On January 15, 1902, N\u00e2z\u0131m Hikmet was born in Thessaloniki which belonged to the Ottoman Empire at that time. In 1917, he was enrolled in the Ottoman Naval Academy in Istanbul. His first poem titled \u201cDo They Still Cry at the Cypress Trees?\u201d was published in 1918. On January 1, 1921, he went to Anatolia with his friend V\u00e2l\u00e2 Nureddin to take part in the Independence War: Over the Black Sea, they went to Inebolu, from there on to Ankara; afterwards, he became a teacher in Bolu. The journey continued into the heart of the October Revolution where they reached Batumi in September and then Tbilisi.<\/p>\n
In 1922, he studied at KUTV (The Communist University of the Toilers of the East) in Moscow. In 1924, he returned to the recently founded Republic of Turkey as a member of TKP in December. He sold \u201cthe Hammer and the Sickle\u201d newspaper on the Galata Bridge in 1925 and was condemned to 15 years\u2019 of hard labour. In the same year, he returned to the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
In 1928, upon receiving no answer from the Turkish embassy in Moscow whether or not he could return to his country, he secretly entered the country from Hopa. After serving a short term in prison, he began working at the weekly magazine named Resimli Ay in 1929. He started a campaign titled \u201cDemolishing the Idols\u201d against the prominent poets of the time. In 1930, a poet\u2019s poems were recited for the first time in Turkey for a record: In this way, his poems such as \u201cThe Caspian Sea\u201d and \u201cWeeping Willow\u201d were played with great enthusiasm in workers\u2019 coffeehouses and open public spaces.<\/p>\n
However, this enthusiasm was alarming for the record company, for the police forces and for some politicians. In 1933, he was condemned to a year of imprisonment with hard labour for libel by poem against his father\u2019s employer, S\u00fcreyya Pasha. In addition, he was given four years\u2019 of imprisonment with hard labour for forming an organization. He got out of prison due to the general amnesty granted to celebrate the 10th year of the Republic in 1934. 1930s remain as the period in which N\u00e2z\u0131m Hikmet produced works in other genres aside from poetry, such as plays, librettos, film scripts and literary criticism.<\/p>\n
In 1938, according to the prosecutor\u2019s indictment, he was sentenced to 15 years\u2019 of imprisonment on the allegation of \u201cinciting the cadets to revolt\u201d \u201cwith his works incensed with revolution and insurrection;\u201d additionally, 13 years\u2019 and four months\u2019 of imprisonment for \u201cspreading communist propaganda among the members of the navy and attempting to incite a revolt among the ranks of the navy against their superiors.\u201d In total, he was sentenced to 28 years\u2019 and 4 months\u2019 of imprisonment with hard labour. In 1941, N\u00e2z\u0131m began writing the series of poems, which he titled as \u201cHuman Landscapes from Turkey in Year 1941.\u201d He matured and developed the style and approach he employed in \u201cThe Epic of National Militia\u201d and \u201cMe\u015fhur Adamlar Ansiklopedisi\u201d [The Encyclopedia of Famous Men], into what is now known as one of his greatest works, \u201cHuman Landscapes from My Country.\u201d\u00a0 He transformed the prison cells he was detained in into schoolrooms and politically instructed writers and artists such as Kemal Tahir, Orhan Kemal, \u0130brahim Balaban.<\/p>\n
In 1950, N\u00e2z\u0131m Hikmet began a hunger strike in protest against the Turkish Parliament’s failure to pass an amnesty law before it closed for the upcoming general election. He was persuaded to stop the strike by his lawyers after 15 days. On November 22, it was announced that he was the recipient of the International Peace Prize. Pablo Neruda received N\u00e2z\u0131m\u2019s prize, as he could not attend the ceremony due to his imprisonment. In 1951, he was set free.<\/p>\n
Although he was discharged from the army on the invalidation due to pleurisy in 1918, as well as being 49 years old and a cardiac patient, he was summoned to the army.\u00a0 Being sure of the danger he was in, he left the country by a boat that sailed out from the Bosphorus. He returned to the Soviet Union. In 1958, he met with many writers and artists in Paris, such as Aragon and Picasso.<\/p>\n
On May, 1961, he was welcomed in Cuba by his friend, poet N. Guill\u00e9n to make observations on the Cuban Revolution, which took power in 1959, and the socialist transformations in place. The impressions from his Cuban travels were manifested in his poems titled \u201cHavana Reportage\u201d and \u201cStraw-Blond.\u201d The 60th birthday of the great poet, whose \u201cpoems were translated into forty languages,\u201d was celebrated by the Soviet Writers\u2019 Union. He returned from the Congress of the Union of the Writers of Asia and Africa with \u201cTanganyika Reportage.\u201d On June 3, 1963, N\u00e2z\u0131m passed away in Moscow.<\/p>\n
N\u00e2z\u0131m Hikmet is one of the most important and greatest poets of the 20th century. So much so that even his adversaries had nothing to say against his greatness and importance at the time when he lived, produced and fought, as well as thereafter. It was not only his poetic and literary skills that made him important and great: he built his greatness with his understanding of humanity, society and life.<\/p>\n
He believed in equality, liberty, brotherhood and peace; as he never considered those concepts as perpetual longings or unattainable goals, he was ready to achieve them. He became important and great because he believed that being an artist and being creative are indispensable parts of the fight to free his country and humanity of their chains.<\/p>\n
He began his political life by not surrendering to the occupying forces and always searched, learned and looked for ways of improvement and profoundness. He believed that the working class would be organized and become the sole force to defeat the \u201ckingdom of the money, darkness of the bigot and the rocket of the foreigner.\u201d He was politically engaged with this thought. Even in his darkest hours, he was determined not to yield, to stand tall and to labour.<\/p>\n
By his own definition, he \u201cwrote poems as much as the rainfall in one year\u201d; in the most desperate times, he persistently searched for hope and at all costs, found it. With all his works, he still continues to give hope and strengthen the belief that \u201cwe will see good days.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On January 15, 1902, N\u00e2z\u0131m Hikmet was born in Thessaloniki which belonged to the Ottoman Empire at that time. In 1917, he was enrolled in the Ottoman Naval Academy in Istanbul. His first poem titled \u201cDo They Still Cry at the Cypress Trees?\u201d was published in 1918. On January 1, 1921, he went to Anatolia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":10211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n