the Turkish War of Independence. From there he, together with Vâlâ Nûreddin, walked to Ankara, where the Turkish liberation movement was headquartered. In Ankara, they were introduced to Mustafa Kemal Pasha, later called Atatürk, who wanted the two friends to write a poem that would invite and inspire Turkish volunteers in Istanbul and elsewhere to join their struggle. The poem was much appreciated, and Muhittin Bey (Birgen) decided to appoint them as teachers to the Sultani (high college) in Bolu, rather than to send them to the front as soldiers. However, their communist views were not appreciated by the conservative officials in Bolu and so both of them decided to go to Batumi in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic to witness the results of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and arrived there on 30 September 1921. In July 1922, both friends went to Moscow, where Ran 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 Vladimir Lenin.[6]
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 influenced by the young Soviet poets who advocated Futurism. On his return to Turkey, he became the charismatic leader of the Turkish avant-garde by producing streams of innovative poems, plays and film scripts.[6]
In Moscow in 1922, he broke the boundaries of syllabic meter, changed his form and began writing in free verse.[15]
He has been compared by Turkish and non-Turkish men of letters to such figures as Federico García Lorca, Louis Aragon, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Yiannis Ritsos, and Pablo Neruda. Although Ran's work bears a 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 iconoclasm and lyricism, of ideology and poetic diction.[5]:19
On 8 April 1950, Nâzım began a hunger strike to protest the Turkish Parliament's failure to include an amnesty law in its agenda before it closed for the upcoming general election. He was then transferred from the prison in Bursa, first to the infirmary of Sultanahmet Jail, in Istanbul, and later to Paşakapısı Prison.[18] Seriously ill, Ran suspended his strike on 23 April, National Sovereignty and Children's Day. His doctor's request to treat him in hospital for three months was refused by officials. As his imprisonment status had not changed, he resumed his hunger strike on the morning of 2 May.[17]
Nâzım's hunger strike caused a stir throughout the country. Petitions were signed and a magazine named after him was published. His mother, Celile, began a hunger strike on 9 May, followed by the renowned Turkish poets Orhan Veli, Melih Cevdet and Oktay Rıfat the next day. In light of the new political situation after the 1950 Turkish general election, held on 14 May, the strike ended five days later, on 19 May, Turkey's Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day, when he was finally released by a general amnesty law enacted by the new government.[17]
Later on, Nâzım escaped from Turkey to Romania on a ship via the Black Sea and from there moved to the Soviet Union. Because the Soviet bloc recognized the Turkish minority only in communist Bulgaria, the poet's books were immediately brought out in this country, both in Turkish originals[19] and in Bulgarian translations.[20] The communist authorities in Bulgaria celebrated him in Turkish and Bulgarian publications as 'a poet of liberty and peace.'[21] The goal was to discredit Turkey presented as a "lackey of the imperialist" United States in the eyes of Bulgaria's Turkish minority,[22] many of whom desired to leave for or were expelled to Turkey in 1950–1953.[23]
When the EOKA struggle broke out in Cyprus, Ran believed that its population could live together peacefully, and he called on the Cypriot Turks to support the Greek Cypriots' demand for an end to British rule and union with Greece (enosis).[24][25][26] Hikmet drew negative reaction from Turkish Cypriots for his opinions.[27]
Persecuted for decades by Turkey during the Cold War for his communist views, Nâzım died of a heart attack in Moscow on 3 June 1963 at 6.30 a.m. while he was picking up a morning newspaper at the door of his summer house in Peredelkino, far away from his beloved homeland.[28] He is buried in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, where his tomb is still a place of pilgrimage for Turks and others from around the world. His final wish, which was never carried out, was to be buried under a plane tree (platanus) in any village cemetery in Anatolia.[citation needed]
His poems depicting the people of the countryside, villages, towns and cities of his homeland (Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları, "Human Landscapes 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, "Force of the Nation) are considered among the greatest literary works of Turkey.[citation needed]
