What do you think?
Rate this book
Poems of Nazım Hikmet
A centennial volume, with previously unavailable poems, by Turkey's greatest poet. Published in celebration of the poet's one hundredth birthday, this exciting edition of the poems of Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963) collects work from his four previous selected volumes and adds more than twenty poems never before available in English. The Blasing/Konuk translations, acclaimed for the past quarter-century for their accuracy and grace, convey Hikmet's compassionate, accessible voice with the subtle music, innovative form, and emotional directness of the originals.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Nâzım Hikmet
220 books739 followersNazim Hikmet was born on January 15, 1902 in Salonika, Ottoman Empire (now Thessaloníki, Greece), where his father served in the Foreign Service. He was exposed to poetry at an early age through his artist mother and poet grandfather, and had his first poems published when he was seventeen.
Raised in Istanbul, Hikmet left Allied-occupied Turkey after the First World War and ended up in Moscow, where he attended the university and met writers and artists from all over the world. After the Turkish Independence in 1924 he returned to Turkey, but was soon arrested for working on a leftist magazine. He managed to escape to Russia, where he continued to write plays and poems.
In 1928 a general amnesty allowed Hikmet to return to Turkey, and during the next ten years he published nine books of poetry—five collections and four long poems—while working as a proofreader, journalist, scriptwriter, and translator. He left Turkey for the last time in 1951, after serving a lengthy jail sentence for his radical acts, and lived in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, where he continued to work for the ideals of world Communism.
After receiving early recognition for his patriotic poems in syllabic meter, he came under the influence of the Russian Futurists in Moscow, and abandoned traditional forms while attempting to “depoetize” poetry.
Many of his works have been translated into English, including Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse (2009), Things I Didn’t Know I Loved (1975), The Day Before Tomorrow (1972), The Moscow Symphony (1970), and Selected Poems (1967). In 1936 he published Seyh Bedreddin destani (“The Epic of Shaykh Bedreddin”) and Memleketimden insan manzaralari (“Portraits of People from My Land”).
Hikmet died of a heart attack in Moscow in 1963. The first modern Turkish poet, he is recognized around the world as one of the great international poets of the twentieth century.
Raised in Istanbul, Hikmet left Allied-occupied Turkey after the First World War and ended up in Moscow, where he attended the university and met writers and artists from all over the world. After the Turkish Independence in 1924 he returned to Turkey, but was soon arrested for working on a leftist magazine. He managed to escape to Russia, where he continued to write plays and poems.
In 1928 a general amnesty allowed Hikmet to return to Turkey, and during the next ten years he published nine books of poetry—five collections and four long poems—while working as a proofreader, journalist, scriptwriter, and translator. He left Turkey for the last time in 1951, after serving a lengthy jail sentence for his radical acts, and lived in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, where he continued to work for the ideals of world Communism.
After receiving early recognition for his patriotic poems in syllabic meter, he came under the influence of the Russian Futurists in Moscow, and abandoned traditional forms while attempting to “depoetize” poetry.
Many of his works have been translated into English, including Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse (2009), Things I Didn’t Know I Loved (1975), The Day Before Tomorrow (1972), The Moscow Symphony (1970), and Selected Poems (1967). In 1936 he published Seyh Bedreddin destani (“The Epic of Shaykh Bedreddin”) and Memleketimden insan manzaralari (“Portraits of People from My Land”).
Hikmet died of a heart attack in Moscow in 1963. The first modern Turkish poet, he is recognized around the world as one of the great international poets of the twentieth century.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
November 25, 2021
Poems of Nazım Hikmet, Nâzım Hikmet Ran, Randy Blasing (Translator), Mutlu Konuk Blasing (Translator), Carolyn Forché (Foreword)
Things I Didn't Know I Loved
by Nazim Hikmet
translated by Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing
It's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird
I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love
and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
and will be said after me
I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves. . .
they call me The Knife. . .
lover like a young tree. . .
I blow stately mansions sky-high"
in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief
to a pine bough for luck
I never knew I loved roads
even the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea
Koktebele
formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish
the two of us inside a closed box
the world flows past on both sides distant and mute
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
when I was eighteen
apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take
and at eighteen our lives are what we value least
I've written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand
his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
with a sable collar over his robe
and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison
I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I'm floored watching them from below
or whether I'm flying at their side
I have some questions for the cosmonauts
were the stars much bigger
did they look like huge jewels on black velvet
or apricots on orange
did you feel proud to get closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't
be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract
well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to
say they were terribly figurative and concrete
my heart was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos
snow flashes in front of my eyes
both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I liked snow
I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
except the Sea of Azov
or how much
I didn't know I loved clouds
whether I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts
moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it
I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue
the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return
19 April 1962
Moscow
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه ژوئن سال 2012میلادی
عنوان: آخرین شعرها؛ ناظم حکمت؛ مترجمها: رضا سیدحسینی، جلال خسروشاهی؛ موضوع شعر شاعران ترکیه - 20م
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 27/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Things I Didn't Know I Loved
by Nazim Hikmet
translated by Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing
It's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird
I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love
and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
and will be said after me
I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves. . .
they call me The Knife. . .
lover like a young tree. . .
I blow stately mansions sky-high"
in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief
to a pine bough for luck
I never knew I loved roads
even the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea
Koktebele
formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish
the two of us inside a closed box
the world flows past on both sides distant and mute
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
when I was eighteen
apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take
and at eighteen our lives are what we value least
I've written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand
his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
with a sable collar over his robe
and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison
I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I'm floored watching them from below
or whether I'm flying at their side
I have some questions for the cosmonauts
were the stars much bigger
did they look like huge jewels on black velvet
or apricots on orange
did you feel proud to get closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't
be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract
well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to
say they were terribly figurative and concrete
my heart was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos
snow flashes in front of my eyes
both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I liked snow
I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
except the Sea of Azov
or how much
I didn't know I loved clouds
whether I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts
moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it
I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue
the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return
19 April 1962
Moscow
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه ژوئن سال 2012میلادی
عنوان: آخرین شعرها؛ ناظم حکمت؛ مترجمها: رضا سیدحسینی، جلال خسروشاهی؛ موضوع شعر شاعران ترکیه - 20م
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 27/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
September 5, 2018
NAZIM HIKMET: WRITING POETRY WITH ONE’S HEART
Literature is replete with stories of great artists who were hunted and persecuted during their lifetime for their ideologies and convictions. Russian poets Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam and the Spanish poets Federico Garcia Lorca and Miguel Hernandez are some familiar names that immediately come to my mind. But I doubt whether any poet has suffered so much as Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963), the first modern Turkish poet and one of the most important and influential figures in 20th-century Turkish literature.
A Romantic communist, Nazim Hikmet's life is the content of a legend.Hikmet served a thirteen-year jail term in Turkey, imprisoned primarily for speaking out as a communist against the economic situation of Turkey. It took an international campaign by leading artists and a hunger strike by Hikmet himself to obtain his release. Upon release in 1951, he shared Soviet Union’s International Peace Prize with Pablo Neruda. Irritated once again, the Turkish Government banished him forever and revoked his citizenship. This led to spending the rest of his life as an exile in Russia.
These hardships and the trials of WWII provided the raw material of adventure and suffering that informed and inspired his poetry. In the perfect oneness of his life and art, Hikmet emerges as a heroic figure. He was a revolution in life and literature, flouting Ottoman literary conventions and introducing free verse and colloquial language.
While going through much of his poetry, what struck me most is his deep humanism. He has that uncanny ability to vibe with any reader in any part of the universe. His poetry is imbued with rare sincerity, originality and passion for life. His is an authentic voice imbued with optimism even while sinking in darkness. I hope the poems I try to illustrate here will succeed in fathoming the essence of his poetry.
CUCUMBER
The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard
and still coming down hard:
it hasn't let up all morning.
We're in the kitchen.
On the table, on the oilcloth, spring —
on the table there's a very tender young cucumber,
pebbly and fresh as a daisy.
We're sitting around the table staring at it.
It softly lights up our faces,
and the very air smells fresh.
We're sitting around the table staring at it,
amazed
thoughtful
optimistic.
We're as if in a dream.
On the table, on the oilcloth, hope —
on the table, beautiful days,
a cloud seeded with a green sun,
an emerald crowd impatient and on its way,
loves blooming openly —
on the table, there on the oilcloth, a very tender young cucumber,
pebbly and fresh as a daisy.
The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard
and coming down hard.
It hasn't let up all morning.
The poet beautifully captures a hopeful and dreamy atmosphere in this quiet poem when a family sits around a table and watches a tender cucumber. The admiration of a cucumber because of its smell, its freshness and color leads him to much more tender and rapturous feelings . It evokes a million memories of the salad days of his life. How beautifully the poet ruminates on the emerald cucumber (with its teeming seeds) and hopes it to become the green sun in his life too. How wondrously the poet has used 'repetition' as a way to enhance the poetic message .This poem itself is worth an emerald.
