In the Soviet Union, communism as a doctrine in action fired his imagination and gave him hope to reach what he liked to call “sunny days”. He spent about four years there and met writers and artists from all over the world. His time there was essential in the creation of his unique voice and focus, he was acquring a passionate attachment to communism, as well as revolutionary ideas about the norms and functions of poetry. With his new orientation, he started breaking the boundaries of classical rhyme and form, which until his time were preserved and protected almost religiously throughout centuries of Ottoman and Turkish poetry. The first poem in his new style was “The Pupils of the Eyes of Hungry People” which he wrote after seeing a film called Hungry People in Moscow:
Hungry people, lined up, hungry, Neither man nor woman, neither boy nor girl, Frail and feeble. With the twisted arms, Of a writhing tree, They are, The walking limbs, Of those, Barren lands… Hungry people, lined up, hungry Not two or three, Not five or ten, Thirty million, Our hungry People… This poem was marked Nazım Hikmet’s adoption of free verse and ideological poetry. He abandoned formal lyric and ready-made meters. After the Turkish Independence in 1924, he returned to Turkey. However, he was soon arrested for working on a leftist magazine. He escaped to Russia and continued to write plays and poems. A general amnesty in 1928 allowed him to return to his home country. After his return, he was immediately arrested and sentenced to six and a half years in prison, he was released in 1933 by another amnesty. Because of his communist beliefs, he was under surveillance by the Turkish secret police and spent five of the next ten years in prison because of various trumped-up charges. During the years of 1929 through 1936 he published nine books of poetry—five collections and four long poems—while working as a proof-
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reader, journalist, scriptwriter, and translator. He became the charismatic leader of the avant-garde and revolutionized Turkish poetry. His freedom came to an end in 1938 again. In prison, Nazım Hikmet’s poetry reflected the seriousness of a spirit that could not be broken. He produced some of his greatest work between the years of 1941 and 1945 while in prison. Nazım Hikmet’ s imprisonment in the 1940s became a cause célèbre among intellectuals worldwide. In 1949 an international committee that included Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, and Jean-Paul Sartre was formed in Paris to campaign for Nazım Hikmet’s release. In 1950, he went on an eighteen-day hunger strike, despite a recent heart attack. His hunger strike caused a stir throughout the country, petitions were signed, and a magazine named after him was published. After the 1950 general election, when Turkey’s first democratically elected government came to power, he was released in a general amnesty. In 1950, the World Council of Peace announced that Nazım Hikmet Ran was awarded the International Peace Prize along with Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, Wanda Jakubowska and Pablo Neruda. In 1951, within a year after his freedom, his persecution had resumed. There were two attempts to murder him, he decided to escape across the Bosphorus in a tiny motorboat on a stormy night. Nazım never returned to his home country again and spent the rest of his life in Poland, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union as a political refugee. The Turkish government denied his wife and child permission to join him. His Turkish citizenship was revoked in 1959 and he acquired a Polish citizenship. During his exile, his poetry was published in various countries and translations of his work appeared throughout Europe. He died of a heart attack in Moscow in June of 1963 and was buried in Moscow’s famous Novodevichy Cemetery. After his death, his books gradually began to be published in Turkey. In 2002, the centennial of his birth was recognised in Turkey and as a UNESCO international year. In 2009, his Turkish citizenship was restored, and his family has been asked if they want his remains repatriated from Russia. Despite his persecution by Turkish government, Nazım Hikmet was always and always will be revered by the people of Turkey. He is considered to be a romantic revolutionary and his works are among the greatest patriotic literature to come out of Turkey. Nazım taught all of us to hope, love, criticise and never give up. He pointed out “sunny days” in the future and told us how we can reach them. In this world, we still have wars, bombs, dying children, and hungry people and it seems that we will continue to