Nâzım Hikmet
Nazim 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.
“Thinking of you is pretty, hopeful, It is like listening to the most beautiful song From the most beautiful voice on earth... But hope is not enough for me any more, I don't want to listen to songs any more, I want to sing.”
“I know you can't wash in the same river even onceI know the river will bring new lights that you will not seeI know we live slightly longer than a horse and not nearly as long as a crowI know this has troubled people before and will trouble those after meI know all this has been said a thousand times before and will be said after meI didn't know I like the sky cloudy or clearthe blue vault that Andrei watched on his back on the battlefield at Borodino...”
“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.”
“Separation isn’t time or distanceit’s the bridge between usfiner than silk thread sharper than swords”
“And the most beautiful words ever spoken, I have not yet said to you.”
“Hayatı ıskalama lüksün yok senin!”
“لا تحيا على الأرضكمستأجر بيت ..أو زائر ريف وسط الخضرة ..ولتحيا على الأرضكما لو كان العالم بيت أبيك !ثق في الحب وفي الأرض وفي البحر..ولتمنح ثقتك قبل الأشياء الأخرى للإنسانامنح حبك للسحب وللآلة والكتبولتمنح حبك قبل الأشياء الأخرى للإنسانولتستشعر اكتئابة الغصن الجاف ..والكوكب الخامد ..والحيوان المقعد..ولتستشعر أولاً اكتئابة الإنسان..!”
“Saçları saman sarısı kirpikleri mavi”
“It's this way:being captured is beside the pointthe point is not to surrender.- It's This Way”