As mentioned, Hikmet introduced modern poetic techniques in his poetry combining these with traditional and folk styles. Here is another poem that perfects his mastery of ‘repetition’ as a stylistic device and incidentally the theme of the poem itself is repetition. In utmost simplicity, the poet speaks to his lover about the innumerable repetitions one sees in nature. They are verily joy dancing in nature and without those voiceless, clueless and endless repetitions, our life is monochrome. As the poet affirms at the end, the key is, ‘to repeat without repeating’.
BACH’S CONCERTO NO. 1 IN C MINOR
Fall morning in the vineyard:
in row after row the repetition of knotty vines,
of clusters on the vines,
of grapes in the clusters,
of light on the grapes.
At night, in the big white house,
the repetition of windows,
each lit up separately.
The repetition of all the rain that rains
on earth, trees, and the sea,
on my hands, face, and eyes,
and of the drops crushed on the glass.
The repetition of my days
that are alike,
my days that are not alike.
The repetition of the thread in the weave,
the repetition in the starry sky,
and the repetition of “I love” in all languages,
and the repetition of the tree in the leaves,
and of the pain of living, which ends in an instant
on every deathbed.
The repetition in the snow -
the light snow,
the heavy wet snow,
the dry snow,
the repetition in the snow that whirls
in the blizzard that drives me off the road.
The children are running in the courtyard;
in the courtyard the children are running.
An old woman is passing by on the street;
on the street an old woman is passing by;
passing by on the street is an old woman.
At night, in the big white house,
the repetition of windows,
each lit up separately.
In the clusters, of grapes,
on the grapes, of light.
To walk toward the good, the just, the true,
to fight for the good, the just, the true,
to seize the good, the just, the true.
Your silent tears and smile, my rose,
your sobs and bursts of laughter, my rose,
the repetition of your shining white teeth when you laugh.
Fall morning in the vineyard:
in row after row the repetition of knotty vines,
of clusters on the vines,
of grapes in the clusters,
of light on the grapes,
of my heart in the light.
My rose, this is the miracle of repetition -
to repeat without repeating.
(PS: I have strived to maintain the syntax as given in the book. GR borderline format is unsuitable for maintaining syntax)
The increasingly breathless pace of his late poems such as in the one below conveys the never-ending agony of man in all corners of this universe and his eagerness and heroic temper to embrace the pain of all humanity. There is sense urgency in many of his poems as if time is accelerating for him and it hooks the reader.
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.
There are poets who, while they love all the bounties and blessings of nature and life, advocate binding bond with their fellow human beings as their pivotal principle and Hikmet was one of them. In his style and humanistic vision, he can be compared with Neruda with whom he shared a deep kinship (Mayakovski could be cited as another people’s poet). In his touching “Last letter to my Son’, he gives the following advice.
From LAST LETTER TO MY SON
Don’t live in the world as if you were renting
or here only for the summer,
but act as if it was your father’s house. . .
Believe in seeds, earth, and the sea,
but people above all.
Love clouds, machines, and books,
but people above all.
Grieve
for the withering branch,
the dying star,
and the hurt animal,
but feel for people above all.
Rejoice in all the earth’s blessings –
darkness and light,
the four seasons,
but people above all.
The emotional directness and his fresh, down-to-earth imagery- e.g., "you must live with great seriousness / like a squirrel" or one red apple: / my heart" as in Angina Pectoris, night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain or the evening star / sparkling like a glass of water -are scintillating. No poet I know of today can compare with Nazim when it comes to the scope, range, and quality of his achievement and the freshness of his metaphors and imageries.
The Selected poems of Nazim Hikmet sensitively and carefully translated by Randy Blasing and his Turkish wife Mutlu Konuk is a treasure trove for poetry lovers . There are many wonderful long poems in this collection and some of my favourites happen to be the long ones like Letters from a Man in Solitary, 9-10 P.M. Poems, Since I Was Thrown Inside, On Living, Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison, Straw-Blond, Autobiography, and Things I Didn't Know I Loved. In the poem Things I Didn’t Know I loved the poet chronicles everything (earth, rivers, stars, flowers) with fresh eyes and records with awe that he didn’t know he loved them so intensely. The poem contains arresting passages like the one below.
From THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW I LOVED
I’ve written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I’m going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather’s hand
his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
with a sable collar over his robe
and there’s a lantern in the servant’s hand
and I can’t contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn’t know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison
I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I’m floored watching them from below
or whether I’m flying at their side
The most striking "aspect" of his life and work is the way he followed his heart wherever it led him, whether in his life or in his work, without regard for how he appeared to others or the world at large. He didn't keep up appearances but acted on his feelings in his life and put his feelings into poetry, no matter how he looked.
From ON LIVING
"This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet--
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . .
You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived". . .|
A great poet feels the pulse of everything in this universe, even the cry of an earthworm. These final lines quoted above from the poem in three sections, with the emphatic “You must grieve for this right now” are as forceful as a commandment. Only by embracing mortality “right now”, by understanding and feeling life’s negation, can we live fully. Loving life to the point of grieving for its loss is inseparable from truly living – the half-rhyme of “loved” and “lived” in this translation underscores this.
Like Whitman, Hikmet speaks of himself, his country, and the world in the same breath. At once personal and public, his poetry records his life without reducing it to self-consciousness; he affirms reality of facts at the same time that he insists in the validity of his feelings. His human presence - playful, optimistic, and capable of childlike joy- keeps his poems open, public, and committed to social and artistic change. And in the perfect oneness of his life and art, Hikmet emerges as a heroic figure. His early poems proclaim this unity as a faith: art is an event, he maintains, in social as well as literary history, and a poet's bearing in art is inseparable from his bearing in life. The rest of Hikmet's life gave him ample opportunity to act upon this faith and, in fact to deepen it.
As Terrence Des Pres observes: Hikmet's exemplary life and special vision - at once historical and timeless, Marxist and mystical - had unique consequences for his art: Simply because in his art and in his person Hikmet opposes the enemies of the human spirit in harmony with itself and the earth, he can speak casually and yet with a seriousness that most modern American poets never dream of attempting.
Nazim’s poetry is a celebration of our joys and sorrows. His poems are fresh, intimate, honest, uncompromising, gently humorous, musical, filled with longing and hope and refuse to let despair triumph in spite of outward circumstances. It is with a sense of euphoria that I recommend this marvelous poetry collection to all poetry lovers across the globe.
Literature is replete with stories of great artists who were hunted and persecuted during their lifetime for their ideologies and convictions. Russian poets Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam and the Spanish poets Federico Garcia Lorca and Miguel Hernandez are some familiar names that immediately come to my mind. But I doubt whether any poet has suffered so much as Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963), the first modern Turkish poet and one of the most important and influential figures in 20th-century Turkish literature.
A Romantic communist, Nazim Hikmet's life is the content of a legend.Hikmet served a thirteen-year jail term in Turkey, imprisoned primarily for speaking out as a communist against the economic situation of Turkey. It took an international campaign by leading artists and a hunger strike by Hikmet himself to obtain his release. Upon release in 1951, he shared Soviet Union’s International Peace Prize with Pablo Neruda. Irritated once again, the Turkish Government banished him forever and revoked his citizenship. This led to spending the rest of his life as an exile in Russia.
These hardships and the trials of WWII provided the raw material of adventure and suffering that informed and inspired his poetry. In the perfect oneness of his life and art, Hikmet emerges as a heroic figure. He was a revolution in life and literature, flouting Ottoman literary conventions and introducing free verse and colloquial language.
While going through much of his poetry, what struck me most is his deep humanism. He has that uncanny ability to vibe with any reader in any part of the universe. His poetry is imbued with rare sincerity, originality and passion for life. His is an authentic voice imbued with optimism even while sinking in darkness. I hope the poems I try to illustrate here will succeed in fathoming the essence of his poetry.
CUCUMBER
The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard
and still coming down hard:
it hasn't let up all morning.
We're in the kitchen.
On the table, on the oilcloth, spring —
on the table there's a very tender young cucumber,
pebbly and fresh as a daisy.
We're sitting around the table staring at it.
It softly lights up our faces,
and the very air smells fresh.
We're sitting around the table staring at it,
amazed
thoughtful
optimistic.
We're as if in a dream.
On the table, on the oilcloth, hope —
on the table, beautiful days,
a cloud seeded with a green sun,
an emerald crowd impatient and on its way,
loves blooming openly —
on the table, there on the oilcloth, a very tender young cucumber,
pebbly and fresh as a daisy.
The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard
and coming down hard.
It hasn't let up all morning.
