ORHAN VELİ KANIK
collapsed on
November 14, 1950 in
the city of Istanbul. He was rushed to
the hospital, fell
into a coma and died
before midnight. He
was 36, but already
a legend in his
lifetime. He was the
enfant terrible
of Turkish
poetry, the man who
had written the
notorious line, " I
just wish I were a
fish in a bottle of
booze." Attending
physicians must have
felt that his wish
had been granted for
they first assumed
that death was the
result of "poisoning
due to intoxication."
Later, world got
around that the poet
had fallen into a
ditch in Ankara a
few days before and
had been complaining
about an unbearable
headache ever since.
As a result, a
number of people
concluded he had
suffered a brain
concussion. A few
intimates also
recalled that the
poet had never fully
recovered from a
serious automobile
accident in 1939.
Then he had been in
a coma for 20 days.
Officially it was a
cerebral hemorrhage
which ended the life
of Turkey's most
talked-about, most
colorful poet. But
alcohol could lay
claim to being the
unofficial cause,
for the fall into
the ditch in Ankara
had followed a bout
of heavy drinking.
Orhan Veli Kanık's
death shocked the
Turkish literary
world. His vitality
had seemed
indestructible, his
perconality a
catalytic force on
the Turkish scene.
Kanık's poems
reaffirmed faith in
the sheer joy of
being alive. Some of
his lines were so
well-known that they
had become household
phrases. The lucid
colloquialism, the
humor and verve, the
effective but gentle
satire of his verse
were such
celebrations of life
that Kanık and death
seemed
irreconcilable.
After a moving
funeral ceremony,
Orhan Veli Kanık was
buried on a hill
overlooking the
Bosphorus as though
in death, as in
life, he would be "listening
to Istanbul" and
rejoicing in its
beauty.
Kanık, more often
referred to as Orhan
Veli, was the
leading modernist in
Turkish poetry in
the 1940's. Few
literary upheavals
have had an impact
comparable to that
produced by the
stylistic and
substantive
innovations he made
in Turkish poetry, a
tradition which
dates back to the
8th century A.D. (Even
earlier references
in Chinese sources
allude to
translations from
Turkish poetry in
the 2nd century
B.C.) Within the
decade or so that
spanned his career,
Orhan Veli
revolutionized not
only the form and
content but also the
function of Turkish
poetry.
He presided over the
demise of strict
stanzaic forms and
stood squarely
against artifice,
hackneyed metaphors
and a variety of
clichés and literary
embellishments which
had rendered much of
Turkish poetry
sterile. Orhan
Veli's poems dealt
with everyday life
expressed in direct
terms. While the use
of free verse had
been established
earlier, (the
leftist poet Nazım
Hikmet had
introduced it in the
1920's), it was
Orhan Veli who made
vers libre
and the French
modernists relevant
to contemporary
Turkish poetry.
Orhan Veli wrote
about the man in the
street using the
natural rhythms and
idioms of colloquial
Turkish. Together
with his fellow-poets
Oktay Rifat
(1914-1988) and
Melih Cevdet Anday
(1915- ), he led an
aesthetic movement
which can be
described as "Poetic
Realism" in which
the embattled common
man emerges as the
contemporary hero.
Orhan Veli's
iconoclasm paved the
way for a poetry
steeped in the
vernacular and
stripped of
adornments. By
liberating his
contemporaries from
the stultifying
weight of the past,
he made them
conscious of the
life and values of "everyman."
Any and all topics
could be treated
poetically and poets
were free to use all
the expressive
resources of the
Turkish language.
The man responsible
for this
transformation of
Turkish poetry was
born in Istanbul in
1914 just as Europe
plunged into World
War I. By the time
of his death he had
witnessed a second
calamitous war, seen
empires collapse,
ideologies clash,
and watched
technology rise,
first as boon and
then as threat.
Millions had fallen
prey to genocide;
many more millions
were liberated from
colonialism, and
mankind grew
conscious of the
prospect of self-annihilation.
