Nâzım Hikmet

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Nâzım Hikmet

Nâzım Hikmet (Ran) [ naːˈzɯm hikˈmet ] (born January 15, 1902 in Thessaloniki , † June 3, 1963 in Moscow ) was a Turkish poet and playwright . He is considered the founder of modern Turkish poetry and one of the most important poets in Turkish literature .

Life

Nâzım Hikmet was born in Thessaloniki in 1902 as the son of an official of the Foreign Ministry; his date of birth is occasionally given as November 20, 1901, although there are discrepancies as to the actual date. He grew up mainly with his grandfather, who was the governor of the Sultan, in Aleppo and later Diyarbakır . His family offered him plenty of intellectual stimulation and he wrote his first poem ( Schrei der Heimat ) at the age of 11 .

The ancestors were partly of Polish and German descent. A great-grandfather on my mother's side was the Chief of Staff of the Ottoman Army , Mehmed Ali Pascha, who was born as Karl Detroit in Magdeburg . In 1917 Hikmet went to Istanbul to the naval school on the Prince Island of Halki ( Heybeliada ), which was commanded from 1917-18 by the German Lieutenant Wilhelm Böcking. Böcking's personal interpreter was Wolfgang Schrader (1894–1984), born in Istanbul, the eldest son of Friedrich Schrader . The October Revolution made a big impression on Hikmet. In 1918 his parents divorced. The following year he opposed the officers who had surrendered to the occupation forces; he was released for incitement to riot and subsequently took part in events of the liberation movement.

In 1921 he fled occupied Istanbul and traveled to Anatolia with his friend Vâlâ Nûrettin, where they sought contact with the “common people” as well as with socialist organizations. In the same year they were sent to Bolu as teachers . At the end of the year both traveled illegally to the young Soviet Union, where they experienced the famine in the rural areas of southern Russia. In Moscow, Hikmet studied sociology and art history at the Communist University of the Working People of the East and had contacts with the Soviet Futurists . Especially Sergei Esenin and Vladimir Mayakovsky influenced Hikmet's poetry. Since 1924 he was a member of the illegal Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). After returning to Turkey, he was persecuted for his political convictions and for his work in the magazine Aydınlık . In 1925 he fled again to Moscow; while trying to return he was arrested in 1928 and interned for eight months. His lover Lena could not follow him to Turkey and died shortly afterwards. From 1929 onwards, Hikmet had initial successes as a writer despite state repression. As a result, his writings were repeatedly censored and he himself was imprisoned. From 1933 to 1935 he was again imprisoned in Bursa , where The Epic by Sheikh Bedreddin was written . In 1936 he married Piraye.

Nâzım Hikmet (right) with Stephan Hermlin (left) on the III. German Writers' Congress 1952 in Berlin

In a political process in 1938 he was sentenced by a court martial to 28 years imprisonment; in addition, a publication ban was imposed on him. While in custody he was productive and translated, among other things, War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy . In the mid-1940s he fell in love with Münevver and wrote love poems and letters to her. His health deteriorated dramatically in the late 1940s.

In 1950, after a hunger strike and international protests, Hikmet was pardoned in a general amnesty. He started writing scripts to make a living. He married Münevver; At the beginning of 1951, their son Mehmet was born. In 1951, however, Nâzım Hikmet had to flee to Moscow again - and this time for good - after he was sent to the military when he was 49 years old. In the same year he got a divorce. In the same year he was expatriated from Turkey. In Moscow he belonged to the intellectual prominence and in the coming years he mainly toured the Eastern Bloc . In 1959 he married Vera Tuljakowa. He saw Münevver and Mehmet only briefly in 1961 on a visit to Warsaw . He died on June 3, 1963 in Moscow, where he is also buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery .

The strict publication ban in Turkey continued until 1965. On January 6, 2009, the poet, who was expatriated while he was still alive, was posthumously restored to Turkish citizenship .

Although Hikmet's major works were written before his last exile in Moscow, he was ignored in the West for decades. While Hikmet's first volume of poetry was published in German translation in the GDR as early as 1959, until the end of the 1970s he was only known in West Germany for three poems that Hans Magnus Enzensberger had included in his Museum of Modern Poetry in 1960. Eleven other poems appeared in Yüksel Pazarkaya's collection of Modern Turkish Poetry in 1971 .

Create

Despite persecution, a ban on publications and exile, Nâzım Hikmet has managed to make a lasting impression on Turkish literature. This includes that he overcomes the Ottoman verse form and absorbs diverse (especially Soviet) influences of modernity. In addition to a social revolutionary pathos, he always expresses a bond with the common people and at the same time a rejection of any romanticizing orientalism .