The poet beautifully captures a hopeful and dreamy atmosphere in this quiet poem when a family sits around a table and watches a tender cucumber. The admiration of a cucumber because of its smell, its freshness and color leads him to much more tender and rapturous feelings . It evokes a million memories of the salad days of his life. How beautifully the poet ruminates on the emerald cucumber (with its teeming seeds) and hopes it to become the green sun in his life too. How wondrously the poet has used 'repetition' as a way to enhance the poetic message .This poem itself is worth an emerald.
As mentioned, Hikmet introduced modern poetic techniques in his poetry combining these with traditional and folk styles. Here is another poem that perfects his mastery of ‘repetition’ as a stylistic device and incidentally the theme of the poem itself is repetition. In utmost simplicity, the poet speaks to his lover about the innumerable repetitions one sees in nature. They are verily joy dancing in nature and without those voiceless, clueless and endless repetitions, our life is monochrome. As the poet affirms at the end, the key is, ‘to repeat without repeating’.
BACH’S CONCERTO NO. 1 IN C MINOR
Fall morning in the vineyard:
in row after row the repetition of knotty vines,
of clusters on the vines,
of grapes in the clusters,
of light on the grapes.
At night, in the big white house,
the repetition of windows,
each lit up separately.
The repetition of all the rain that rains
on earth, trees, and the sea,
on my hands, face, and eyes,
and of the drops crushed on the glass.
The repetition of my days
that are alike,
my days that are not alike.
The repetition of the thread in the weave,
the repetition in the starry sky,
and the repetition of “I love” in all languages,
and the repetition of the tree in the leaves,
and of the pain of living, which ends in an instant
on every deathbed.
The repetition in the snow -
the light snow,
the heavy wet snow,
the dry snow,
the repetition in the snow that whirls
in the blizzard that drives me off the road.
The children are running in the courtyard;
in the courtyard the children are running.
An old woman is passing by on the street;
on the street an old woman is passing by;
passing by on the street is an old woman.
At night, in the big white house,
the repetition of windows,
each lit up separately.
In the clusters, of grapes,
on the grapes, of light.
To walk toward the good, the just, the true,
to fight for the good, the just, the true,
to seize the good, the just, the true.
Your silent tears and smile, my rose,
your sobs and bursts of laughter, my rose,
the repetition of your shining white teeth when you laugh.
Fall morning in the vineyard:
in row after row the repetition of knotty vines,
of clusters on the vines,
of grapes in the clusters,
of light on the grapes,
of my heart in the light.
My rose, this is the miracle of repetition -
to repeat without repeating.
(PS: I have strived to maintain the syntax as given in the book. GR borderline format is unsuitable for maintaining syntax)
The increasingly breathless pace of his late poems such as in the one below conveys the never-ending agony of man in all corners of this universe and his eagerness and heroic temper to embrace the pain of all humanity. There is sense urgency in many of his poems as if time is accelerating for him and it hooks the reader.
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.
There are poets who, while they love all the bounties and blessings of nature and life, advocate binding bond with their fellow human beings as their pivotal principle and Hikmet was one of them. In his style and humanistic vision, he can be compared with Neruda with whom he shared a deep kinship (Mayakovski could be cited as another people’s poet). In his touching “Last letter to my Son’, he gives the following advice.
From LAST LETTER TO MY SON
Don’t live in the world as if you were renting
or here only for the summer,
but act as if it was your father’s house. . .
Believe in seeds, earth, and the sea,
but people above all.
Love clouds, machines, and books,
but people above all.
Grieve
for the withering branch,
the dying star,
and the hurt animal,
but feel for people above all.
Rejoice in all the earth’s blessings –
darkness and light,
the four seasons,
but people above all.
The emotional directness and his fresh, down-to-earth imagery- e.g., "you must live with great seriousness / like a squirrel" or one red apple: / my heart" as in Angina Pectoris, night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain or the evening star / sparkling like a glass of water -are scintillating. No poet I know of today can compare with Nazim when it comes to the scope, range, and quality of his achievement and the freshness of his metaphors and imageries.
The Selected poems of Nazim Hikmet sensitively and carefully translated by Randy Blasing and his Turkish wife Mutlu Konuk is a treasure trove for poetry lovers . There are many wonderful long poems in this collection and some of my favourites happen to be the long ones like Letters from a Man in Solitary, 9-10 P.M. Poems, Since I Was Thrown Inside, On Living, Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison, Straw-Blond, Autobiography, and Things I Didn't Know I Loved. In the poem Things I Didn’t Know I loved the poet chronicles everything (earth, rivers, stars, flowers) with fresh eyes and records with awe that he didn’t know he loved them so intensely. The poem contains arresting passages like the one below.
From THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW I LOVED
I’ve written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I’m going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather’s hand
his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
with a sable collar over his robe
and there’s a lantern in the servant’s hand
and I can’t contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn’t know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison
I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I’m floored watching them from below
or whether I’m flying at their side
The most striking "aspect" of his life and work is the way he followed his heart wherever it led him, whether in his life or in his work, without regard for how he appeared to others or the world at large. He didn't keep up appearances but acted on his feelings in his life and put his feelings into poetry, no matter how he looked.
From ON LIVING
"This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet--
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . .
You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived". . .|
A great poet feels the pulse of everything in this universe, even the cry of an earthworm. These final lines quoted above from the poem in three sections, with the emphatic “You must grieve for this right now” are as forceful as a commandment. Only by embracing mortality “right now”, by understanding and feeling life’s negation, can we live fully. Loving life to the point of grieving for its loss is inseparable from truly living – the half-rhyme of “loved” and “lived” in this translation underscores this.
Like Whitman, Hikmet speaks of himself, his country, and the world in the same breath. At once personal and public, his poetry records his life without reducing it to self-consciousness; he affirms reality of facts at the same time that he insists in the validity of his feelings. His human presence - playful, optimistic, and capable of childlike joy- keeps his poems open, public, and committed to social and artistic change. And in the perfect oneness of his life and art, Hikmet emerges as a heroic figure. His early poems proclaim this unity as a faith: art is an event, he maintains, in social as well as literary history, and a poet's bearing in art is inseparable from his bearing in life. The rest of Hikmet's life gave him ample opportunity to act upon this faith and, in fact to deepen it.
As Terrence Des Pres observes: Hikmet's exemplary life and special vision - at once historical and timeless, Marxist and mystical - had unique consequences for his art: Simply because in his art and in his person Hikmet opposes the enemies of the human spirit in harmony with itself and the earth, he can speak casually and yet with a seriousness that most modern American poets never dream of attempting.
Nazim’s poetry is a celebration of our joys and sorrows. His poems are fresh, intimate, honest, uncompromising, gently humorous, musical, filled with longing and hope and refuse to let despair triumph in spite of outward circumstances. It is with a sense of euphoria that I recommend this marvelous poetry collection to all poetry lovers across the globe.
February 7, 2017
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space ...
You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived" ...
Nâzım Hikmet may be my favorite poet, or at least one of my favorites for sure.
He uses similes so simple, that sometimes his poems seem effortless. No one can deny that beauty lies in simplicity. His poems are pure, honest, beautiful.
Nâzım Hikmet is a poet whom you read again again because you can never get enough.
(Last but not least, reading his poems in the original is such a wonderful experience.)
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space ...
You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived" ...
Nâzım Hikmet may be my favorite poet, or at least one of my favorites for sure.
He uses similes so simple, that sometimes his poems seem effortless. No one can deny that beauty lies in simplicity. His poems are pure, honest, beautiful.
Nâzım Hikmet is a poet whom you read again again because you can never get enough.
(Last but not least, reading his poems in the original is such a wonderful experience.)
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return
June 28, 2018
After reading his poems randomly since 1999, in English and Arabic, I bought this book last year at Istanbul Modern's library (highly recommended for lovers of Modern Art) that celebrates his 100th birthday.
When I read Lorca’s poems for the first time, I have wondered that if he wasn't brutally killed so young by Franko's militia, would've he had the same agitated life and what would his later poems look like if he was persecuted in the prison like Nazim Hikmet was.
My first impression when reading the book was the 'physicability' of his language (how it sounds and feel).
There is a clarity and honesty about the poems that lifts them above fads and fashions. Nazim is an idiosyncratic poet that juggles with limpid clarity, vague moods and blurred distracting images simultaneously.
His poems are brimful with smells, aromas, melancholy, patriotism, bitterness, nostalgia and hopes.. Disorientation? Creative chaos to blur our perception of the world? maybe.. The mood can suddenly change within a poem between one stanza and another. While reading I strolled amidst a swirl of haunting profound sentiments and plunged in his existential dilemmas. All the sensations that he transmits are soluble in his very own profound being, and his pervasive sensitivity is diffused eloquently throughout his simple words.
Humane and lyrical, the poems are moving without being mawkish:
The Optimist
As a kid he didn’t pluck the wings off flies
Tie tin cans to cats’ tails
Lock beetles in matchboxes
Or stomp anthills
He grew up
And all those things were done to him
I sat at his deathbed
He said to read him a poem
About the sun and the sea
Nuclear reactors and satellites
The greatness of humanity.
