Ahmet Haşim

Ahmet Haşim's grave in Eyup

Ahmet Haşim (* between 1883 and 1887 probably in Baghdad ; † June 4, 1933 in Istanbul ; also written as Ahmed Hâşim ) was an influential Turkish poet of the early 20th century.

Life

Childhood and school

Ahmet Haşim was born in Baghdad around 1884. He was descended from families that produced prominent religious scholars. The maternal great-grandfather, Emin Efendi , was one of them and was also a member of the first Ottoman parliament. Ahmet Haşims father was the governor of the Ottoman Sanjak of Fizan . The mother was seriously ill and died when Ahmet was eight years old. The following period is characterized by a close bond with his father, who took him on numerous business trips in his administrative district, so that there was no regular school attendance.

Around 1894/95 Haşim moved to Istanbul with his father. Since he had not learned Turkish in Baghdad , but grew up with Arabic , he first had to learn this language for about a year before he could start school there. But then he attended Galatasaray High School as a boarding school student. Here he learned French and Persian as foreign languages and also had Arabic lessons. Classical oriental poetry was also taught. Tevfik Fikret (1867–1915) was one of his literature teachers. During this time, his father remarried, which broke the close emotional bond with him. Ahmet Haşim graduated from high school in 1906.

job

At first he worked in state administration and studied law on the side . Without completing his studies, he was transferred to Izmir in 1908 as a French teacher . There he made friends with the writer and diplomat Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu (1889–1974). During this time he wrote his first poems. From 1910 he worked as a translator in the government debt administration . In World War I fed it first served in Canakkale , from 1917 then illness as an inspector of the troops catering. After the military collapse of the Ottoman Empire , he was unemployed and got into great material hardship. From 1920 he was able to teach as a professor of aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts and as a French teacher at the Istanbul University. In 1921 he switched again to the government debt management, where he worked until the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. In 1924 he spent the summer in Paris . For many years he also wrote for the Akşam and İkdâm newspapers . His main job was now for Osmanlı Bankası .

From 1927 health problems set in again. Repeatedly he went to Paris for long periods of treatment. The heart muscle, liver and kidney were affected. He gave up the job at the bank and worked as a French teacher in several private schools. For a short time he was also a member of the board of the Anatolian Railway . After hospital stays in Istanbul, he went to Frankfurt am Main for treatment in autumn 1932 . On this occasion he wrote his Frankfurt travel report ( Frankfurt Seyahatnamesi ). But his health got worse and worse after his return to Istanbul. Four days before his death he married his nurse. He died on June 4, 1933.

poetry

Ahmet Haşim's first poems were published in the literary journal Mecmua-i Edebiye between 1900 and 1912 . He was later a member of the movement known as Fecr-i Atî, or Dawn of the Future . After that it was published in the journal Dergâh along with other poets. Around 1921 he published his first book of poems under the title Göl Saatleri ( Hours of the Lake ). His second volume of poetry, Piyâle ( The Wine Bowl ), followed in 1926.

A famous poem from the volume of poems Piyâle is Merdiven (stairwell):

آغير, چيقه جقسك بو مرديونلردن آغير
أتکلرکده کونش رنکى بر ييغين ياپراق
..و بر زمان باقاجقسك سمايه آغلايه رق
 , صولر صاراردى ... پرده پرد صولقده يوزك
..قزيل هوالرى سيرايت که آقشام اولقده

Ağır, ağır çıkacaksın bu merdivenlerden,
Eteklerinde güneş rengi bir yığın yaprak,
Ve bir zaman bakacaksın semâya ağlayarak ..
Sular sarardıret .. yüzün perde perde solmakta,
Kızıl havalar ..

This poem shows that Haşim uses carefully selected natural images to express the emotional state of the person in the poem. Many of Haşim's more recent poems, especially those in Piyâle , use this technique in a very concise way. They show the influence of not only symbolism but also the haiku poetry that Haşim was reading at the time.

Works

• Bize Göre , 1928. - German: Viewing matters, Manzara Verlag, Pfungstadt 2012. ISBN 978-3-939795-20-9
• Bütün Kitapları . İstanbul: Oğlak Yayıncılık ve Reklamcılık Ltd. Şti. 2004. ISBN 975-329-466-2 .
• Bütün Şiirleri . Ed. İnci Enginün, Zeynep Kerman. İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2003. ISBN 975-7462-69-1
• Frankfurt Seyahatnamesi . 1933. - German: Frankfurter Reisebericht. Frankfurt 2008. Literaturca Verlag. ISBN 3-935535-18-X
• Göl Saatleri (گول ساعتلرى, "Hours of the Lake"), 1921
• Gurebâhâne-i Laklakan , 1928
• Hayatı — Sanatı — Eserleri. İstanbul: Boğaziçi Yayınları . Ed .: Ahmet Özdemir. 1997. ISBN 975-451-151-9 .
• Piyâle (پياله, "Goblet"), 1926

literature

• Suat Batur: Bize brat. Ahmet Haşim . Istanbul 2005
• Beatrix Caner: Turkish poet and esthete: Ahmet Haşim . In: Ahmet Haşim: Frankfurter Reisebericht . Frankfurt 2008. p. 83 ff.
• Atilla Özkırımlı: Ahmet Haşim . Istanbul 1975

Web links

• Ahmet Haşim'in Hayatı (1884–1933). siraze.net, archived from the original on February 12, 2010 ; Retrieved December 22, 2012 ((Turkish)). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Critical to this: Caner, p. 90 (note).