Meditation on Nazım Hikmet

Day 1,196, 16:57 • Published in USA USA • by Silas Soule

Hello. Merhaba. I actually love Turkish poetry. So in a non-response to the recent unpleasantness, I offer this meditation on the imprisonment of poetry in eRepublik for you to make of what you will...

-- PQ





INVITATION
To live like a tree single and at liberty
and brotherly like the trees of a forest,
this yearning is ours.

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


-- Nazım Hikmet Ran







Yasamak sakaya gelmez,
buyuk bir ciddiyetle yasayacaksin
bir sincap gibi mesela,
yani, yasamanin disinda ve otesinde hicbir sey beklemeden,
yani butun isin gucun yasamak olacak

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 occupation.

-- Nâzim Hikmet Ran








Nâzim Hikmet taught that art is an event. His life demonstrated that poetry is a matter of life and death. His prosecutors honored him by beieving that a book of poems could incite the military to revolt.


Hikmet détourned those who sought to crush human spirits that are in harmony with themselves and with the earth. He spoke casually, yet with a seriousness that most of us moderns never dreamt of attempting. Maybe we can hear his echo in the calm, determined tones of some young millenials just now reaching adulthood. He mixed a cool blend between marxism and mysticism, between socialism and sufism.


He was both Turkish and Greek, and Polish and Russian. Some observers said he was a 20th century Turkish Walt Whitman.







I love my country...
I love my country...
I swung in its lofty trees, I lay in its prisons.
Nothing relieves my depression
Like the songs and tobacco of my country.
. . . and then my working, honest, brave people.
Ready to accept with the joy of a wondering child,
everything,
progressive, lovely, good,
half hungry, half full.
half slave...

-- Nâzim Hikmet Ran







Look at the lion in the iron cage,
look deep into his eyes:
like two naked steel daggers
they sparkle with anger.
But he never loses his dignity
although his anger
comes and goes
goes and comes

You couldn't find a place for a collar
round his thick, furry mane.
Although the scars of a whip
still burn on his yellow back
his long legs
stretch and end
in the shape of two copper claws.
The hairs on his mane rise one by one
around his proud head.
His hatred
comes and goes
goes and comes ...

The shadow of my brother on the wall of the dungeon
moves
up and down
up and down

-- Nâzim Hikmet Ran






What is a New World worth that lacks such poetry?

What is a Republik worth without such a poet?

When will our Nâzim Hikmet Ran emerge from his cell?