Millennium of Turkish Literature : a concise History

From: Th
e Epic of Şeyh Bedreddin
It was hot.
Th
e clouds were loaded.
Th
e fi rst drop, like a sweet word, was about to fall.
Suddenly,
as if pouring from the rocks
raining down from the sky
sprouting out of the soil
like the ultimate creation of this earth,
Bedreddin’s warriors confronted the Royal Heir’s army.
Th
ey were wearing seamless white robes,
their heads were bare
feet bare, swords bare.
It was a ruthless battle.
Turkish peasants from Aydın
Greek sailors from Chios
Jewish artisans
Börklüce Mustafa’s ten thousand heretical comrades
tore into the forest of enemies like ten thousand axes.
Th
e ranks with red and green banners,
emblazoned shields and bronze helmets
were shattered to pieces
but as the day sank into evening in the torrential rain
the ten thousand were but two thousand.
To sing their songs in unison,
to drag the nets together out of the water,
to work the iron together like lace
to be able to plow the land together

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Republic and Renascence
89
and to eat the honey-fi lled fi gs together
to be able to say
“Together 
in 
everything
together 
everywhere
except 
the 
lover’s 
face”
the ten thousand gave their eight thousand . . .
Th
ey were defeated.
Th
e victors wiped the blood off their swords
on the seamless white robes
of 
the 
vanquished.
And the earth they had tilled together, with their brotherly hands
like a song sung together
was trampled
under the hooves of horses bred in the Edirne
4
Palace.
* * *
It’s drizzling,
fearful,
whispering
like a talk of treason.
Drizzling,
like the patter of the white bare feet of
renegades on damp dark earth.
Drizzling.
In the marketplace of Serez,
5
across from a coppersmith’s shop,
my Bedreddin is hanging from a tree.
Drizzling.
Late on a starless night,
and getting soaked in the rain
swinging from a leafl ess branch
is the stark-naked body of my sheikh.
4. Edirne: Adrianopolis, the Ottoman capital of the time.
5. Serez: A small town in present-day Greece.

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90
A Millennium of Turkish Literature
Drizzling.
Th
e market of Serez is mute,
the market of Serez is blind.
In the air hovers the accursed sorrow of not speaking, not seeing
and the market of Serez has covered its face with its hand.
It’s drizzling.
Turkish and non-Turkish men of letters have compared Nazım Hik-
met at his best to such fi gures as Lorca, Aragon, Esenin, Mayakovski, 
Neruda, and Artaud. No other Turkish poet has been translated into 
more languages or enjoyed greater acclaim in so many countries. Tristan 
Tzara, who translated some of Nazım Hikmet’s poems into French, 
paid the following tribute: “Th
e life Nazım led engulfs the experiences 
of a large segment of mankind. His poetry exalts the aspirations of the 
Turkish people as well as articulates the common ideals of all nations in 
humanistic terms.”
Nazım Hikmet’s most prolifi c translators into English, Randy Blasing 
and Mutlu Konuk, have identifi ed him as “the fi rst and greatest modern 
Turkish poet.” He has also earned substantial praise from American and 
British poets: Denise Levertov affi
rms, “Nazım Hikmet’s poetry, as well as 
all I have ever heard and read about his life, has always fi lled me with joy, 
hope, and new determination towards poetry and struggle”; David Igna-
tow comments, “He writes our most private thoughts with a zest and love 
that makes us treasure them in ourselves”; Paul Zweig believes that “Hik-
met is one of the few important political poets of this century”; and W. S. 
Merwin observes, “Hikmet is clearly a fi gure of great energy and talent.”
Although Nazım Hikmet’s innovations struck a responsive chord in 
poetic tastes throughout his life and aft er his death, they by no means 
established a monopoly. Most of his contemporaries pursued diff erent 
courses: Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel combined neoclassicism with urbanized 
versions of folk verse; Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901–62), Ahmet Muhip 
Dıranas (1908–80), and Ahmet Kutsi Tecer (1901–67) specialized in simple 
lyrics of genteel sensibilities expressed in tidy stanzaic forms and the tra-
ditional syllabic meters.
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar followed in the steps of Beyatlı, about whom 
he produced a sophisticated critical study and whose aesthetics he distilled 
into crystalline poems written in syllabic verse.

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Republic and Renascence
91
Fear
I have the fear of all the things that end,
I am the Blue Eagle who drags the dawn
Along in his iron beak . . .
And 
life 
is 
caught
Within my claws like dangling emeralds
And deathlessness along my lovely swoop
Now bites the thirsty antelope of time.
Ahmet Muhip Dıranas, one of Turkey’s best lyric poets, wrote all of 
his poems in the traditional syllabic meters. His agility in molding his 
lucid ideas and tender sentiments into these meters is most impressive. So 
is his ingenuity in fi nding rhymes.