Talât Sait Halman

Talât Sait Halman (born July 7, 1931 in Istanbul ; † December 5, 2014 there ) was a Turkish poet, translator and cultural historian. He was the first Minister for Culture and Tourism of Turkey. He has taught at numerous universities in the United States and from 1998 at Bilkent Üniversitesi , where he was also Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Literature.

Life

Halman was born in 1931 to Admiral Sait Halman. He graduated from Robert College in Istanbul and received a Masters in Political Science, International Relations and International Law from Columbia University in the mid-1950s .

During his long academic career, Halman taught as a professor at Columbia University , Princeton University (1965–1971) and (1972–80), the University of Pennsylvania and New York University , where he also headed the Department of Languages ​​and Literature of the Middle East East was.

In 1971, Halman became the first Minister for Culture and Tourism. During his tenure, the "Whirling Dervishes" made their first international tour to the United States. In 1976 he was responsible for the first American museum tour with artefacts from the Ottoman sultans from the Topkapı Palace . After the end of his tenure, he returned to the United States.

From 1980 to 1982 he was Turkey's first cultural ambassador. He initiated a program with Turkish cultural activities. From 1991 to 1995 he was a member of the Executive Council of UNESCO . He was also a member of the Executive Board of the PEN American Center and served on the Centre's Translation Committee. For many years he was a member of the Poetry Society of America and since 1967 a member of the editorial board of World Literature Today .

From 1998 he taught at the Bilkent University in Ankara , where he was dean of the faculty for humanities and literature. There he founded a program for Turkish language and literature with the aim of enabling a new critical approach.

From October 2003 he headed the Turkish delegation at UNICEF.

family

Halman's father Sait Halman served in the Turkish War of Liberation and World War II. Halman's father was also active as a writer. He translated and wrote his own books on military history, including a monograph on the map of Piri Reis . Halman's mother, Iclal, came from the respected Nemlizade family. Both families came from the Trabzon region on the Black Sea coast.

In 1960, Halman married Seniha Taşkıranel . The couple have two sons and a daughter.

Awards

Halman received the Thornton Wilder Prize from Columbia University for his life's work. He was an honorary doctor of the Boğaziçi Üniversitesi and a Rockefeller scholarship holder. He was awarded the UNESCO medal. In 1971 the British Queen Elizabeth II honored him as Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire during a visit to Turkey .

Works

Talat Sait Halman wrote 60 books, more than 2000 newspaper articles and 500 scientific articles. He was a translator of Turkish and English literature. His English-language books include a collection of his poems ( Shadows of Love , published in Canada) and A Last Lullaby (published in the US), as well as contemporary Turkish prose and poetry and modern Turkish plays. He also wrote books on the mystical folk poet of the 13th century from Anatolia Yunus Emre , on Jalāl ad-Dīn ar-Rūmī and the whirling dervishes (with Metin And), Suleyman I and the stories of Nasreddin . Many of his books have also appeared outside of Turkey.

His Turkish-language books include nine volumes of poetry, two anthologies of ancient poems and a book on poems from ancient Egypt. He gathered selected poems by Wallace Stevens and Langston Hughes and wrote an anthology of contemporary American poets, a book on American poets, the translation of Shakespeare's sonnets , a volume of poetry by Eskimos and many more. He also translated Robinson Jeffers ' version of Medea , Neil Simons Lost in Yonkers , Dear Liar (based on letters from George Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell ) and Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh . For the latter two he won the Turkey Translation Prize. He was William Faulkner's first Turkish translator .

literature

• Jayne Warner (Ed.): Cultural Horizons: a Festschrift in Honor of Talat Sait Halman . 2 volumes, Syracuse University Press, 2001

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Talât Sait Halman , Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, accessed on May 6, 2018 (English)
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Talât Sait Halman , Biyografya, accessed May 7, 2018
3. ↑ Talat Halman ( Memento of September 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Bilkent Üniversitesi