***
Nazim's poems enchant with their delicately crafted imagery and sheer musicality..The underlying tone of the poems is soft:
… and the most beautiful words ever spoken,
I have not yet said to you.
Sometimes, an intriguing analogy or metaphor occurs and make the poem shifts towards surrealism:
Spring marched with muddy bare feet on the sky..
So many of Nazim’s poems are dedicated to his wife of which he was often separated when in prison or in exile, for Love is a catharsis, his pain reliever:
About Us
All i wrote about us is lies
Not what happened but what I wished would happen
They were my hungers dangling from your out-of-reach branches
My thirsts rising from the well of my dreams
They were pictures I drew on light
All I wrote about us is the truth
Your beauty
I mean a fruit basket or a picnic in a meadow
My missing you
I mean being the last streetlamp on the last city block
My jaleousy
I mean running blindfolded among night trains
My happiness
I mean a sun-struck dam-busting river
All I wrote about us is lies
All I wrote about us is the truth.
***
But don't be fooled, reader, for Nazim isn't a naive romantic.
Preoccupied with the fight against the injustices that were inflicted upon his people and the people of other countries, he was a tireless internationalist socialist revolutionary who confronted the system and the authorities.. with a fearless affirmation of his political convictions, no matter the consequences, he remained faithful to his ideas and principles.
In his poem About Your Hands And Lies, he is a messenger of the masses’ common cause, the voice of the poor and the marginalized, even those beyond the borders of his homeland Turkey:
Your hands grave like all stones,
Sad like all prison songs,
Clumsy and heavy like all beats of burden,
Your hands sullen like hungry children’s faces.
Your hands nimble and light like bees,
Full like breasts filled with milk,
Brave like nature,
Your hands hiding their soft touch under rough skin.
This world isn’t balanced on a bull’s horns-
It’s in your hands.
People, my people,
They feed you lies.
But you’re starving,
You need to be fed bread and meat.
And without one full meal at a white table,
You leave this world where fruits bend every branch.
Oh, my people,
Especially in Asia, Africa,
The Near and middle East, Pacific Islands,
And my countrymen
-i mean, mire than seventy percent of all people-
You’re old and absent-minded like your hands,
Curious, amazed, and young like your hands.
Oh, my people,
My European, My American,
You’re smart, bold, and forgetful like your hands-
Like your hands, you’re quick to seduce,
Easy to deceive...
People, my people,
If the antennas lie,
If the presses lie,
If books lie,
If the posters on the walls and the ads in the columns lie,
If prayers,
Lullabies,
And dreams lie,
If the fiddler at the tavern is lying,
If moonlight on the nights of hopeless days lies,
If voices lie,
And words,
If everyone and everything is lying
But your hands,
It’s so they’ll be obedient like clay,
Blind like darkness,
And dumb like sheep dogs-
It’s so that your hands won’t rebel.
And so that in this mortal, this livable world
-where we’re guests all too briefly anyway-
This merchants’ empire, this cruelty, won’t end.
***
His poems are filled with implicit and explicit thoughts and references to his social and political ideals and struggles.
They are expressed in rhetorics that are accentuated by irony and sarcasm:
You're free
with the freedom of being unemployed (..)
You are free to be arrested, imprisoned
and even hanged.
Nazim's poems are sources to a flow of paradox. Paradox expresses "the passion of thought", asserted the philosopher Kierkegaard. Very often, simple and clear similes are juxtaposed to deep metaphors and allegories, and poignant images that evoke painful sequences of his life, his deceptions and bitterness, may swing at times with his elusive and ephemeral sweet sensations that designate his love for life and his pursuit of happiness. They underly his texts with intense emotional quality:
But hope is not enough for me any more,
I don't want to listen to songs any more,
I want to sing.
Realistic, Hikmet is conscient of the transience of life and happiness.. Yet the poem ends on a subtle optimistic thought even when he is overwhelmed by melancholy, anguish, grief and regrets.
As soon as the gloomy images fade away, optimism will surface, even when the poem evokes the death.. Nazim has found in poetry an alternative world to the reality, where he could fantasize about the fulfillment of his dreams and desires.
Because his life was always menaced with the penalty of death, love is oftenly entangled with death that scared his psyche and haunted him day and night. This weird mash gave birth to oxymoronic expressions about love.
The Death theme is recurrent but never portrayed with darkness. Nazim is conscient of this obsession as he titled his poem On Death Again.
It seems however to be for him another state of existence, a postponed reunion with the lover:
My wife,
Life of my life,
My Pirayé,
I’m thinking about death,
Which means my arteries
Are hardening..
One day
When it’s snowing,
Or one night
Or
in the heat of one noon,
Which of us will die first,
How
And where?
How
And what will be
The last sound the one dying hears, the last color seen, the first movement of the one left behind,
The first words,
The first food tasted?
Maybe we will die far apart.
The news
Will come screaming,
Or someone will just hint at it
And fo away, leaving alone
The one left behind..
And the one left behind
Will be lost in the crowd.
I mean, that’s life...
And all these possibilities,
What year in the 1900’s,
Which month
Which days
What hour?
My wife,
Life of my life,
My Pirayé,
I’m thinking if death,
About our life passing.
I’m sad,
At peace,
And proud.
Whoever dies first,
However
And wherever we die,
You and I
Can say we loved
Each other
And the people’s greatest cause
-we fought for it-
We can say
“We lived”.
***
If Nazim fears death, it’s because it could take his love away before him:
I want to die before you
You'd better have me burned,
and put me on the stove in your room in a jar.
The jar shall be made of glass,
transparent, white glass
so that you can see me inside...
You see my sacrifice:
I renounced from being part of the earth,
I renounced from being a flower
to be able to stay with you.
And I am becoming dust,
to live with you ..
***
To appreciate Nazim Hikmet poetry, it is better to read his biography first. My admiration is for the honesty I touched when he describes his different ''états d'âme'', for his contagious optimism in the way he constantly celebrates life and for his tenacity in defending courageously his ideological beliefs and principles during his life.
In Angina Pectoris, Nazim writes I look at the night through the bars . To me, that quote says it all: Nazim Hikmet the poet and Nazim Hikmet the political and oppressed activist can never be separated. His poems are purposeful as much as they are touching, a blend of a political manifesto and an Hymn to Life :
Tonight my hand
Can't read or write.
Neither loving nor unloving.
It's the tongue of a leopard at a spring
A grape leaf,
A wolf's paw.
To move, breathe, eat, drink.
My hand is like a seed
Splitting open underground
Neither a song of the heart nor "common sense'',
neither loving nor unloving..
When I read Lorca’s poems for the first time, I have wondered that if he wasn't brutally killed so young by Franko's militia, would've he had the same agitated life and what would his later poems look like if he was persecuted in the prison like Nazim Hikmet was.
My first impression when reading the book was the 'physicability' of his language (how it sounds and feel).
There is a clarity and honesty about the poems that lifts them above fads and fashions. Nazim is an idiosyncratic poet that juggles with limpid clarity, vague moods and blurred distracting images simultaneously.
His poems are brimful with smells, aromas, melancholy, patriotism, bitterness, nostalgia and hopes.. Disorientation? Creative chaos to blur our perception of the world? maybe.. The mood can suddenly change within a poem between one stanza and another. While reading I strolled amidst a swirl of haunting profound sentiments and plunged in his existential dilemmas. All the sensations that he transmits are soluble in his very own profound being, and his pervasive sensitivity is diffused eloquently throughout his simple words.
Humane and lyrical, the poems are moving without being mawkish:
The Optimist
As a kid he didn’t pluck the wings off flies
Tie tin cans to cats’ tails
Lock beetles in matchboxes
Or stomp anthills
He grew up
And all those things were done to him
I sat at his deathbed
He said to read him a poem
About the sun and the sea
Nuclear reactors and satellites
The greatness of humanity.
***
Nazim's poems enchant with their delicately crafted imagery and sheer musicality..The underlying tone of the poems is soft:
… and the most beautiful words ever spoken,
I have not yet said to you.
Sometimes, an intriguing analogy or metaphor occurs and make the poem shifts towards surrealism:
Spring marched with muddy bare feet on the sky..
So many of Nazim’s poems are dedicated to his wife of which he was often separated when in prison or in exile, for Love is a catharsis, his pain reliever:
About Us
All i wrote about us is lies
Not what happened but what I wished would happen
They were my hungers dangling from your out-of-reach branches
My thirsts rising from the well of my dreams
They were pictures I drew on light
All I wrote about us is the truth
Your beauty
I mean a fruit basket or a picnic in a meadow
My missing you
I mean being the last streetlamp on the last city block
My jaleousy
I mean running blindfolded among night trains
My happiness
I mean a sun-struck dam-busting river
All I wrote about us is lies
All I wrote about us is the truth.
***
But don't be fooled, reader, for Nazim isn't a naive romantic.
