Continuing on my nostalgic November trip to the writers’ and artists’ circles in Turkey, I want to introduce you to Can Yücel, a poet to whom many biographers refer as “Can Baba” – Father Can (non-religious connotation). His poetry stands out with his use of colloquial Turkish, thus, making poetic compositions a product for the masses. The video below demonstrates a flawless reading performance of one of Can Baba’s most popular poems – “The Most Beautiful Part about Being with You”:
For my translation, I have chosen a different poem by Can Baba, namely his “Hayal Oyunu” – “A Play with Imagination”:
Hayal Oyunu
Ellerindi ellerimden tutan
Ellerimdi ellerinden tutan…
Bıraktığı anda ellerimiz ellerimizi
Gökyüzüne vuracaktı gölgeleri ellerimizin
Kimbilir kaç martılar halinde
Bir masada karşı karşıya
Seyrederken dudaklarını senin
Dile gelmiş ilk Türkçeydik
Henüz başlamış kül rengi bahar
Ne savaş, ne barıştık biz…
Bu dünyaya yeni gelmiş bir diyar
Manolyaya gece konmuş kumrular…
A Play with Imagination
It was your hands holding mine
Mine, holding yours…
The shadows of our hands were going to hit the sky
As soon as our hands left our hands
Who knows? In the form of how many sea gulls
//
We were the first spoken Turkish
While I was beholding your lips
At a table, across from one another
We were the newly setting smoke-colored spring
We were neither war nor peace…
//
A realm newly born in to this world
Doves, perched on the magnolia in the night…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I hope you have enjoyed your visit this Wednesday. I look forward to you stopping by next week again but also for your visit to my Sunday Reflections.
For the month of November – my most favorite autumn time, I will make a virtual visit with an artist or a writer (or both, as is the case today) of my country of birth. Why Turkey? Why now? Well, I have reached and fast passing the autumn of my life and have begun to feel an increasing nostalgia toward the world corner where I first joined the living. November is marked for us in the U.S. as the month of thanksgiving. It is my way of giving thanks to my birthing place in this manner. And I just would love it, if you were to join me on that travel for a little longer…on Wednesdays…and only for a month…
The video above vocalizes a reading of “Yalnızlık Paylaşılmaz,” one of the many poems on loneliness by Turkey’s widely reputed poet, Özdemir Asaf – Halit Özdemir Arun, with his real name (1923-1981):
Yalnızlık, yaşamda bir an,
Hep yeniden başlayan…
Dışından anlaşılmaz.
Ya da kocaman bir yalan,
Kovdukça kovalayan…
Paylaşılmaz.
Bir düşünde, beni sana ayıran
Yalnızlık paylaşılmaz
Paylaşılsa yanlızlık olmaz.
Loneliness, an instant in life,
Always occurring anew…
An enigma from the outside.
Or, a colossal deceit,
One that chases the more it is chased…
Cannot be shared.
Saving me for you in one of your dreams
Loneliness cannot be shared
If it could, it would not transpire.
(My own translation, as of 10.29.2013)
Özdemir Asaf – with his best-known name, is considered a prominent landmark when contemporary Turkish literature is considered, not only for his poetic work in his native tongue but also for his translations from French poets and writers in journals and anthologies since 1940.
Yıldız Moran Arun (1932-1995), the poet’s wife was Turkey’s first professionally trained female photographer. An article inKadınlar Gökkuşağı claims that – while on one single day, 25 of her photographs were purchased in Cambridge; Moran’s photographic art was overlooked in her country of birth, Turkey, despite its popular appeal. Her accounts on how she met her husband count as some of the most critical representations of Özdemir Asaf in his true light.
The poem below constitutes one of the poet’s perhaps most passionate verses on loneliness, with my English translation following immediately:
Sen herşeyi süpürebilirsin; sonbaharı süpüremezsin
yalnızsa sürekli bir sonbaharı süpürür hep..
Düşünemezsin.
Yanar sobasında yalnız’ın üşüyen bakışları.
Lambasında karınlığa dönük bir ışık titrer sönük-sönük.
Penceresi dışına kapanmıştır kapısı içine örtük.
Yalnız bin yıl yaşar kendini bir an’da.
Yalnız’ın nesi var nesi yoksa tümü birdenbire’dir.
Yalnız bir ordudur kendi çölünde..
Sonsuz savaşlarında hep yener kendi ordusunu.
Yalnız’ın sakladığı bir şey vardır;
Boyuna yerini değiştirir boyuna onu arar… Biri bulsa diye.
