Nazim Hikmet Ran

Nazım Hikmet Ran (November 20, 1901 – June 3, 1963), commonly known as Nazım Hikmet (pronounced [nɑːˌzɯm hikˈmɛt]), was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist. He was acclaimed as the first and foremost modern Turkish poet, and regarded throughout the world as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century for the "lyrical flow of his statements".Described as a "romantic communist" and "romantic revolutionary",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.

Hikmet was born in Selânik (now Thessaloniki, Greece), the western-most metropolis of the Ottoman Empire, where his father served as a government official. He came from a cosmopolitan and distinguished family of Polish and Circassian ancestry. He attended primary school in the Göztepe district of Istanbul at the prestigious Galatasaray High School, where he began to learn French; but in 1913, he was transferred to another school in the Nişantaşı district. His school days coincided with a period of political upheaval as the Ottoman government entered the First World War allying itself with Germany.

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.

As a student in the early 1920s in Moscow, he was influenced by the artistic experiments of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold, as well as the ideological vision of Lenin.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. 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.

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.

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. He would later be released in a general amnesty.

In 1951 Nazım 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.

Persecuted for decades by the Republic of Turkey during the Cold War for his communist views, Hikmet died of a heart attack in Moscow after many years of exile far away from his beloved Istanbul.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 platanus tree in any village cemetery in Anatolia, which was never realized.

Despite his persecution by the Turkish state, Nazım 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.

* Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları (Human Landscapes from My Country)
* Taranta-Babu'ya Mektuplar (Letters to Taranta-Babu)
* Ferhad ile Şirin (Ferhad and Şirin)
* Kurtuluş Savaşı Destanı (The Epic of the War of Independence)
* Şeyh Bedrettin Destanı (The Epic of Sheikh Bedreddin)
* Kafatası (The Skull)
* Unutulan Adam (The Forgotten Man)


Kız Çocuğu

Nazım'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), 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."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(compared with the lowest echelon U.S. soldiers at $70), Nazım Hikmet wrote a protest poem criticising the policies of the United States. This poem is titled "23 Sentlik Askere Dair" (About the soldier valued 23 cents).


Poems

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 even as a heap of ice,
or a lifeless cloud,
it will roll like an empty walnut round and round

in pitch darkness for ever.

For now you must feel this pain,
and endure the sadness,
but so loved this world

that you can 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.

DAVET
(Very famous poem of Nazım Hikmet).

Dörtnala gelip Uzak Asya'dan Akdeniz'e bir kısrak başı gibi uzanan bu memleket bizim.

Bilekler kan içinde, dişler kenetli, ayaklar çıplak ve ipek bir halıya benzeyen toprak,bu cehennem, bu cennet bizim.

Kapansın el kapıları, bir daha açılmasın,
yok edin insanın insana kulluğunu,bu dâvet bizim.

Yaşamak bir ağaç gibi tek ve hür ve bir orman gibi kardeşçesine,bu hasret bizim.


Poetry


* İlk şiirler / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : Yapı Kredi, 2002.

* 835 satır / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002.

* Benerci kendini niçin öldürdü? / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002.

* Kuvâyi Milliye / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002.

* Yatar Bursa Kalesinde / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002.

* Memleketimden insan manzaraları : (insan manzaraları) / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : YKY, 2002.

* Yeni şiirler : (1951-1959) / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2002.

* Son şiirleri : (1959-1963) / Nâzım Hikmet, İstanbul : Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2002.


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 (meaning "Blue eyed giant") is a 2007 Turkish biographical film about Nazım Hikmet. He is portrayed by actor Yetkin Dikinciler.