Preoccupied with the fight against the injustices that were inflicted upon his people and the people of other countries, he was a tireless internationalist socialist revolutionary who confronted the system and the authorities.. with a fearless affirmation of his political convictions, no matter the consequences, he remained faithful to his ideas and principles.
In his poem About Your Hands And Lies, he is a messenger of the masses’ common cause, the voice of the poor and the marginalized, even those beyond the borders of his homeland Turkey:
Your hands grave like all stones,
Sad like all prison songs,
Clumsy and heavy like all beats of burden,
Your hands sullen like hungry children’s faces.
Your hands nimble and light like bees,
Full like breasts filled with milk,
Brave like nature,
Your hands hiding their soft touch under rough skin.
This world isn’t balanced on a bull’s horns-
It’s in your hands.
People, my people,
They feed you lies.
But you’re starving,
You need to be fed bread and meat.
And without one full meal at a white table,
You leave this world where fruits bend every branch.
Oh, my people,
Especially in Asia, Africa,
The Near and middle East, Pacific Islands,
And my countrymen
-i mean, mire than seventy percent of all people-
You’re old and absent-minded like your hands,
Curious, amazed, and young like your hands.
Oh, my people,
My European, My American,
You’re smart, bold, and forgetful like your hands-
Like your hands, you’re quick to seduce,
Easy to deceive...
People, my people,
If the antennas lie,
If the presses lie,
If books lie,
If the posters on the walls and the ads in the columns lie,
If prayers,
Lullabies,
And dreams lie,
If the fiddler at the tavern is lying,
If moonlight on the nights of hopeless days lies,
If voices lie,
And words,
If everyone and everything is lying
But your hands,
It’s so they’ll be obedient like clay,
Blind like darkness,
And dumb like sheep dogs-
It’s so that your hands won’t rebel.
And so that in this mortal, this livable world
-where we’re guests all too briefly anyway-
This merchants’ empire, this cruelty, won’t end.
***
His poems are filled with implicit and explicit thoughts and references to his social and political ideals and struggles.
They are expressed in rhetorics that are accentuated by irony and sarcasm:
You're free
with the freedom of being unemployed (..)
You are free to be arrested, imprisoned
and even hanged.
Nazim's poems are sources to a flow of paradox. Paradox expresses "the passion of thought", asserted the philosopher Kierkegaard. Very often, simple and clear similes are juxtaposed to deep metaphors and allegories, and poignant images that evoke painful sequences of his life, his deceptions and bitterness, may swing at times with his elusive and ephemeral sweet sensations that designate his love for life and his pursuit of happiness. They underly his texts with intense emotional quality:
But hope is not enough for me any more,
I don't want to listen to songs any more,
I want to sing.
Realistic, Hikmet is conscient of the transience of life and happiness.. Yet the poem ends on a subtle optimistic thought even when he is overwhelmed by melancholy, anguish, grief and regrets.
As soon as the gloomy images fade away, optimism will surface, even when the poem evokes the death.. Nazim has found in poetry an alternative world to the reality, where he could fantasize about the fulfillment of his dreams and desires.
Because his life was always menaced with the penalty of death, love is oftenly entangled with death that scared his psyche and haunted him day and night. This weird mash gave birth to oxymoronic expressions about love.
The Death theme is recurrent but never portrayed with darkness. Nazim is conscient of this obsession as he titled his poem On Death Again.
It seems however to be for him another state of existence, a postponed reunion with the lover:
My wife,
Life of my life,
My Pirayé,
I’m thinking about death,
Which means my arteries
Are hardening..
One day
When it’s snowing,
Or one night
Or
in the heat of one noon,
Which of us will die first,
How
And where?
How
And what will be
The last sound the one dying hears, the last color seen, the first movement of the one left behind,
The first words,
The first food tasted?
Maybe we will die far apart.
The news
Will come screaming,
Or someone will just hint at it
And fo away, leaving alone
The one left behind..
And the one left behind
Will be lost in the crowd.
I mean, that’s life...
And all these possibilities,
What year in the 1900’s,
Which month
Which days
What hour?
My wife,
Life of my life,
My Pirayé,
I’m thinking if death,
About our life passing.
I’m sad,
At peace,
And proud.
Whoever dies first,
However
And wherever we die,
You and I
Can say we loved
Each other
And the people’s greatest cause
-we fought for it-
We can say
“We lived”.
***
If Nazim fears death, it’s because it could take his love away before him:
I want to die before you
You'd better have me burned,
and put me on the stove in your room in a jar.
The jar shall be made of glass,
transparent, white glass
so that you can see me inside...
You see my sacrifice:
I renounced from being part of the earth,
I renounced from being a flower
to be able to stay with you.
And I am becoming dust,
to live with you ..
***
To appreciate Nazim Hikmet poetry, it is better to read his biography first. My admiration is for the honesty I touched when he describes his different ''états d'âme'', for his contagious optimism in the way he constantly celebrates life and for his tenacity in defending courageously his ideological beliefs and principles during his life.
In Angina Pectoris, Nazim writes I look at the night through the bars . To me, that quote says it all: Nazim Hikmet the poet and Nazim Hikmet the political and oppressed activist can never be separated. His poems are purposeful as much as they are touching, a blend of a political manifesto and an Hymn to Life :
Tonight my hand
Can't read or write.
Neither loving nor unloving.
It's the tongue of a leopard at a spring
A grape leaf,
A wolf's paw.
To move, breathe, eat, drink.
My hand is like a seed
Splitting open underground
Neither a song of the heart nor "common sense'',
neither loving nor unloving..
February 7, 2009
My personal favorite will probably always be "On Living"
(Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example--
I mean, without looking for something beyond and above living
I mean living must be your whole life...)
(Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example--
I mean, without looking for something beyond and above living
I mean living must be your whole life...)
July 3, 2016
(In loving memory of Işıl, whose journey was cut short before she could reach her city)
Because of you
Because of you, each day is a melon slice
smelling sweetly of earth.
Because of you, all fruits reach out to me
as if I were the sun.
Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope.
You are the reason my heart beats.
Because of you, even my loneliest nights
smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall.
Should my journey end before I reach my city,
I’ve rested in a rose garden thanks to you.
Because of you I don’t let death enter,
clothed in the softest garments
and knocking on my door with songs
calling me to the greatest peace.
Because of you
Because of you, each day is a melon slice
smelling sweetly of earth.
Because of you, all fruits reach out to me
as if I were the sun.
Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope.
You are the reason my heart beats.
Because of you, even my loneliest nights
smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall.
Should my journey end before I reach my city,
I’ve rested in a rose garden thanks to you.
Because of you I don’t let death enter,
clothed in the softest garments
and knocking on my door with songs
calling me to the greatest peace.
March 28, 2024
absolūta dzejas izcilība, ja tādu esmu jebkad lasījis
tik mīļi un tik sērīgi, un tik vientuļi un izolēti
tik mīļi un tik sērīgi, un tik vientuļi un izolēti
June 17, 2011
Nazim Hikmet is one of those big poets born in violent times. He is the perfect combination of poetic quality, incorruptible conscience and duty to society. His work is inseparable from the events of the troubled times, affecting the social processes and the revolutionary transformations.
Nazim Hikmet lives in constant creative fever. The misfortune, the bad luck, the years spent in prison are unable to break his spirit. In the gloomy light in the cell, he turns into poetry even the last letters from his wife. Poetry for him was never an end in itself. He is a citizen-patriot that pierces with a poetic passion the battle for the future of humanity. His works is filled with most significant events, problems and conflicts of the human race. He used to say “For me there is no yesterday, there is only tomorrow”. I think that defines him enough. What of a poet he was and what a Man!
Nazim Hikmet lives in constant creative fever. The misfortune, the bad luck, the years spent in prison are unable to break his spirit. In the gloomy light in the cell, he turns into poetry even the last letters from his wife. Poetry for him was never an end in itself. He is a citizen-patriot that pierces with a poetic passion the battle for the future of humanity. His works is filled with most significant events, problems and conflicts of the human race. He used to say “For me there is no yesterday, there is only tomorrow”. I think that defines him enough. What of a poet he was and what a Man!
Want to read
May 21, 201516 April
Today we spoke
in the language of eyes.
He works as a weaver days
and studies nights.
Now it's a long time since the night
came on like a pack of black-shirted Fascists.
The cry of a man out of work
who jumped into the Seine
rose from the dark water.
And ah! you on whose fist-size head
mountain-like winds descend,
at this very minute you're probably busy
building towers of thick, leather-bound books
to get answers to the questions you asked of the stars.
READ
SI-YA-U
READ...
And when your eyes find in the lines what they desire,
when your eyes tire,
rest your tired head
like a black-and-yellow Japanese chrysanthemum
on the books..
SLEEP
SI-YA-U
SLEEP..
Today we spoke
in the language of eyes.
He works as a weaver days
and studies nights.
Now it's a long time since the night
came on like a pack of black-shirted Fascists.