Hikmet has also made a name for himself with dramatic works: At the freight station , blood revenge , Fatme and Ali , the legend of love and Joseph in the land of Egypt established his fame; other important pieces are e.g. B. A Strange Person (1953) and Did Ivan Ivanovich Really Live? (1955)

Other important works by Hikmet are:

  • Why did Benerci kill himself? (1932)
  • The Epic of Sheikh Bedreddin (1933)
  • Human landscapes (1938 ff.)
  • The Romantics (1963)

In German , the last verse from one of Hikmet's most famous poems, Davet (invitation), has become particularly well known - thanks to Hannes Wader , among others :

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

Living individually and free
as a tree and
brotherly like a forest,
this yearning is ours.

(literal translation: life like a tree, individual and free, and fraternal like a forest, that is our longing. )
(Analogous translation: "We long for a life like a tree, free-standing in a forest of community.")

In 2001 the internationally renowned Turkish pianist and composer Fazıl Say created an orchestral work on texts by Nâzım Hikmet.

Works (selection)

  • On his 100th birthday NAZIM HIKMET, Doğumunun 100th Yıldönümünde NAZIM HİKMET. Anadolu Verlag , Hückelhoven 2002, ISBN 3-86121-196-3
  • The epic of Sheikh Bedreddin , son of the Kadis of Simavne - Simavne Kadısı Oğlu Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı. Ararat-Verlag , Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-921889-09-X
  • Why did Benerci kill himself? Poems2. - Benerci Kendini Niçin Öldürdü? şiirler2. ADAM, İstanbul 1987, ISBN 975-418-017-2
  • A journey without return - Dönüşü Olmayan Yolculuk. Poems and poems. Dağyeli, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-89329-108-3
  • The most beautiful sea is the one that has not yet been navigated - En Güzel Deniz Henüz Gidilememiş Olanıdır. Love poems. Dağyeli, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-89329-115-6
  • The air is heavy as lead - Hava Kurşun Gibi Ağır. Poems. 2nd Edition. Dağyeli, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-89329-105-9
  • The names of longing - Hasretlerin Adı. Amman Verlag, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-250-10440-7
  • How the raven entered a splinter - Ayağına Diken Batan Karga . Fairy tale. Elefanten Press children's book, Berlin 1980 ISBN 3-88520-043-0 .
  • The romantics. Man, life is beautiful! - Yaşamak güzel şey be kardeşim . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-22436-6 .

literature

  • Turkish Academic and Artists Association e. V. (Ed. Mehmet Aksoy and Team): Nazim Hikmet - You are afraid of our songs , Berlin 1977, consistently bilingual in German and Turkish, 336 pp.
  • Erika Glassen : The Turkish prison as a school of literary realism (Nâzim Hikmet's way to Anatolia). In: Ingeborg Baldauf (Hrsg.): Turkish language and literatures: materials of the first German conference of Turkologists in Bamberg, 3. – 6. July 1987. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1991, ISBN 3-447-03121-2 , pp. 129-141 ( online ).
  • Dietrich Gronau: Nâzım Hikmet. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991, ISBN 3-499-50426-X
  • Vâlâ Nureddin (Vâ-Nû): Bu Dünyadan Nâzım Geçti. İlke, İstanbul 1995, ISBN 975-8069-00-4
  • Turkish Center Berlin (Ed.): Nazım Hikmet. About his life - Hayatı üstüne. Elefanten Press Verlag, Berlin undated, ISBN 3-88520-009-0

Movies

  • Nazim Hikmet. Poet and revolutionary. Documentation by Osman Okkan and Dieter Oeckl, WDR 1993, running time 12 minutes.

Adaptations

  • The poem Kız Çocuğu (1956, German: The Little Girl) was musically adapted by several artists in different languages, u. a. by The Byrds (titled I Come and Stand at Every Door ; 1966), Joan Baez , Pete Seeger , Zülfü Livaneli , This Mortal Coil .
  • In 2020 the Weber-Herzog-Musiktheater released a double CD with texts and songs after Nâzım Hikmet.

Web links

Commons : Nazım Hikmet Ran  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Translation: Tevfik Turan: Look at Nâzim Hikmet . In: THE WORLD . October 12, 2008 ( welt.de [accessed on August 22, 2018]).
  2. ^ Nazim Hikmet: Nazim Hikmet. July 11, 2000, accessed August 22, 2018 .
  3. Biography - Nâzım Hikmet Kültür ve Sanat Vakfı. Retrieved August 22, 2018 (American English).
  4. ^ Poetry Foundation: Nazim Hikmet. August 22, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018 (American English).
  5. Weber-Herzog-Musiktheater: Brotherly like a forest - (double CD)