At home Orhan Veli
saw the Ottoman
Empire crumble and
the Republic of
Turkey emerge from
the ruins following
a massive war of
national
independence. The
transition from
empire to republic
enabled Turkey to
launch intensive
reforms. Traditional
patterns of life and
culture were
abandoned, values
and institutions
changed, religion
and state were
separated, and the
Latin alphabet
replaced the Arabic
script. The powerful
Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk, founder and
first President of
the Turkish Republic,
was himself a major
force in turning
Turkey from East to
West so that a
commitment to a
European life-style
became a dominant
feature in Turkish
literature and
segments of society.
A further
westernization
followed World War
II when the country
switched from
autocratic one-party
rule to a democratic
multi-party system.
Upheavals in Turkey
and elsewhere were
the major historical
events in Orhan
Veli's life. His
education began at
Istanbul's
Galatasaray Lycée
where he acquired a
good command of
French. His talent
was apparent from
early childhood, and
he was fortunate in
getting advice and
encouragement from a
number of first-rate
teachers. Some of
them were leading
poets, including
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar,
who was also a
prominent literary
critic and historian.
Orhan Veli printed
his earliest poems
in a school paper he
published,
Sesimiz (Our
Voice). He graduated
from the Gazi Lycée
in Ankara in 1932
and attended the
Faculty of
Literature at the
University of
Istanbul. He worked
for a while as a
teacher's assistant
at the Galatasaray
Lycée, but he
decided not to
pursue graduate
studies and returned
to Ankara. There he
worked for the
Turkish Postal
Administration from
1936 to 1942. He
served in Turkish
Armed Forces as a
reserve officer from
1942 to 1945. Later
he joined the staff
of the Translation
Bureau at the
Ministry of Public
Education. He quit
after two years
during which he
translated many
books from French
into Turkish. From
January 1949 until
his death the
following year, he
edited a one-page
literary periodical,
Yaprak (Leaf).
This appeared 28
times and ceased
publication with a
special memorial
issue after his
death.
Orhan Veli never
married even though,
or perhaps because,
as he admitted, "I
have been in love
many times." His
brother Adnan Veli
Kanık comments: "Orhan's
first love affair (if
it can be called
that) started when
he was twelve," and
adds that there was
a succession of
attachments to young
women, some of whom
he remembers by
name: "When he was a
lycée student, he
fell in love with a
girl called Cazibe.
His first serious
affair was when he
was attending the
University... But
his greatest love
started much later
and continued until
his death."
Orhan Veli's first
entry into literary
world came through
formal lyrics which
were published under
the pseudonym Mehmet
Ali Sel in the
influential literary
magazine Varlık.
Most of these early
poems show an
impressive mastery
of classical forms
and meters. The
lyrics in strict
stanzaic forms and
syllabic meters
followed
conventional
patterns. Some of
them are interesting
for their
preoccupation with
Greek or Western
literary themes as
evidenced by such
titles as "Oaristys",
"Eldorado", "Ave
Maria", "Lied", "For
Héléne", etc. Like
most of the leading
poets of the
previous generation
Orhan Veli's early
work combines French
influences with
Turkish modes and
forms. He even wrote
lyrics in
conventional meters
for songs composed
in the traditional
alla turca
vein. Some of the
early verses were
praised by the
prominent neo-classical
poet Yahya Kemal
Beyatlı for their
excellence in
prosody and
structure. Not long
after this, however,
Orhan Veli abandoned
traditional forms.
He wrote later that
it was only a year
or two after he was
twenty when he felt
it was time to
search for new
horizons in poetry.
Traditional verse
was too turned in
upon itself; it
suffered from
stereotyped words,
idioms, and imagery.
Orhan Veli's first
book was also his
most controversial
and influential.
Published in 1941
with the title
Garip (Strange),
it featured the work
of Orhan Veli and
his best friends
Oktay Rifat and
Melih Cevdet Anday.
Garip began
with an introduction
which was in fact a
manifesto,
influenced by André
Breton's
Manifeste du
Surrealisme
according to Oktay
Rifat. The
manifesto, which
marked a
turningpoint in the
modernization of
Turkish poetry,
declared:
"The literary
taste on which
the new poetry
will base itself
is no longer the
taste of a
minority class.
People in the
world today
acquire their
right to life
after a
sustained
struggle. Like
everything else,
poetry is one of
their rights and
must be attuned
to their tastes.
This does not
signify that an
attempt should
be made to
express the
aspirations of
the masses by
means of the
literary
conventions of
the past. The
question is not
to make a
defense of class
interests,but
merely to
explore the
people's tastes,
to determine
them, and to
make them reign
supreme over
art.
"We can arrive
at a new
appreciation by
new ways and
means. Squeezing
certain theories
into familiar
old molds cannot
be a new
artistic thrust
forward. We must
alter the whole
structure from
the foundation
up. In order to
rescue ourselves
from the
stifling effects
of the
literatures
which have
dictated and
shaped our
tastes and
judgments for
too many years,
we must dump
overboard
everthing that
those
literatures have
taught us. We
wish it were
possible to dump
even language
itself, because
it threatens our
creative efforts
by forcing its
vocabulary on us
when we write
poetry."
In the repressive
Turkey of 1941 this
vehement documents
was a clear and
courageous
denunciation of the
entrenched
institutions and of
the establishment.
In the manifesto,
Kanık and his two
colleagues did not
name their targets
but they were
obvious. Chief among
them was the
traditions of
Turkish classical
poetry which had
used the stringent
stanzaic forms, the
quantitative "aruz"
prosody, and the
mythology and
vocabulary of Arabic
and Persian
literatures from the
12th century until
well into the 20th.
The confining
effects of such
highly formalized
technique can be
realized by
examining a gazel
(lyric ode), where
the first couplet is
self-rhyming and the
second line of each
succeeding couplet
is rhymed with the
opening couplet. The
following gazel
is by Fuzuli (16th
centry), and
translated by an
indefatigable
student and
atrocious translator
of Turkish classical
poetry, E.J.W. Gibb
(d.1901):
Goddess, when I
sight thy figure
wonder makes me dumb
to be;
He who sees my
plight and fashion
for a figure holdeth
me.
Naught of love to me
thou showest, naught
of ruth, till now at
length
Passion for thy
locks doth tread me
like to shadow on
the lea.
Weak my star, my
fortune adverse, yet
withal thy gracious
mien
Ever fills my soul
with yearning fond
for union with thee.
Thou a princess; I,
a beggar, may not
woo thee; what can
I?
Yearning dazeth me
with fancies vain I
ne'er can hope to
see.
Shoot not forth thy
glance's dart, it
smites my vitals,
spills my blood;
Cast not loose thy
knotted tresses, for
they work my
tormentry.
Destiny long since
hath vowed me to the
love of darlings
fair;
Every moon-bright
one doth make me
thrall of down and
mole to be.
O Fuzuli, never
shall I quit the
path of love,
because
Through his virtue
gain I entrance mid
the noble company.*
Another target of
the Garip
proclamation was the
neo-classical poetry
penned with
impressive success
by Yahya Kemal
Beyatlı (1884-1958),
whose refined
formalistic poems
were about love, the
glory of the Ottoman
past, the beauty of
Istanbul, and so on.
Kanık and his
friends took their
stand against such
work as well as the
malaise of Ahmet
Haşim (1884-1933),
whose half-European,
half-Oriental pseudo-symbolism
had excluded all
social concerns.
They were against
the polished love
lyrics and idealized
depictions of
Turkish life that
Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel
(1898-1973) was
turning out, and
against the
patriotic and
religious verse of
Mehmet Akif Ersoy
(1873-1936) whose
artistic output
seemed to consist of
paeans for Islam and
Turkey. The Orhan
Veli school had no
patience for turgid
verse and jungoistic
doggerel. Kanık and
his friends also
considered Necip
Fazıl Kısakürek
(1905-1983), a poet
who had been an
early influence on
Orhan Veli, tedious
and tasteless for
his treatment of
human anguish as a
literary conceit:
Month after month I
roamed broken,
aghast:
My soul was a
cauldron which my
mind drained;
With the madmen's
town one horizon
past,
My brain's fantasies
were bridled and
chained.
Why do all things in
the distance dwindle?
In eyeless dreams
who gives me
piercing sight?
Why the dance of
time in the globe's
spindle?
I crave wisdom to
see my life's
twilight.
Thoughts burns as
vitriol in the
wound's grail
Clinging like
leeches to the
brain's membranes,
Hail, most majestic
of agonies, hail,
Magic log that
blooms as it sears
and pains.
In my respects, in
particular for their
use of free verse,
the Garip
poets were indebted
to Nazım Hikmet Ran
(1902-1963) , who
was silenced from
the late thirties
until the late
forties during his
imprisonment on
charges of leftwing
activities. They
went far beyond his
modernism and their
verse had none of
Ran's heavy rhymes,
contrived rhythmic
effects or all too
obvious
embellishments.
Orhan Veli
revitalized Turkish
poetry for social as
well as aesthetic
purposes. His work,
purged of spurious
devices, was to
speak of and
for the man
in the street.
Modern man, who was
beginning to acquire
a new sense of his
worth, would best be
served by free
verse, a fresh style,
and a colloquial
idiom. In a poem
which became famaus
overnight, "Epitaph
I," Kanık made the
non-hero Süleyman
Efendi ("efendi"
refers to someone
low on the social
ladder) his hero:
He suffered from
nothing in the world
The way he suffered
from his corns;
He didn't even feel
so badly
About having been
created ugly.
Though he wouldn't
utter the Lord's
name
Unless his shoe
pinched,
He couldn't be
considered a sinner
either.
It's a pity Süleyman
Efendi had to die.
The closing line has
become a proverbial
expression among the
Turks. The "corns"
drove home the point
that any subject or
image - no matter
how ugly or
offensive - could be
incorporated into a
poem.
"Epitaph I" shocked
the literary
sensibilities of
sedate circles. The
Turkish bourgeoisie
felt that it had
received a slap on
the face. For Orhan
Veli this poem
signifed an
exploration into the
new aesthetics and
the "democratization"
of poetry. In 1937,
at age 23, and 3
years before the
first publicion of "Epitaph
I", he had resolved
that "All of our
concepts, not merely
our conception of
beauty, must change.
We should find new
elements, new
substance, and new
forms of expression."
The literary
establishment
opposed Kanık's new
ventures with full
force while a few
progressive critics
- principally
Nurullah Ataç
(1898-1957) - sided
with him. In the
early 1940's
critical
denunciations and
blistering satires
were published
against the poet
himself and his work,
in particular, "Epitaph
I". Typical of the
comment from
Turkey's literary
circles was the
following excerpt
from an article by
Yusuf Ziya Ortaç
(1895-1967), himself
a poet:
"Meters are gone,
rhymes are gone,
meanings are
gone. They have
been applauding
the line 'It's a
pity Süleyman
Efendi had to
die' as the most
beatiful line of
Turkish poetry...
The insane
asylum and the
flop-house of
art are now
joined hand in
hand... O
Turkish Youth! I
appeal to you to
spit in the face
of such
shamefulness!"
There are no
stentorian effects
in Orhan Veli's
verse, no rhetoric,
no bloated images.
In most of his poems
he strikes a vital
chord by offering
the simple truth,
and he is usually so
sincere as to seem
almost sentimental.
He never wrote a
complex line nor a
single perplexing
metaphor. His verse
was a revolt of a
purist against
facile meters, pre-determined
form and rhythm,
pompous diction.
Style, in his hands,
became a vehicle for
the natural sounds
of colloquial
Turkish.
Humor formed the
vital core of
Kanık's world-view
and aesthetics.
Unlike most of his
contemporaries, he
never gave vent to
bitterness or
cynicism in the face
of inequity and
suffering. His
poetry remained free
of polemics, protest
and denunciation.
The tenor of "Epitaph
I" is characteristic.
Its affable and
ironic tone was to
permeate the "Poetic
Realism" of Kanık
and his friends - an
aura of bonhomie
clothing the poets'
awareness and
criticism of
injustice.
Orhan Veli Kanık was
a prolific and
excellent translator.
His renderings of
poems by François
Villon, Pierre de
Ronsard, Alfred de
Musset,
ThéophileGauter,
Charles Baudelaire,
Charles Cros, Paul
Verlaine, Jules
Laforgue, Stephane
Mallarmé, Jules
Supervielle,
Phillippe Soupault,
Paul Eluard, André
Breton, Louis Aragon,
Guillaume
Apollinaire are
deservedly famous.
He also translated
Arthur Rimbaud, Jean
Moréas, Paul Valéry
and Shelley as well
as rubais by
Omar Khayyam and
Mawlana Djalal-al-din
Rumi. Kanık wrote a
few traditional
rubais of his
own. The following
is a typical example:
To discover life's
secret, just look
arround;
With one root, trees
cling on to the
ground;
The world is
precious: Without
arms or legs,
People still yearn
to live safe and
sound.
Among his
translations are
haikus by Japanese
poets and several
Chinese verses. In
addition to verse,
Kanık also
translated dramatic
and prose works,
including works by
Moliére, Alfred de
Musset and Nikolai
Gogol, Jean-Paul
Sarte's The
Respectful
Prostitute, and
Jean Anouilh's
Antigone.
Of the many poets he
read or translated,
particularly from
the French, it was
the contemporary
poet Jacques Prevert
who probably exerted
the strongest
influence on Orhan
Veli. As his friend
Oktay Rifat observed:
"Orhan lived within
his all too brief
lifetime the
adventures of
several generations
of French poets."
Kanık's natural bent
for wit and humor
led him, like
Marianne Moore, to
translate the Fables
of La Fontaine, 49
of which he
published in book
form in 1948. He is
also well-known for
his verse versions
of the anecdots of
Nasreddin Hodja, a
perennially popular
Turkish wit and
raconteur, who
probably lived in
the 13th century.
The following is
from the collection
of Nasreddin Hodja
stories Kanık
published in 1949:
TAMERLANE'S PRICE
One day, Tamerlane
and Hodja together
take a trip
To a bath where they
start to wash as
soon as they strip.
While bathing, out
of the clear blue,
demands his Highness:
"If I were a serf
for sale, how much
would you bid?"
Of course Hodja
knows no cowardice
nor shyness:
First he pretends he
ponders, then with
customary slyness
"If you ask me," he
says, "I would bid a
hundred quid."
Tamerlane is furious:
"You must be insane!"
"Our towel here
alone is worth at
least a hundred."
Hodja shakes with
guffaws that he
cannot restrain;
Then he bows and
blandly says to
Tamerlane:
"In fact, it was the
towel for which I
made my bid."
In 1945 Kanık re-published
his Garip
poems, using the
same title, with a
number of poems
added and with the
Oktay Rifat and
Anday contributions
in the original 1941
book eliminated. The
same year saw the
publication of
Vazgeçemediğim
(I Cannot Give Up).
Three more books
follewed: Destan
Gibi (Like an Epic)
in 1946, Yenisi
(The New One) in
1947, and Karşı
(Across) in 1949.
Orhan Veli's
Complete Poems,
published
posthumously in
1951, has gone
through nearly 20
printings,
attentesting too his
continuing
popularity. His
essays, critical
pieces, and short
stories were
collected in a book
which came out in
1953.
The selections in
Just for the Hell of
it represent
about two-thirds of
Kanık's lifetime
output of poems in
free verse. The
translations are, on
the whole, entirely
faithful, although
never slavish. No
poem here appears as
a free adaptation or
as an "imitation".
Most of Orhan Veli's
work lends itself
very well to
colloquial English.
In many ways the
poems are akin in
spirit and style to
those of the newer
generation of poets
in America today.
Since Turkish
expressions usually
find their exact
counterparts in
today's American and
British vernacular,
the poems can be
translated without
too great a loss of
poetic values. Very
few of Kanık's
important poems have
been omitted because
of untranslatable
features. Orhan
Veli's poetry can
probably be
translated into many
languages without
too much difficulty.
For as much as his
work reflects Turkey
and Turkish life,
his substance and
manner have
universal validity
and value.
*E.J.W. Gibb, A
History of Ottoman
Poetry, Luzac &
Co Ltd, London,
1904, Vol. III pp.
95-96.