The cry of a man out of work
who jumped into the Seine
rose from the dark water.
And ah! you on whose fist-size head
mountain-like winds descend,
at this very minute you're probably busy
building towers of thick, leather-bound books
to get answers to the questions you asked of the stars.
READ
SI-YA-U
READ...
And when your eyes find in the lines what they desire,
when your eyes tire,
rest your tired head
like a black-and-yellow Japanese chrysanthemum
on the books..
SLEEP
SI-YA-U
SLEEP..
January 27, 2014
Hikmet is contagious. He is so full of life and hope and possibility. He never bowed. And although it's obvious he felt great pain and fell into bouts of depression, his poetry is all about more life. As I read him, I feel hopeful—not outrageously so, but hopeful that there will come a day when things will get better, and that life, as life, is worth living, despite everything horrible in our world. And that is very unlike me. I'm more suited to Paul Celan or Ingeborg Bachmann's depression, or at best, suited towards Nicanor Parra's smirking and laughing hopeful ridicule.
Hikmet loved his native Turkey, but he always pressed forward. As a young man, he walked to Russia after the revolution and studied there. When he returned to his beloved Turkey, he was hounded by the police and constantly arrested and imprisoned. He spent more than ten years in prison because of trumped up charges; all because he believed in a better way of life and was outspoken. He survived attempts on his life, was forced into military conscription as an old man, and eventually had to escape to Moscow, never to see his beloved wife, nor his son for years. He fell in love again. Got a peace prize. Travelled the world. But never got to go back to his beloved Turkey; never got to spend time again with his former wife or son. But through all this he remained hopeful and full of life (at least in his poetry). And it's contagious.
The best poem in this book, for me, is The Epic of Shiek Bedreddin. I didn't know anything about Sheik Bedreddin before I read Hikmet, but you should look him up. (The Wikipedia entry is quite a bit different from Hikmet's description.) The poem alternates between various forms and ends with a story about peasant followers of Bedreddin. One of the peasants ends the poem by saying:
Here's an example of his hope and thirst for life from
And a similar section from
Or this from
Only a few times in this book does Hikmet despair, like in this bit from
But one more... one more in its entirity:
Hikmet loved his native Turkey, but he always pressed forward. As a young man, he walked to Russia after the revolution and studied there. When he returned to his beloved Turkey, he was hounded by the police and constantly arrested and imprisoned. He spent more than ten years in prison because of trumped up charges; all because he believed in a better way of life and was outspoken. He survived attempts on his life, was forced into military conscription as an old man, and eventually had to escape to Moscow, never to see his beloved wife, nor his son for years. He fell in love again. Got a peace prize. Travelled the world. But never got to go back to his beloved Turkey; never got to spend time again with his former wife or son. But through all this he remained hopeful and full of life (at least in his poetry). And it's contagious.
The best poem in this book, for me, is The Epic of Shiek Bedreddin. I didn't know anything about Sheik Bedreddin before I read Hikmet, but you should look him up. (The Wikipedia entry is quite a bit different from Hikmet's description.) The poem alternates between various forms and ends with a story about peasant followers of Bedreddin. One of the peasants ends the poem by saying:
"We are Bedreddin's people; we don't believe in any afterlife or resurrection that we can believe a dead, scattered body will gather together and be reborn. When we say Bedreddin will come again, we mean his look, words, and breath will reappear among us."That is exactly the type of afterlife I can believe in.
Here's an example of his hope and thirst for life from
On Death Again
...
Whoever dies first,
however
and wherever we die,
you and I
can say we loved
each other
and the people's greatest cause
—we fought for it—
we can say
"We lived."
And a similar section from
On Living
...
The earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-back space...
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived"...
Or this from
Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison
...
you'll put your foot down and live.
It may not be a pleasure exactly,
but it's your solemn duty
to live one more day
to spite the enemy.
...
Only a few times in this book does Hikmet despair, like in this bit from
The Strangest Creature on Earth
...
Not one,
not five—
sadly, you number millions.
You're like a sheep, my brother:
when the cloaked drover raises his stick,
you quickly join the flock
and run, almost proudly, to the slaughterhouse.
I mean, you're the strangest creature on earth—
even stranger than the fish
that couldn't see the ocean for the water.
...
But one more... one more in its entirity:
Waitress
One of the waitresses
at Berlin's Astoria Restaurant
was a jewel of a girl.
She'd smile at me across her heavy trays.
She looked like the girls of the country I've lost.
Sometimes she had dark circles under her eyes—
I don't know why.
I never got to sit
at once of her tables.
He never once sat at one of my tables.
He was an old man.
And he must have been sick—
he was on a special diet.
He could gaze at my face so sadly,
but he couldn't speak German.
Fore three months he came in for three meals a day,
then he disappeared.
Maybe he went back to his country,
maybe he died before he could.
December 14, 2016
"Part of you may live alone inside,
like a stone at the bottom of a well.
But the other part
must be so caught up
in the flurry of the world
that you shiver there inside
when outside, at forty days’ distance, a leaf moves.
To wait for letters inside,
to sing sad songs,
or to lie awake all night staring at the ceiling
is sweet but dangerous.
Look at your face from shave to shave,
forget your age,
watch out for lice
and for spring nights,
and always remember
to eat every last piece of bread--
also, don’t forget to laugh heartily.
And who knows,
the woman you love may stop loving you.
Don’t say it’s no big thing:
it’s like the snapping of a green branch
to the man inside.
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.
I mean, it’s not that you can’t pass
ten or fifteen years inside
and more--
you can,
as long as the jewel
on the left side of your chest doesn’t lose its luster!"
"This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived”. .
like a stone at the bottom of a well.
But the other part
must be so caught up
in the flurry of the world
that you shiver there inside
when outside, at forty days’ distance, a leaf moves.
To wait for letters inside,
to sing sad songs,
or to lie awake all night staring at the ceiling
is sweet but dangerous.
Look at your face from shave to shave,
forget your age,
watch out for lice
and for spring nights,
and always remember
to eat every last piece of bread--
also, don’t forget to laugh heartily.
And who knows,
the woman you love may stop loving you.
Don’t say it’s no big thing:
it’s like the snapping of a green branch
to the man inside.
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.
I mean, it’s not that you can’t pass
ten or fifteen years inside
and more--
you can,
as long as the jewel
on the left side of your chest doesn’t lose its luster!"
"This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived”. .
January 20, 2008
it's this way
i stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.
my eyes can't get enough of the trees-
they're so hopeful, so green.
a sunny road runs through the mulberries,
i'm at the window of the prison infirmary.
i can't smell the medicines-
carnations must be blooming nearby.
it's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.
because
they'll go to the moon
and beyond,
to places even telescopes can't see.
but when will no one go hungry
on earth
or fear others
or push them around,
shun them
or steal their hope?
because i responded to this question
i'm called a communist.
i stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.
my eyes can't get enough of the trees-
they're so hopeful, so green.
a sunny road runs through the mulberries,
i'm at the window of the prison infirmary.
i can't smell the medicines-
carnations must be blooming nearby.
it's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.
because
they'll go to the moon
and beyond,
to places even telescopes can't see.
but when will no one go hungry
on earth
or fear others
or push them around,
shun them
or steal their hope?
because i responded to this question
i'm called a communist.
November 24, 2011
Randy Blasing is my poetry professor. I am incredibly fortunate to study under him and to have been introduced to the works of Hikmet. I didn't know I liked poetry until I read Hikmet and Blasing. Completely spellbinding. My favorite poems are, "Vera" and "Loving You."
February 7, 2017
Ἡ ζωὴ δὲν εἶναι παῖξε-γέλασε Πρέπει νὰ τήνε πάρεις σοβαρά, Ὅπως, νὰ ποῦμε, κάνει ὁ σκίουρος, Δίχως ἀπ᾿ ὄξω ἢ ἀπὸ πέρα νὰ προσμένεις τίποτα. Δὲ θά ῾χεις ἄλλο πάρεξ μονάχα νὰ ζεῖς.
Ἡ ζωὴ δὲν εἶναι παῖξε-γέλασε Πρέπει νὰ τήνε πάρεις σοβαρὰ Τόσο μὰ τόσο σοβαρὰ Ποὺ ἔτσι, νὰ ποῦμε, ἀκουμπισμένος σ” ἕναν τοῖχο μὲ τὰ χέρια σου δεμένα Ἢ μέσα στ᾿ ἀργαστήρι Μὲ λευκὴ μπλούζα καὶ μεγάλα ματογυάλια Θὲ νὰ πεθάνεις, γιὰ νὰ ζήσουνε οἱ ἄνθρωποι, Οἱ ἄνθρωποι ποὺ ποτὲ δὲ θά ῾χεις δεῖ τὸ πρόσωπό τους καὶ θὰ πεθάνεις ξέροντας καλὰ Πὼς τίποτα πιὸ ὡραῖο, πὼς τίποτα πιὸ ἀληθινὸ ἀπ᾿ τὴ ζωὴ δὲν εἶναι.
