Poetry then

So what is it? About my country? My country is exactly how Nazim describes it. I dont think anything changed. My country is its people, with all adjectives, brave, ignorant, utterly smart and yet deceived over and over again. They are my people. With the soft smile in their eyes, their affection for complete strangers and their high potential to hurt the ones closest to them. My people who love their country so much yet f.ck it up each single day.

Yes Nazim writes my country, in every single line. His Turkish for one thing, is our Turkish. The rythm can come from mayakovsky and ideas from Marx and the Soviet, yet it is our Turkish and our people. He was one person, who wasn't lost in himself, as a poet. There aren't many. For to write poetry about the people and not about oneself, requires a big big big heart, which he had. Here I will easily claim, that not one Swedish poet could have emerged even close to this expressiveness, plain and real and yet, each time I read it, I cry, freely.

This one I had not read before in Turkish I think, the guy was futuristic:

Yes he was naively futuristic. For one could be naively this and that in those years. Post the second world war, soviets still thriving. Although he was naive in his beliefs, for he was a man of belief I believe, he was not naive in his poetry in this observations. He may read biased, he was and proud of it! But never simplistic. He was not simplistic. He was from a rich family, had read and learned a great deal, had traveled to Russia when young and studied. He had a clear mind.

I saw just on a page browsing the web, that there are people with wolf pictures as profile photos that like Nazim. This should be the power of a true poet. As, in Turkey, wolf is being a Turk fanatic, holding Turks above other races, in other words, being a fachist.

I am yet to meet anyone in Turkey, who would speak truly badly about Nazim, funny. Even our literature teacher who would mumble all day long about I don't know what, who would talk not more sophisticated than a village man with no education, who was outright islamist and so on.. They claim that one could read Nazim's poem in his lecture to get a grade. Even him.

nazim hikmet ran II

It is surprisingly hard to find good translations. A translation should keep meaning that is well but it should also try to keep the music, the rythm and it seems to achieve both at the same time is hard(?). I will start a translation series myself I think. But for now make do with some selections:

Angina Pectoris

If half my heart is here, doctor,
the other half is in China
with the army flowing
toward the Yellow River.
And, every morning, doctor,
every morning at sunrise my heart
is shot in Greece.
And every night,c doctor,
when the prisoners are asleep and the infirmary is deserted,
my heart stops at a run-down old house
in Istanbul.
And then after ten years
all i have to offer my poor people
is this apple in my hand, doctor,
one read apple:
my heart.
And that, doctor, that is the reason
for this angina pectoris--
not nicotine, prison, or arteriosclerosis.
I look at the night through the bars,
and despite the weight on my chest
my heart still beats with the most distant stars.

Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)



And then there is this one, which I am not going to quote:

nazim hikmet ran

Everyone's country is somethings to that person. Say you may remember family, friends, summers and springs and trees and girls. I think of Nazim Hikmet.

Last Will and Testament

Comrades, if I don't live to see the day - I mean if I die before freedom comes - take me away and bury me in a village cemetery in Anatolia.

The worker Osman whom Hassan Bey ordered shot can lie on one side of me, and on the other side the martyr Aysha, who gave birth in the rye and died within 40 days.

Tractors and songs can pass below the cemetery - in the dawn light, new people, the smell of burnt gasoline, fields held in common, water in canals, no drought or fear of the police.

But I sang those songs before they were written, I smelled the burnt gasoline before the blueprints for the tractors were drawn.

As for my neighbours, the worker Osman and the martyr Aysha, they felt the great longing while alive, maybe without even knowing it.

Comrades, if I die before that day - and it's looking more and more likely - bury me in a village cemetery in Anatolia, and if there's one handy, a plane tree could stand at my head, I wouldn't need a stone or anything.

• Nazim Hikmet, 27 April 1953, Moscow

happiness in life

sometimes i imagine that the happiness in my life can be measured by the kilos of strawberry, cherry (not the sour type), mulberry and canerik that I have eaten all my life in season! Add to that figs as well. That only in season counts is fairly obvious to those who have eaten these things in season.

I can probably make a good graph of my happiness in life which holds on to a good high during the first 14 years when I lived at home. Decreases constantly from the beginning of high school to end of university, goes to an all time low in Sweden with short highs for june when those incredible strawberries come out. Here in the middle East, I wouldn't say it is so much better. Surprisingly.

before the journey

I packed somewhat. Changed handbag.

Played some stuff to get calmer.

Called the local company but they are busy so they are supposed to call back.

Solved some problems.

Checked on regular expressions and shell programming loops.

Solving some more problems now.