soL English

Nazım Hikmet Ran is the most prominent Turkish poet (November 20, 1902 – June 3, 1963). As a member of the Communist Party of Turkey, he spent a great deal of his adult life in prison or exile.

Nazım, who wrote his first poem at the age of 11, has revolutionized Turkish poetry by achieving a spectacular breakthrough from the old syllabic poetry. Influenced by futurism, and especially the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, the style of Nazım Hikmet evolved into free verse, which practically brought a new dynamism with his creative work in Turkish poetry.

In 1921, Nazım left Istanbul and went to Anatolia to participate in the War of Liberation. However, because of health reasons, he had to quit the army and soon went through Batumi to Moskow. In Moskow, Nazım studied political science and economics in the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV). There he got to know the revolution and became a communist. He returns to Turkey in 1924. From that year on, his life will be haunted by threats and executions of political persecutions. In 1963, he dies of a heart attack in Moskow.

His body still lies in a cemetery in Moskow. Nazım Hikmet was denationalized in 1951 by a government decree. The actual government of Justice and Development Party (AKP) has canceled that decree in January 2009.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I was born in 1902
and never went back to the city I'd been born
I don't like to go back
at three I served as a pasha-grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student of communist University in Moscow
at forty nine again in Moscow as a Tseka Party guest
and since fourteen I serve as a poet

some people know all the kinds of grass some of fish
me of separations
some people recite the names of the stars
me of longings

I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels
I've starved including a hunger strike
and there is almost no food I haven't tasted
at thirty they wanted to hang me
at forty eight they wanted to give me the Peace Prize
which they did

at thirty six I passed four square meters of concrete
in half a year
at fifty nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours

I've never seen Lenin but stood watch at his coffin in 1924
his tomb I visit in 1961 is his books

they tried to tear me off from my party
it didn't work
I wasn't even crushed under the falling idols

in 1951 with a young friend in a sea I've attacked upon death
in 1952 with a cracked heart flat on my back for four months
I've waited death
I was madly jealous of the women I loved
I didn't envy Chaplin even a bit
I deceived my women
I never backbit my friends

I drank but I didn't become a drinker
I always earned my bread with the sweat of my brow
what a happiness for me

I was ashamed on behalf of others and lied
I lied not to worry others
but I also lied without a reason

I've ridden trains planes cars
majority can not
I've gone to the opera
majority can not
they haven't even heard the name of the opera
and since 1921 I haven't gone
to some places where majority can go
mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers
but I've had my fortune read on coffee grounds

my writings are published in thirty or forty languages
in my Turkey in my Turkish they're forbidden

I'm not caught by cancer yet
and not supposed to be caught
I'll never be a prime minister and so
I'm not interested in such things
I didn't take part in a war
I didn't go down to shelters in midnights
I didn't walk on the roads under diving planes
but I fell in love at nearly sixty
in short comrades
even if today in Berlin I'm dying of sorrow
I can say I lived humanly
and how much longer shall I live
what else shall I experience
who knows.

This autobiography was written
in East Berlin on 11'th September 1961

(translated by Fuat Ergin)