Πρέπει νὰ τηνε πάρεις σοβαρὰ Τόσο μὰ τόσο σοβαρὰ Ποὺ θὰ φυτέυεις, σὰ νὰ ποῦμε, ἐλιὲς ἀκόμα στὰ ἑβδομῆντα σου Ὄχι καθόλου γιὰ νὰ μείνουν στὰ παιδιά σου Μὰ ἔτσι γιατὶ τὸ θάνατο δὲ θὰ τόνε πιστεύεις Ὅσο κι ἂν τὸν φοβᾶσαι Μὰ ἔτσι γιατί ἡ ζωὴ θὲ νὰ βαραίνει πιότερο στὴ ζυγαριά.
Ἡ ζωὴ δὲν εἶναι παῖξε-γέλασε Πρέπει νὰ τήνε πάρεις σοβαρὰ Τόσο μὰ τόσο σοβαρὰ Ποὺ ἔτσι, νὰ ποῦμε, ἀκουμπισμένος σ” ἕναν τοῖχο μὲ τὰ χέρια σου δεμένα Ἢ μέσα στ᾿ ἀργαστήρι Μὲ λευκὴ μπλούζα καὶ μεγάλα ματογυάλια Θὲ νὰ πεθάνεις, γιὰ νὰ ζήσουνε οἱ ἄνθρωποι, Οἱ ἄνθρωποι ποὺ ποτὲ δὲ θά ῾χεις δεῖ τὸ πρόσωπό τους καὶ θὰ πεθάνεις ξέροντας καλὰ Πὼς τίποτα πιὸ ὡραῖο, πὼς τίποτα πιὸ ἀληθινὸ ἀπ᾿ τὴ ζωὴ δὲν εἶναι.
Πρέπει νὰ τηνε πάρεις σοβαρὰ Τόσο μὰ τόσο σοβαρὰ Ποὺ θὰ φυτέυεις, σὰ νὰ ποῦμε, ἐλιὲς ἀκόμα στὰ ἑβδομῆντα σου Ὄχι καθόλου γιὰ νὰ μείνουν στὰ παιδιά σου Μὰ ἔτσι γιατὶ τὸ θάνατο δὲ θὰ τόνε πιστεύεις Ὅσο κι ἂν τὸν φοβᾶσαι Μὰ ἔτσι γιατί ἡ ζωὴ θὲ νὰ βαραίνει πιότερο στὴ ζυγαριά.
December 16, 2008
For the people who has concerns about other people. He never gave up, on his poems and what he believed.
On Living
...
II
Let's say you're seriously ill, need surgery--
which is to say we might not get
from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast ...
Let's say we're at the front--
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
but we'll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
...
On Living
...
II
Let's say you're seriously ill, need surgery--
which is to say we might not get
from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast ...
Let's say we're at the front--
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
but we'll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
...
September 30, 2014
Magnificently exquisite. Hikmat has this casual style of speaking that has all the depth in the world. He is so humane that he is certain to touch you, regardless of whether you agree with his ideas and values or not.
This translation is very well written in itself (I don't know Turkish do I can't judge the quality of the translation). I know this because I felt the words and enjoyed the style and diction to the most.
Highly recommend.
This translation is very well written in itself (I don't know Turkish do I can't judge the quality of the translation). I know this because I felt the words and enjoyed the style and diction to the most.
Highly recommend.
Read
May 8, 2013Reading poems in a forein language, is very hard thing. Because poets are write poems with their souls. And if you know anything about this country and culture, maybe you dont understand what poet says. But if you read nazım, neruda or lorca, you feel their words in your heart. Nazım was a amazing person and he lived exteremly hard life, away from his lovely contry because of politicians. He died in Moscow.
July 23, 2018
L'odore del mare più bello ma la brezza marina porta e riporta via
(1942)
Il più bello dei mari
è quello che non navigammo.
Il più bello dei nostri figli
non è ancora cresciuto.
I più belli dei nostri giorni
non li abbiamo ancora vissuti.
E quello
che vorrei dirti di più bello
non te l’ho ancora detto.
Questa poesia di Nazim Hikmet sono state scritte nel carcere di Bursa (Anatolia), imprigionato con accuse di propaganda comunista e di complotto contro il governo.
Queste poesie sono indirizzate alla moglie Munevvér.
Luglio 2018
La “lotta”, i “piedi”, quel “ti amo” che ormai è solo un’abbreviazione che non conosce il sentimento della lingua, del pronunciarlo. Così delicato e buffo. Come il cuore. Come qualcosa che non si può avere. Come un sogno. Come un mondo che quasi non esiste più.
(1942)
Il più bello dei mari
è quello che non navigammo.
Il più bello dei nostri figli
non è ancora cresciuto.
I più belli dei nostri giorni
non li abbiamo ancora vissuti.
E quello
che vorrei dirti di più bello
non te l’ho ancora detto.
Questa poesia di Nazim Hikmet sono state scritte nel carcere di Bursa (Anatolia), imprigionato con accuse di propaganda comunista e di complotto contro il governo.
Queste poesie sono indirizzate alla moglie Munevvér.
Luglio 2018
La “lotta”, i “piedi”, quel “ti amo” che ormai è solo un’abbreviazione che non conosce il sentimento della lingua, del pronunciarlo. Così delicato e buffo. Come il cuore. Come qualcosa che non si può avere. Come un sogno. Come un mondo che quasi non esiste più.
July 31, 2012
Ο Ναζίμ Χικμέτ γεννήθηκε στη Σαλονίκη το 1902 από γονείς Τούρκους, αξιωματούχο και ζωγράφο. Ήταν αριστερός ποιητής που υπηρέτησε όσο κανείς άλλος την ιδέα της αδελφοσύνης ανάμεσα σε δύο λαούς, τον ελληνικό και τον τούρκικο, μέσα από την έντονη πένα του και το πάθος του για ελευθερία και κοινωνικά δικαιώματα. Φυλακίστηκε στη Τουρκία αλλά κανείς δεν μπόρεσε να σιγάσει την ποιητική του φωνή:"Αν δεν καώ εγώ, αν δεν καείς εσύ, τότε ποιός θα γίνει το φως του κόσμου;"
April 19, 2020
VERA
Come she said
Stay she said
Smile she said
Die she said
I came
I stayed
I smiled
I died
Nazim Hikmet
Come she said
Stay she said
Smile she said
Die she said
I came
I stayed
I smiled
I died
Nazim Hikmet
September 29, 2022
These poems were a pleasure to read! Props to both Hikmet and the translator. I can’t say how accurately translated these are, but there is such richness i these poems, and there is rhythm and cadence to them, which I can imagine is a hard thing to achieve in translation of poetry.
Thematically, these poems cover romantic love, love of the world/neighbor, activism, imprisonment, justice and injustice, death, what is living, nature, oneness of the world, time, perspective, loss of country, love (and anger despite that love) of country, and friendship.
The Gioconda poems are so unique and I just loved them! Have about 30 additional poems I labeled to reread.
The poems are non-pretentious and not overly confusing or abstract, while still making significant use of poetic and rhetorical devices. Hikmet’s poems aren’t always very obvious in their points and often make the reader wonder and question, while still being clear, succinct, and sincere.
International Reading Challenge: Turkey
Thematically, these poems cover romantic love, love of the world/neighbor, activism, imprisonment, justice and injustice, death, what is living, nature, oneness of the world, time, perspective, loss of country, love (and anger despite that love) of country, and friendship.
The Gioconda poems are so unique and I just loved them! Have about 30 additional poems I labeled to reread.
The poems are non-pretentious and not overly confusing or abstract, while still making significant use of poetic and rhetorical devices. Hikmet’s poems aren’t always very obvious in their points and often make the reader wonder and question, while still being clear, succinct, and sincere.
International Reading Challenge: Turkey
March 28, 2020
A collection of unconventional poems which flout traditional literary conventions with free verse and colloquial diction. The unpunctured, breathless and impatient pace of the poems were somehow made relatable to my current feelings of disorientation and recent global events feeling surreal. Most of Hikmet’s poems were written during his years in prion and exile, but the level of complexity in some of the poems is impressive. I’ve enjoyed getting lost in his exilic poems, particularly in the inscription of speed, motion, and movement through time through poetic devices
Read
March 24, 2024I’ve never been very into poetry, but I came across one of this guy’s poems and wanted to read more! So I got this collection of his works. Most of them I don’t really “get,” but his poem Autobiography is very powerful. My favorite lines from it are:
I’ve been a poet since I was fourteen
Some people know all about plants some about fish
I know separation
Some people know the names of the stars by heart
I recite absences
I’ve been a poet since I was fourteen
Some people know all about plants some about fish
I know separation
Some people know the names of the stars by heart
I recite absences
April 19, 2023
the entirety of hikmet & his writings at the fundamental level can be summed up with this line from his poem titled 'Istanbul House of Detention':
"I — with all that was bravest and meanest in me, strongest and weakest — I thought of the world, my country and you."