Yalnız hem bilgesi hem delisidir kendi dünyasının.
Ayrıca; hem efendisi hem kölesidir kendisinin.
Tadını çıkaramaz görece’siz dünyasında hiçbirisinin.
Yalnız sürekli dinleyendir söylenmemiş bir sözü.
Sözünde durması yalnız’ın yalancılığıdır kendisine..
Hep yüzüne vurur utancı. O yüzden gözlerini kaçırır gözlerinden.
Yalnız’ın odasında ikinci bir yalnızlıktır ayna.
Yalnız hep uyanır ikinci uykusuna.
Yalnız kendi ben’inin sen’idir.
Bir sözde saklanmış bir yalanı bir gözde okuduğundan
bakmaz kendi gözlerine bile.
Her susadığında o kendi çölündedir.
Kendi öyküsünü ne anlatabilen ne de dinleyebilen.
Kendi türküsünü ne yazabilen ne söyleyebilen.
Bir zamanlar güldüğünü anımsar da…
Yoğurur hüzün’ün çamurunu avuçlarında.
Yalnız aranan tek görgü tanığıdır
yargılanmasında kendi davasının..
Her duruşması ertelenir kavgasının.
Yalnız hem kaptanı hem de tek
yolcusudur batmakta olan gemisinin..
Onun için ne sonuncu ayrılabilir gemisinden ne de ilkin.
Yalnız’ın adı okunduğunda okulda ya da yaşamda..
Kimse “burda” deyemez.. Ama yok da..
Uykunun duvarında başladı..
Önceleri bir toz gölgesi sanki; sonra bir yumak yün gibi.
Ama şimdi iyice görüyor örümceğin ağını gün gibi.
Yalnız’ın adına hiç kimse konuşamaz..
O kendi kendisinin sanığıdır.
Yalnız önceden sezer sonra olacakları..
Paylaşacak biri vardır; anlatır anlatır ona olanları olmayacakları.
Her leke kendisiyle çıkar.
You can sweep everything; but not the autumn
lonely*, however, sweeps the fall all the time…
You cannot imagine.
The freezing looks of lonely, inside its burning stove.
A dim light shivers toward the darkness in its lamp.
Its window is shut to the outside; its door, closed to its inside.
In an instant, lonely lives itself a thousand years.
Whatever lonely owns, they all amount to all at once.
Lonely is an army in its own desert…
Always defeats its own army in eternal wars.
There is something lonely hides incessantly;
It changes its location, quests for it incessantly…For someone to find it.
Lonely is both the wise and the mad of its own world.
Moreover; the master and the slave of itself.
Can’t savour any of them in its futile world
Lonely constantly listens to an unspoken word.
Keeping its promise is its deception of itself…
Its disgrace always tells it off. It therefore avoids its eyes from its own.
In lonely’s room, the mirror is a second loneliness.
Lonely always wakes up to its second sleep.
Lonely is the you of its own I.
For it once read a lie in an eye hiding in a word
it won’t even look in to its own eyes.
When it thirsts, it is in its own desert.
Can neither tell its own story nor can it listen to it.
Can neither write its own song nor can it sing it.
Though it will remember its once upon a smile…
It will knead the sorrow’s mire in its palms.
Lonely is the only witness searched for
in the trial of its own case…
Each hearing of its quarrel, postponed.
Lonely is the captain as well the sole
passenger of its own sinking ship…
It thus can neither leave it last or first.
When its name is called in school or in life…
No one can say “here”…But neither “away”…
It began on the verge of sleep…
As if a dust shadow, first; then, a ball of yarn.
But now, it clearly sees the spider web as clearly as day.
Lonely is deaf to what it had heard; blind to what it had seen…
It dies and dies then kills…it kills and kills then dies.
Forgets what it hears; thinks of what it will hear.
No one can speak on lonely’s behalf…
It is its own accused.
Lonely foresees what is yet to happen…
It has someone to share it with; tells and tells all that happened all that won’t take place.
Every defect removes itself with itself.
(My translation as of 10.29.2013. *Özdemir Asaf transforms the adjective “lonely” in to a noun in Turkish. I have honored the grammatical freedom he takes in this poem.)
I hope you enjoyed this autumn Wednesday with me during my virtual visit to an artist and a writer of Turkey. I very much look forward to another November Wednesday but first, to Sunday when we will meet here again. May you have a wonderful of everything in the meantime.