After his death, the Kremlin ordered the publication of the poet's first-ever Turkish-language collected works in communist Bulgaria, where a large and recognized Turkish national minority still existed. The eight volumes of these collected works, Bütün eserleri, appeared at Sofia between 1967 and 1972, in the very last years of the existence of the Turkish minority educational and publishing system in Bulgaria.[29]
Nâzım had Polish and Turkish citizenship.[2] The latter was revoked in 1959 and restored in 2009.[30][31] His family has been asked if it wanted his remains repatriated from Russia.[32]
During the 1940s, as he was serving his sentence at Bursa Prison, painted. There, he met a young inmate, İbrahim Balaban. Ran discovered Balaban's talent in drawing, gave all his paint and brushes to him, and encouraged him to continue with painting. Ran influenced the peasant and educated him, who had finished only a three-grade village school, in forming his own ideas in the fields of philosophy, sociology, economics, and politics. Ran greatly admired Balaban and referred to him in a letter to the novelist Kemal Tahir as "his peasant painter" (Turkish: Köylü ressam). Their contact remained after they were released from the prison.[33][34]
Nâzım's poem "Kız Çocuğu" ("The Girl Child") conveys a plea for peace from a seven-year-old girl, ten years after she perished in the US atomic bomb attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It has achieved worldwide popularity as a powerful anti-war message and has been performed and translated in many languages as a song by a number of singers and musicians both in Turkey and many countries. It is also known in English by various other titles, including "I Come and Stand at Every Door", "I Unseen" and "Hiroshima Girl".[35]
Turkish
Zülfü Livaneli has performed a version of the original Turkish poem on his album Nazım Türküsü, which was later sung in Turkish by Joan Baez.
Subhash Mukhopadhyay (poet) translated Hikmet's poems into Bengali. The poems are collected in two anthologies, Nirbachita Nazim Hikmet (1952)(Selected Poems of Nazem Hikmet) ISBN81-7079-501-X and Nazem Hikmet er Aro Kobita (1974) (More Poems of Nazem Himet). Some of the translations are available in open source.
Greek
Thanos Mikroutsikos, in the album Politika tragoudia (Political Songs, 1975) composed a series of Hikmet's poems, adapted in Greek by the poet Yiannis Ritsos.[37]
Manos Loizos composed settings of some of Ran's poems, adapted in Greek by Yiannis Ritsos. They are included in the 1983 disc Grammata stin agapimeni (Letters to the Beloved One).
English
The usual tune is a nontraditional melody composed by Jim Waters in 1954 to fit the lyrics of Child 113 ballad "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry", which was recorded by American folksinger Joan Baez as "Silkie" on her second album Joan Baez, Vol. 2 in 1961.
According to American activist folk musicianPete Seeger, Jeanette Turner did a loose English "singable translation" of the poem under a different title, "I Come And Stand At Every Door", and sent a note to Seeger asking "Do you think you could make a tune for it?" in the late 1950s. After a week of trial and failure, the English translation was used by Seeger in 1962 with an adaptation of "an extraordinary melody put together by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, James Waters, who had put a new tune to a mystical ballad 'The Great Silkie' which he could not get out of his head, without permission." Seeger wrote in Where Have All the Flowers Gone: "It was wrong of me. I should have gotten his permission. But it worked. The Byrds made a good recording of it, electric guitars and all."[38] Seeger also used the track in his 1999 compilation album Headlines & Footnotes: A Collection Of Topical Songs. Seeger sang the song on 9 August 2013, the 68th anniversary of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, on a Democracy Now! interview.[39]
British folk singer Harvey Andrews recorded a version under the title "Child of Hiroshima" (sometimes re-released as "Children of Hiroshima"), released on his eponymous debut EP in 1965.[40]
The Byrds; the American rock band used the translation on their third album Fifth Dimension in 1966.
Roger McGuinn of the Byrds later recorded the song with its original lyrics as part of his Folk Den project.
The Misunderstood used the translation, changing the title to "I Unseen", on a 1969 UK Fontana single, later included in the 1997 anthology album Before The Dream Faded with their own tune.
Paul Robeson recorded the song as "The Little Dead Girl" with another translation.
The Fall on their 1997 album Levitate, albeit omitting the last verse and wrongly attributing writing credits to anon/J Nagle. "I Come and Stand at Your Door" listed as "Anon/Nagle", which is an interpretation of the song "I Come and Stand at Every Door". "Jap Kid" is an instrumental version of this track.
Anne Hills on 1998 album Where Have All The Flowers Gone: The Songs of Peter Seeger.
Ibon Errazkin has an instrumental song with the same title on Esculea de arte.
Styrofoam aka Arne Van Petegem's EP and first US release, RR20, included an instrumental version of the traditional tune of "Great Silkie" with the same title.
Nâzım Hikmet's children's tale, "Sevdalı Bulut" (A Cloud in Love), has been translated into English by Evrim Emir-Sayers for dePICTions, the annual critical review of the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking (PICT). The translation is open-access.[41]
Some of Nâzım's poems are translated into Nepali by Suman Pokhrel and are published in print and online literary journals.[42][43]
Spanish
Spanish avant-garde group Aguaviva covered it in 1971 as Niña de Hiroshima.
On the soldier worth 23 cents
How do you propose to get it? Do you want to get it through the cooperation of Turkey where the men in the ranks get 23 cents a month the first year and 32 cents the second year, or do you want to get an American division and equip it and send it over to Turkey which would cost you 10 times as much?
—John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State, 1955
He also opposed the Korean War, in which Turkey participated. After the Senate address of John Foster Dulles, who served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, where he valued Turkish soldiers at 23 cents a month[44] compared with the lowest echelon U.S. soldiers at $70,[45] Nazım Hikmet Ran 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).
Nâzım's poem "We'll Give the Globe to the Children" was set to music in 1979 by Russian composer David Tukhmanov.[46]
Tale of Tales is a Russian animated film (1979) partially inspired by Hikmet's poem of the same name.
Finnish band Ultra Bra recorded a song "Lähettäkää minulle kirjoja" ("Send me books")[47] based on a translated excerpt of Hikmet's poem "Rubai".[48][49]
Mavi Gözlü Dev (Blue Eyed Giant) is a 2007 Turkish biographical film about Nazım Hikmet. The title is a reference to the poem Minnacık Kadın ve Hanımelleri. The film chronicles Nazim Hikmet's imprisonment at Bursa Prison and his relationships with his wife Piraye and his translator and lover Münevver Andaç. He is played by Yetkin Dikinciler.
In the grand-strategy video game "Hearts of Iron IV", Nazim Hikmet is available to hire in a "Revolutionary Poet" ministerial position for Turkey, boosting daily communism support.
The video game Suzerain opens with a quote from Hikmet, and the character Bernard Circas is based on him. The game has elements inspired by modern Turkish history.
Nâzım Hikmet's children's tale, "A Cloud in Love," was adapted into an animated short film in the Soviet Union in 1959[50] and into a children's opera by the Greek National Opera in 2022.[51] The tale was translated into English by Evrim Emir-Sayers for dePICTions, the open-access annual critical review of the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking (PICT), in 2023.[41]
Yeni şiirler: (1951–1959) / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2002. ISBN975-08-0378-7
on şiirleri: (1959–1963) / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2002. ISBN975-08-0379-5
Partial list of translated works in English
Selected Poems / Nâzim Hikmet; done into English by Taner Baybars. London, Cape Editions, 1967.
The Moscow Symphony and Other Poems / translated into English by Taner Baybars. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1971.
The day before tomorrow: poems / translated into English by Taner Baybars. South Hinksey, England: Carcanet Press, 1972. ISBN0-902145-43-6
That Wall / Nâzım Hikmet; illustrations [by] Maureen Scott, London: League of Socialist Artists, 1973. ISBN0-9502976-2-3
Things I didn't know I loved: selected poems / Nâzim Hikmet; translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk. New York: Persea Books, 1975. ISBN0-89255-000-7
Human Landscapes / by Nazim Hikmet; translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk; foreword by Denise Levertov, New York: Persea Books, c1982. ISBN0-89255-068-6
Selected poetry / Nazim Hikmet; translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, New York: Persea Books, c1986. ISBN0-89255-101-1
Poems of Nazim Hikmet, trans. Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk. New York: Persea Books, 1994 (revised 2nd ed., 2002).
