I had a long break since my last entry but will of course continue with my travel story later on. However today I felt like introducing my dear foreign readers to Turkish poetry.Yesterday, while reading the great Russian poet Sergey Yesenin unfortunately not in his own language but in English, my belief in powers of translation gained strength and I wondered how our ingenious poets would sound like in English. The results are really amazing, and even my countrymen can get a different taste in them. I always thought that in terms of poetry Turkish literature can compete with the best of the best in the world and I hope my foreign friends will think the same after reading some of the poems I will introduce. I'm really thankful to Sibel Adalı, a Turkish academician living in New York, who has prepared a website with a really good amount of Turkish poems translated in English. All the translations are taken from her website and if you want to read more just go to her website: Turkish Poetry in Translation
Before starting to quote some poems, a brief history of Turkish poetry may be appropriate. The river of traditional poetry; - or the poetry before the end of 19th century- had two very different tributaries, the folk poetry and the so called "divan" poetry. The folk songs of singer-songwriters ("aşık" in Turkish) playing an instrument called "bağlama" was the folkloric one with a plain Turkish based on lives of simple villagers; while some of them are really touching in terms of their depth I must say. Their wisdom of dealing with the universal and timeless problems of human beings in a sheer simplicity were stunning; a few words were enough for Karac'oğlan for example, one of the most famous songwriters ever, to touch upon the most serious issues. A wisdom hardly seen in the second tributary. By the way some sufis, Islamic mystics, in Anatolia have also wrote songs in such a simplistic style; of course then the topics were related to their mystic philosophy; the greatest prominents were Yunus Emre and Pir Sultan Abdal.
The second one was a much more elevated poetry being fully metaphorical; which could be appreciated by the intellectuals at that time who knew the great classics of Eastern -especially Persian- literature. The language used was a mixed version of Turkish full of Persian and to some extent Arabic words, given the name "Ottoman Turkish". Just as to understand Western poets of those times one has to read Greek and Latin classics such as Homer, Vergilius, Lucretius etc. - along with The Old and New Testaments of course- to understand the images, metaphors and intertextual references one had to know Iranian poets such as Firdevsi, the stories from "Thousand-and-One Nights", Koran and the mystic interpreters of it. They came up with perhaps the most beautiful imageries ever seen; but their poetry might seem a little bit out-dated today. I am not a fan of the art of saying words in a beautiful manner with metaphors just for the sake of it. Reading some classics from those days awakes a feeling in me that maybe 400 pages are just some kind of fillers in a book of 500 pages. Just as the beautiful rokoko music, beautifully harmonical and flowing but lacking in true content. Of course I'm not going to say that content was absolutely missing, but the themes were so abstract -and common for all the poems- they lose their meaning easily. Anyway, modern Turkish poetry could not be so successful without this huge database of images and metaphors.
The modern poetry, started at the end of 19th century under the influence of French poets such as Baudelaire and Verlaine. One should note that the Westernization period had started around the mid-19th century so it was pretty understandable that this movement would have its effect on literature. The rising nationalism at the begining of 20th century tried to "purify" the language from non-Turkish elements by going back to the language of common people, the language of folk poetry. Their poems really sucked, there were even some claims that you couldn't write a poem in the language of common people. If there is only one big achievement of Turkish republic, it is by producing so many great poets to show that such claims were not true.
Apart from the early giants of modern poetry such as Ahmed Haşim and Yahya Kemal (my uncle's ex-wife was a relative of him by the way, an interesting note to add) who made a truly beautiful blend of themes taken from Baudelaire with the images of "divan poetry", the first great poet of the young Republic was a communist, Nazım Hikmet. Before him the poetry was bound to use rhymes and acoustic harmonies which was kind of a chain for him to get rid of. He didn't compromise much from the stylistic issues, rather revolutionized the whole problem of style and gave the content the foremost importance in poetry. In 1920s, reading the great communist poet Mayakovsky, he gave rise to a poetry without rhymes which was called "free poetry", free from rhymes and acoustic scales of the past. After him the poets of course continued to use rhymes from time to time but even if it was the case, not in a strict manner again. Regarding the content he was the first Turkish poet who had dealt with politics and problems of society. Common people entered to the poetry for the first time thanks to his and Orhan Veli's efforts, who was a leading figure of a poetic movement called "Garip" (which means strange mainly but also poor, referring to people dismissed from the poetry), a poetry unlike the old ones; a realist poetry of common,simple people. A movement in response to it occured 15 years later ,during 1950's, who advocated a more puzzle-like, symbolistic approach to poetry. They were political too but not openly as the ones before. From then on these two streams have decided the course of Turkish poetry, some poets preferred the realistic approach with an emphasis on problems of society, while others dealt with more personal problems in a symbolistic manner, open to many interpreations.
But there were also great poets who just went their own way. One such poet was Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca, whom I consider to be the greatest Turkish poet ever along with Nazım Hikmet. He was unlike anyone else in Turkish and also in world literature, completely creating his own language and his poetry in an amazing way. His inventiveness and use of language was unequalled, and starting from 1935 to 2000s he continued to write poems constantly. Another poet I like is maybe the most popular one, Attila Ilhan. His poems with their boheme and cosmopolite atmosphere opened new horizons in the minds of readers. Being a socialist like almost all the significant poets of the century, he preferred to deal with it in a different way than the traditional Marxist aesthetic which dictated a rather dry realism.