The scene shown above is claimed to be the most critical representation of the film “Eşkiya,” a groundbreaking contribution to contemporary Turkish cinema.The plot summaries in English of my finding don’t dwell on what this excerpt reveals with succinct emphasis; namely, the Leitmotif that holds this artistic production together: the story of Baran and Keje. It is a tale of love extending beyond the scopes of life and death, resonating the legendary loves in Turkish literature. Such as that between Ferhat and Şirin (12th century), Leyla and Mecnun (16th century), Kerem and Aslı (16th century), and others.
Keje buries herself in silence and inaction when the man who betrayed Baran to unjust imprisonment becomes her husband after he buys her from her father. Thirty-five years later, Baran is free again. His untiring search for his love embodies his only livelihood.
The storyline assumes numerous complications through unrelated events to create in Baran once again an innocent bystander of crimes he did not commit. Alongside, Baran confronts at last his worst enemy. In Keje’s presence. Her silence – her way of mourning for the loss of her love to life, will cease only then – she has Baran understand – if she were to witness a falling star. A symbol to her of a tortured soul attaining ultimate freedom – for both lovers…
While I can’t remember how far back in the past, I know exactly how I used to think about the phenomenon of love and its loss: a distinctive flair of melancholy lurked only over the people of Turkey – as with today’s few quick examples. But then, I discovered famous names of non-Turkish roots with the same approach to this utterly uplifting, at the same time soul shattering reality of life. And here I am, sharing some of my related deliberations with you in the form of a poem I have written recently:
when love is everything
among long-time friends once again
enduring the familiar left-side pain
decades surpassed their centuries
the hurt remains the same
an Immortal Beloved crafted life
birthed death ever so keen
a blazing desire in-between
oh geh mit, geh mit
oh accompany me, accompany me
Hebuterne embraced the call
Plath followed it with ease
Claudel suffered a living disease
King Edward VIII stunned the monarchy
etched to memory for lives to come:
the essence negates all that is told
nourishes from the authentic self;
sates and attains for evermore,
absolute ecstasy at the core.
For love is everything.
hülya yılmaz (October 3, 2013)
Have you ever grieved in deep sorrow for losing love but led yourself to conclude you had no right to mourn in the open because your loss was not one to death?
What Nazım Hikmet, the world-renowned exilic poet and thinker of Turkey stresses in his call for collective strength in harmony, is as follows: “If you don’t, I don’t, we don’t blaze, how can the darkness emanate light?”
Nazım’s invitation, to me, is one to awareness – a timeless gift to generations to come. If they were to be willing to listen to it, of course. No different than what John Lennon intended with his song, “Imagine”:
The following lyrics – in sync with the rest of the song, seem self-explanatory:
“[…]
Imagine there is no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
living life in peace […]”
These remarkable visionary individuals are no longer among us. We, however, are. I, for one, have found my niche in the sharing of my awareness for this vital thought processing among the living: love for world peace – one I have been yearning for very long. It came to me thanks to the World Healing World Peace Poetry Anthology 2014 initiative by Inner Child Press.
Please know I am writing about this marvelous project not at all because I happen to have a submission of my own. I don’t. I won’t. If I had or were to plan to do so, I would have to step back. Here, I mean. For I have strict self-imposed rules regarding self-promotion. And, you all know how I treat my own work contribution – as you have seen my quite subdued announcement of my poems in an anthology by another publisher.
The conceptualization of world peace by the Inner Child Press is simply me finding home. Through collective poetry creation in order to attract attention across the world, spanning over the boundaries of countries. What a thought! In order to lend a long overdue balance against the power of violence – a trait of our world that has enjoyed dominance for way too long. But, that, is a learned trait. How can it stand – we may respond with a false sense of confidence – against the strength of love, an inborn asset of each human being? It can. It unfortunately can. And it does. It has. It will. As long as we keep letting it.
World Healing World Peace
If you consider to “become a Sponsor of the World Healing ~ World Peace 2014 initiative […] to help the world move toward the Active Consciousness of World Healing ~ World Peace […] simply includ[e] the Icon and the Web Link on your Web Site or Blog.”
Emily Hanford
Education Correspondent, American RadioWorks
The Joy of Quiet
An essay by Pico Iyer, the author of The Man Within My Head
Kazım Koyuncu (1971-2005), "Hayde"
A folk-rock singer and song writer with work in a number of languages spoken along the northeastern Black Sea coast of Turkey, as well as the language of Laz.
hülyaswritings 