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. ISBN0-85646-329-9
Life's Good, Brother / Nâzım Hikmet; translated by Mutlu Konuk Blasing, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. ISBN978-0892554188
"A Cloud in Love" / Nâzım Hikmet; translated by Evrim Emir-Sayers, dePICTions volume 3: Critical Ecologies (2023), Paris Institute for Critical Thinking (open-access).[41]
Partial list of translated works in other languages
Il neige dans la nuit et autres poèmes / Nâzım Hikmet, Münevver Andaç (Trans.), Güzin Dino (Trans.), Gallimard, 1999. ISBN978-20-70329-63-2
Preso na Fortaleza de Bursa/Yatar Bursa Kalesinde, Leonardo da Fonseca (Trans.), In. (n.t.) Revista Literária em Tradução nº 1 (set/2010), Fpolis/Brasil, ISSN2177-5141[52]
Vita del poeta / Nâzım Hikmet, Joyce Lussu (Trans.), Cattedrale, 2008. ISBN978-88-95449-15-9
Últimos poemas I (1959–1960–1961) / Nâzım Hikmet, Fernando García Burillo (Trans.), Ediciones Del Oriente Y Del Mediterráneo S.L., 2000. ISBN978-84-87198-60-1
Últimos poemas II (1962–1963): Poemas finales / Nâzım Hikmet, Fernando García Burillo (Trans.), Ediciones Del Oriente Y Del Mediterráneo S.L., 2005. ISBN978-84-87198-75-5
나쥠 히크메트 시선집 [Selected Poems of Nâzım Hikmet / Nâzım Hikmet] (in Korean (North Korea)). Translated by Paik, Sok; Chon, Chang-shik; Kim, Byong-wook. Pyongyang: National Press. Pyongyang. 1956.
Legenda o miłości. Opowieść o Turcji / Nâzım Hikmet, Ewa Fiszer (Trans.), Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1954
Many of Hikmet's poems are translated into Nepali by Suman Pokhrel, and some are collected in an anthology tilled Manpareka Kehi Kavita.[53][54]
Zalega, Dariusz (13 July 2008). "Zalega - Pióro jak dynamit - lewica.pl"[Remains: Feather like dynamite]. lewica.pl (in Polish). Polish Section of the Communist International (Stalinowsko-Hodżystowskiej). Archived from the original on 15 July 2008. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
Kamilef, H [Кямилев, X]. 1953. Nazim Hikmet - hurriyet ve baris sarkicisi [Nazim Hikmet: A Singer of Liberty and Peace] (translated from the Bulgarian into Turkish by Suleyman Hafizoglu). Sofia: BKP; Кямилев, Х. [Kiamilev, Kh]. 1953. Назъм Хикмет, певец на свободата и мира Nazim Khikmet, pevets na svobadata i mira [Nazim Hikmet: A Singer of Liberty and Peace] (translated from the Russian into Bulgarian by Кругер Милованов Krugev Milovanov]. Sofia: BKP.
Димитрова, Блага Николова [Dimitrova, Blaga Nikolova]. 1952. Назъм Хикмет в България: Пътепис Nazim Khikmet v Bulgariia: Putepis [Nazim Hikmet in Bulgaria: Travels]. Sofia: Bulgarski pisatel; Dimitrova, Blaga [Димитрова, Блага]. 1955. Nazim Hikmet Bulgaristanda: Yolculuk notlari [Nazim Hikmet in Bulgaria: Travel Notes] (translated from the Bulgarian into Turkish by Huseyin Karahasan. Sofia: Naorodna prosveta.
Kostanick, Huey. 1957. Turkish resettlement of Bulgarian Turks, 1950–1953 (Ser: University of California Publications in Geography, Vol 8, No 2). Berkeley: University of California Press
Greek newspaper I Avgi, 17 January 1955 and Phileleftheros, 31 March 2007:
Nâzım sent a message to the Turks of Cyprus emphasizing that Cyprus was always Greek. [...] (The Turkish Cypriots) must support the Greek Cypriots' struggle for liberation from British imperialism. [...] Only when the British imperialists leave the island will its Turkish residents be truly free. [...] Those who encourage Turks to oppose Greeks actually only support the interest of the foreign ruler.
Hürsöz newspaper (in Turkish). 28 August 1951. Berlin Solcu Gençlik Festivali münasebetiyle Stalin uşağı komünist şair Nazım Hikmet, Kıbrıslılara şu mesajı göndermektedir: 'Kıbrıslı Rum ve Türk kardeşlerim! Aynı güzel adanın insanlarısınız! Adanızı İngiliz boyunduruğundan uzak tutunuz. Türk, Rum, Kıbrıslı kardeşlerim- hepiniz el ele vererek Kıbrısın hürriyetini kazanmak için mücadele ediniz.' (Bu Türk vatandaşlığından iskat edilen Stalin uşağı, Kıbrıs'ın hürriyetini adanın Yunanistan'a ilhakında mı buluyor. Yazıklar olsun!.) Bir basın toplantısında komünist şair 17 sene zındanda kaldığını -ne bir casus ve ne de vatanın bir düşmanı olduğunu; kendi halkını sevdiği için onun ekmeğini ve suyunu temin etmek hususunda mücadele ettiğini ve kendisini bu sebepten dolayı hapsettiklerini söylemiştir… Berlinde solcu gençler festivalinde aynı gazetenin bildirdiğine göre, Kıbrıs'ın Yunanistan'a ilhakı için temennilerde bulunulmuştur.{{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
Alasya, H. Fikret (9 October 1951). "Veyl kızıl şaire". Halkın Sesi newspaper (in Turkish). Kızıl uşak Nazım Hikmet Kızıl cennete göçtükten ve Türkiye Cumhuriyet Hükümeti tarafından vatandaşlıktan iskat edildikten sonra Kıbrıslılara 'Kıbrıslı Rum ve Türk kardeşlerim' diye başlayan bir mektup göndermiş ve Rumlarla Türkleri isyana teşvik etmiştir… Kıbrıs'ın 1571'de Türkler tarafından zaptını müteakip Türkiye'nin muhtelif vilayetlerinden Kıbrıs'a mecburi göç ettirilen 5720 hane halkı ile Kıbrıs seferine iştirak eden gazilerle Türkiye'den gönderilen kızların evlenip yuva kurmaları ile ortaya çıkan Türk nüfusu, bu tarihten itibaren Anavatanın bütün hareketlerini adım adım takip etmiştir… bir Kızılın sözlerine kıymet verecek kadar şuursuz ve milliyetsiz değildir… Onun bu hitabına Komünist Rum yoldaşları bir işaret olarak bakabilirler ve belki buna göre hareket tarzlarını tanzim edebilirler fakat Türkler asla!…
Seeger describes the story behind his version of the song in his Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies (A Musical Autobiography) (1993): "In the late '50s I got a letter: 'Dear Pete Seeger: I've made what I think is a singable translation of a poem by the Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet. Do you think you could make a tune for it? (Signed), Jeanette Turner.' I tried for a week. Failed. Meanwhile, I couldn't get out of my head an extraordinary melody put together by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who had put a new tune to a mystical ballad The Great Silkie from the Shetland Islands north of Scotland. Without his permission I used his melody for Hikmet's words. It was wrong of me. I should have gotten his permission. But it worked. The Byrds made a good recording of it, electric guitars and all."
Hikmet, Nazim (28 June 2023). "A Cloud in Love". parisinstitute.org. Translated by Evrim Emir-Sayers. Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
Hikmet, Nazim (April 2015), Momila (ed.), "हृदयरोग (Angina Pectoris)", Kalashree, 5 (5), translated by Suman Pokhrel, Kathmandu, Nepal: Nepali Kala Sahitya Dot Com Pratisthan: 352