"I — with all that was bravest and meanest in me, strongest and weakest — I thought of the world, my country and you."
February 21, 2024
I’m devastated… I was not planning on ending my Tuesday night crying.
RTC maybe
RTC maybe
January 7, 2019
Hikmet's poems captures three main themes - romanticism, patriotism and anguish, written during his days in prison, hospital and exile. He wrote about the present in hopes that it will help him forget yesterday.
I felt that he was a man who knew how to love a woman but it was his burden to live a life separated from her. The poems (from 1940 till 1955) are addressed to Pirayé, who was his third wife. (There is no mention of the first two.) But the poems are full of love, loss and longing. [The book sees a departure from love poems, which is revived only much later, around 1960s].
Pirayé was the hymn to his life - half of his world. Just thinking of her gave him hope. The bit I loved very much was how he thought about little things - reminding her to take out the dress which she wore when he first saw her and to wear the carnation in her hair, which he sent to her from prison and keep her broad white, kissable forehead, raised to the sun.
Their separation was an exile for him. In one of the poems, he addressees Pirayé as his eight year widow. He often wondered what she was doing at a certain time of the day - whether she was walking barefoot or patting a kitten that was resting in her lap. When he was consumed by anguish, he would think of a time when he'd have become dust - and that one day, the two will share their dust in the same jar, and finally live together. (Read 'Letter Fom My Wife) They were two halves of an apple, as he wrote.
In one of the poems 'Rubaiyat,' his love takes a spiritual essence - that all forms are shadows and when his love's image appeared in the mirror and said that she isn't real, I am - he breaks the mirror. The image in the mirror vanishes but not his love.
I wonder if he did not have to flee to Soviet Union, would he still have been married to the woman who had been his muse in the first half of the book - who became the mother of his child - who he wrote to even during sickness? It seems that he wrote rightly - she was his desire out of reach, in the poem titled 'YOU.'
In prison, he wrote about children being born elsewhere, everywhere in the world, while he longed to have his own child. The two have a son later on. Hikmet's poem then celebrates Memet's birth, fatherhood and seeing his wife as a mother.
What I also love about Hikmet was his expression of being alive and young. He borrowed it from the Earth, his country, having people of the world in his heart and above all, the power of LOVE. (People are old only if they love no one but themselves; as long as you give all your love and as much as you can - you are young, he wrote).
During his days in detention, when he was bereft of freedom, bread and his wife, he was still full of hope and had faith about the days that were to emerge out of all the darkness, hunger and screams.
'On Living,' he wrote : "you must feel sorrow and love much
if you're going to say you lived." (1948)
Hikmet's poems are also full of empathy. He reflected on the death of his friend whose lover's head was cut off; on the death of a man in prison; advice to those who will also serve in prison. Later, a message of hope a fellow patient - "The aches and pains will cease. Ease will come softly." (1954)
Once in Soviet Union, he was hospitalized and wrote what he thought would be a last letter, to his son. He reminds Memet to love all of Earth, his country and most importantly, his mother.
In the book, we also see a departure from the theme of love between 1955-1960. It might have had to do with not being able to find another muse as Pirayé, until Vera Tulyakova came along who became his fifth wife. There about 7 poems in her respect. And yet, it was Hikmet's anguish to divorce and separate from her as well. The poems 'Straw Blond' and 'Berlin Letters' expressed the moments leading upto their separation, in the most haunting way. [There is only one poem from and to his fourth wife - Munnever.]
What's unfortunate is how he was considered a traitor, even though he had great love for Turkey and his countrymen. (I've swung on it's plane trees/ I've lived in it's prisons.) George McGovern said, "The highest form of patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but I love for one's country to call her to a higher standard." But Hikmet's times were different.
I only lost pace when, in between, the book conveyed stories about families etc.
In the end, I'd like to believe that Hikmet lived true to his heart and words - "The worst is when people - knowingly or not - carry prison inside themselves."
He wrote not only to forget the yesterday but build a bridge to the future.
I felt that he was a man who knew how to love a woman but it was his burden to live a life separated from her. The poems (from 1940 till 1955) are addressed to Pirayé, who was his third wife. (There is no mention of the first two.) But the poems are full of love, loss and longing. [The book sees a departure from love poems, which is revived only much later, around 1960s].
Pirayé was the hymn to his life - half of his world. Just thinking of her gave him hope. The bit I loved very much was how he thought about little things - reminding her to take out the dress which she wore when he first saw her and to wear the carnation in her hair, which he sent to her from prison and keep her broad white, kissable forehead, raised to the sun.
Their separation was an exile for him. In one of the poems, he addressees Pirayé as his eight year widow. He often wondered what she was doing at a certain time of the day - whether she was walking barefoot or patting a kitten that was resting in her lap. When he was consumed by anguish, he would think of a time when he'd have become dust - and that one day, the two will share their dust in the same jar, and finally live together. (Read 'Letter Fom My Wife) They were two halves of an apple, as he wrote.
In one of the poems 'Rubaiyat,' his love takes a spiritual essence - that all forms are shadows and when his love's image appeared in the mirror and said that she isn't real, I am - he breaks the mirror. The image in the mirror vanishes but not his love.
I wonder if he did not have to flee to Soviet Union, would he still have been married to the woman who had been his muse in the first half of the book - who became the mother of his child - who he wrote to even during sickness? It seems that he wrote rightly - she was his desire out of reach, in the poem titled 'YOU.'
In prison, he wrote about children being born elsewhere, everywhere in the world, while he longed to have his own child. The two have a son later on. Hikmet's poem then celebrates Memet's birth, fatherhood and seeing his wife as a mother.
What I also love about Hikmet was his expression of being alive and young. He borrowed it from the Earth, his country, having people of the world in his heart and above all, the power of LOVE. (People are old only if they love no one but themselves; as long as you give all your love and as much as you can - you are young, he wrote).
During his days in detention, when he was bereft of freedom, bread and his wife, he was still full of hope and had faith about the days that were to emerge out of all the darkness, hunger and screams.
'On Living,' he wrote : "you must feel sorrow and love much
if you're going to say you lived." (1948)
Hikmet's poems are also full of empathy. He reflected on the death of his friend whose lover's head was cut off; on the death of a man in prison; advice to those who will also serve in prison. Later, a message of hope a fellow patient - "The aches and pains will cease. Ease will come softly." (1954)
Once in Soviet Union, he was hospitalized and wrote what he thought would be a last letter, to his son. He reminds Memet to love all of Earth, his country and most importantly, his mother.
In the book, we also see a departure from the theme of love between 1955-1960. It might have had to do with not being able to find another muse as Pirayé, until Vera Tulyakova came along who became his fifth wife. There about 7 poems in her respect. And yet, it was Hikmet's anguish to divorce and separate from her as well. The poems 'Straw Blond' and 'Berlin Letters' expressed the moments leading upto their separation, in the most haunting way. [There is only one poem from and to his fourth wife - Munnever.]
What's unfortunate is how he was considered a traitor, even though he had great love for Turkey and his countrymen. (I've swung on it's plane trees/ I've lived in it's prisons.) George McGovern said, "The highest form of patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but I love for one's country to call her to a higher standard." But Hikmet's times were different.
I only lost pace when, in between, the book conveyed stories about families etc.
In the end, I'd like to believe that Hikmet lived true to his heart and words - "The worst is when people - knowingly or not - carry prison inside themselves."
He wrote not only to forget the yesterday but build a bridge to the future.
November 16, 2021
Llegó de casualidad a mis manos esta antología de Nazim Hikmet, ha sido un descubrimiento, mi primer libro de un poeta turco, poesía con una gran sensibilidad a la vez que crudeza en sus poemas.
December 15, 2008
I really don't like most poetry. I like politic subject matter even less usually. This book was recommended by a Kurdish friend of mine due to author's unique ability to speak to love, pain, freedom, and death in such a universal way. Obviously the translation from Hikmet's native tongue can't really convey what I suspect is a greater beauty when read in context and a cadence my western mind lacks but this work makes me seek to learn more.
I plan to make songs from his words.
I plan to make songs from his words.
September 3, 2023
it literally boggles my mind that writing can do this. it feels like how it felt reading rumi for the first time, like he put every single cell of his entire body for his whole entire life into this most earnest, delicate, indomitable, delicious, vulnerable poem you're reading, and you're actually not even reading a poem actually, you're reading cells and his organ tissue and his organs and organ systems
October 26, 2017
Wondeful poems. Hikmet was a political prisoner for many years. My version of the collection is chronological and so, you can truly see the author becoming wiser and wiser with each year he had to spend in captivity. The poems, especially the ones closer to the end, will make you cry. Made me fall in love with poetry all over again.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews