The poetic life of a revolutionary

June 5, 1996
Issue 

By Margarita Windisch

June 3 marks the 33rd anniversary of Nazim Hikmet's death. Hikmet is one of the most famous and celebrated modern turkish poets, recognised worldwide for his international and humanitarian views which transcended barriers of race and country. Although written more than 30 years ago, Hikmet's poetry is still relevant and has not lost any of its haunting beauty.

Hikmet suffered persecution all his life for his strong nationalistic stance and revolutionary activity. His works were banned in Turkey for most of Hikmet's living years.

Hikmet was born in Salonica in 1902 and grew up in Istanbul. Raised in an artistic household, Hikmet developed an affinity for poetry early in life and published his first poems at age 17. Attracted by the Bolshevik revolution and its socialist principles he went to live in Moscow in 1922.

In 1924, after the Turkish war of independence, Hikmet returned to Turkey. Home again he was imprisoned for his journalistic association with a left-wing magazine. After constant threats to his life he managed to flee back to Russia where he met Mayakovski, a futuristic poet; Vera Piraia and other women who strongly influenced his poetry and prose.

A general amnesty in 1928 enabled Hikmet to return to Turkey. When the Communist Party was outlawed, the radical poet was subject to constant surveillance by the secret police and spent five of the next 10 years in prison on trumped up charges.

Between 1929 and 1933, Hikmet published nine books, five collections and four long poems. His new style of free verse and colloquial diction revolutionised Turkish poetry and challenged conservative Ottoman literary conventions, establishing him as a new major poet.

In 1938 Hikmet was arrested for "inciting the Turkish armed forces to revolt" and sentenced to 28 years in prison on grounds of military personnel reading his poems. The Turkish army authority specifically objected to Hikmet's revolutionary epic "The Sheik of Bedrettin". Published in 1936, this poem was based on a 15th century peasant rebellion against Ottoman rule.

An international committee including Pablo Picasso, Jean Paul Satre and his friend Pablo Neruda was established in Paris in 1949 to organise a campaign for Hikmet's release from prison. In 1950 Hikmet was awarded the World Peace Price while still in prison. That year he went on an 18-day hunger strike and was finally released in a general amnesty for political prisoners. But Hikmet was never allowed to enjoy his freedom. Persecution resumed immediately, forcing him to flee once more and to remain a political refugee for the rest of his life.

Hikmet managed to travel a lot during his exile, from Eastern Europe to Cuba, China, France and Tanganyika, exclaiming "I travelled through Europe, Asia and Africa with my dream, only the US didn't give me the visa".

After his Turkish citizenship was taken from him, Hikmet decided to become a Polish citizen — he has a revolutionary 17th century Polish ancestor. He died of a heart attack in 1963 in Moscow.

Apart from a short period between 1965 and 1980, Hikmet's works have been constantly suppressed in Turkey. In them Hikmet combined the personal and public, wandering from Marxism to mysticism without losing meaning or being dogmatic. His style managed to encompass his personal feelings while affirming hard reality and always, at its centre, was his commitment to the liberation of humanity.

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