Nâzım Hikmet

Nâzım Hikmet — Biography

Nâzım Hikmet is the poet who established free verse in Turkish and is counted among the most important names in modern Turkish poetry. His poems have been translated into more than fifty languages, and he spent most of his adult life in prison or in exile.

Born in Salonica, Hikmet graduated from the Naval School on Heybeliada in 1918 but was discharged in 1920 because of illness. After briefly teaching in Anatolia he went to Moscow and studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. The experiments of Mayakovsky and Meyerhold drew him away from classical syllabic meter, and on his return he led an innovative generation in poetry, theater and film writing. Jokond ile Si-ya-u, Sesini Kaybeden Şehir and Gece Gelen Telgraf are among the books of that period. He also worked in cinema as screenwriter, director and producer.

Because of his communist views and membership in the banned Turkish Communist Party he was tried in eleven separate cases in Turkey and received heavy sentences in 1938 for inciting military mutiny. He spent more than twelve years in prisons in Istanbul, Ankara, Çankırı and Bursa. In 1950 he was awarded the International Peace Prize and, after an international campaign, was released under an amnesty. He left for the Soviet Union in June 1951, was stripped of his citizenship in July and took Polish citizenship; that decision was annulled 46 years after his death, on January 5, 2009. He died of a heart attack in Moscow on June 3, 1963.