I think it's good to conclude this post with a brief list of significant Turkish poets of the century in addition to those who were mentioned before (of course according to my taste):
Cemal Süreya, Cahit Külebi, Turgut Uyar, Melih Cevdet Anday, Behçet Necatigil, Oktay Rifat, Ceyhun Atuf Kansu, Ece Ayhan, Edip Cansever, Ahmed Arif.
A few examples from almost all of them can be found in the great website I mentioned before. In the second part, I will post a selection of some of them but again it is just an appetitizer, for further reading consult the website or better learn Turkish :)
Before starting to quote some poems, a brief history of Turkish poetry may be appropriate. The river of traditional poetry; - or the poetry before the end of 19th century- had two very different tributaries, the folk poetry and the so called "divan" poetry. The folk songs of singer-songwriters ("aşık" in Turkish) playing an instrument called "bağlama" was the folkloric one with a plain Turkish based on lives of simple villagers; while some of them are really touching in terms of their depth I must say. Their wisdom of dealing with the universal and timeless problems of human beings in a sheer simplicity were stunning; a few words were enough for Karac'oğlan for example, one of the most famous songwriters ever, to touch upon the most serious issues. A wisdom hardly seen in the second tributary. By the way some sufis, Islamic mystics, in Anatolia have also wrote songs in such a simplistic style; of course then the topics were related to their mystic philosophy; the greatest prominents were Yunus Emre and Pir Sultan Abdal.
The second one was a much more elevated poetry being fully metaphorical; which could be appreciated by the intellectuals at that time who knew the great classics of Eastern -especially Persian- literature. The language used was a mixed version of Turkish full of Persian and to some extent Arabic words, given the name "Ottoman Turkish". Just as to understand Western poets of those times one has to read Greek and Latin classics such as Homer, Vergilius, Lucretius etc. - along with The Old and New Testaments of course- to understand the images, metaphors and intertextual references one had to know Iranian poets such as Firdevsi, the stories from "Thousand-and-One Nights", Koran and the mystic interpreters of it. They came up with perhaps the most beautiful imageries ever seen; but their poetry might seem a little bit out-dated today. I am not a fan of the art of saying words in a beautiful manner with metaphors just for the sake of it. Reading some classics from those days awakes a feeling in me that maybe 400 pages are just some kind of fillers in a book of 500 pages. Just as the beautiful rokoko music, beautifully harmonical and flowing but lacking in true content. Of course I'm not going to say that content was absolutely missing, but the themes were so abstract -and common for all the poems- they lose their meaning easily. Anyway, modern Turkish poetry could not be so successful without this huge database of images and metaphors.
The modern poetry, started at the end of 19th century under the influence of French poets such as Baudelaire and Verlaine. One should note that the Westernization period had started around the mid-19th century so it was pretty understandable that this movement would have its effect on literature. The rising nationalism at the begining of 20th century tried to "purify" the language from non-Turkish elements by going back to the language of common people, the language of folk poetry. Their poems really sucked, there were even some claims that you couldn't write a poem in the language of common people. If there is only one big achievement of Turkish republic, it is by producing so many great poets to show that such claims were not true.
Apart from the early giants of modern poetry such as Ahmed Haşim and Yahya Kemal (my uncle's ex-wife was a relative of him by the way, an interesting note to add) who made a truly beautiful blend of themes taken from Baudelaire with the images of "divan poetry", the first great poet of the young Republic was a communist, Nazım Hikmet. Before him the poetry was bound to use rhymes and acoustic harmonies which was kind of a chain for him to get rid of. He didn't compromise much from the stylistic issues, rather revolutionized the whole problem of style and gave the content the foremost importance in poetry. In 1920s, reading the great communist poet Mayakovsky, he gave rise to a poetry without rhymes which was called "free poetry", free from rhymes and acoustic scales of the past. After him the poets of course continued to use rhymes from time to time but even if it was the case, not in a strict manner again. Regarding the content he was the first Turkish poet who had dealt with politics and problems of society. Common people entered to the poetry for the first time thanks to his and Orhan Veli's efforts, who was a leading figure of a poetic movement called "Garip" (which means strange mainly but also poor, referring to people dismissed from the poetry), a poetry unlike the old ones; a realist poetry of common,simple people. A movement in response to it occured 15 years later ,during 1950's, who advocated a more puzzle-like, symbolistic approach to poetry. They were political too but not openly as the ones before. From then on these two streams have decided the course of Turkish poetry, some poets preferred the realistic approach with an emphasis on problems of society, while others dealt with more personal problems in a symbolistic manner, open to many interpreations.
But there were also great poets who just went their own way. One such poet was Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca, whom I consider to be the greatest Turkish poet ever along with Nazım Hikmet. He was unlike anyone else in Turkish and also in world literature, completely creating his own language and his poetry in an amazing way. His inventiveness and use of language was unequalled, and starting from 1935 to 2000s he continued to write poems constantly. Another poet I like is maybe the most popular one, Attila Ilhan. His poems with their boheme and cosmopolite atmosphere opened new horizons in the minds of readers. Being a socialist like almost all the significant poets of the century, he preferred to deal with it in a different way than the traditional Marxist aesthetic which dictated a rather dry realism.
I think it's good to conclude this post with a brief list of significant Turkish poets of the century in addition to those who were mentioned before (of course according to my taste):
Cemal Süreya, Cahit Külebi, Turgut Uyar, Melih Cevdet Anday, Behçet Necatigil, Oktay Rifat, Ceyhun Atuf Kansu, Ece Ayhan, Edip Cansever, Ahmed Arif.
A few examples from almost all of them can be found in the great website I mentioned before. In the second part, I will post a selection of some of them but again it is just an appetitizer, for further reading consult the website or better learn Turkish :)
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