Sanatsal Gelişmesinin Özeti

  # Türk Şiir Geleneğinde Serbest Nâzım

  # Nâzım Hikmet'in Başarısı

    "Nâzım Hikmet şair olarak adını ilkin Hececiler çevresinde duyurmuş olsa da temelde onlardan çok ayrı bir anlayışın sanatçısıydı. Hece ölçüsünde yazdığı şiirlerinde, Namık Kemal, Tevfik Fikret, Mehmet Akif, Mehmet Emin gibi, toplumsal görüşlerini, siyasal düşüncelerini savunuyordu. İşgal altındaki bir ülkede, halkı işgalcilere karşı kışkırtıcı şiirler yazan bir direnişçiydi. Deniz Harp Okulu'nda eğitim görmüş olması, gerektiğinde memleketi için her şeyi göze almaktan kaçınmayan özverili bir kişilik edinmesinde herhalde etkili olmuştu. 1921 başlarında Kurtuluş Savaşı'na katılmak için Anadolu'ya geçtiğinde, Bolu'da öğretmenlikle görevlendirilmeyip özlediği gibi ateş hattına gönderilseydi, belki de bu coşkulu genç şairi Kurtuluş Savaşı şehitlerimiz arasında anacaktık. 
    "Bolu'da Türk halkının yaşam koşullarını yakından görüp dinsel yobazlığın baskısıyla karşılaşınca, düşünüşü çok değişik boyutlar kazandı. 
    "Bolu'dan Moskova'ya hececi bir şair olarak gitmişti; dönüşünde, özellikle 1920'lerin ikinci yarısında yazdıklarıyla Türkçede 'yepyeni bir şair' olarak nitelenmeye başlandı. 'Serbest Nâzım' diye adlandırılan yeni bir tarzın öncüsüydü. 
    "Basamaklı dizeler, serbest uyaklar, gerçi getirilen yeniliğin dış biçimde olduğu izlenimini veriyordu, ama asıl yenilik içerikteydi : Şiirin alışılmış konularının, temalarının dışına taşılmış, bunun sonucu olarak da dil, ton, ritim, söyleyiş değişmişti. 
    "Çok aşırı görünen bu yenilik, sanki her şeyi yıkmak, Türk şiir geleneğinin üstünü örtmek istiyor gibiydi. Bir devrimdi Serbest Nâzım, ama çok kısa bir sürede benimsenip tadına varıldı; Nâzım Hikmet övgülere boğuldu. Böylesine aşırı bir yeniliğin neden kolaylıkla kabul edildiği üzerinde pek durulmamıştır. Bu bütün direnmeleri kıran başarının gizi neydi? 
    "Daha ikinci kitabı Jokond ile Sİ-YA-U'da, Nâzım Hikmet'in geleneksel şiirimizle bağlarını kopartmak istemediği, bir bireşim arama özlemi içinde olduğu açıkça görülüyordu. Bu 'yepyeni şair' hem Divan şiirinden, hem de Halk şiirinden etkiler aldığı, alıştığımız güzellikleri yeni bir biçim içinde değerlendirdiği için yadırganmıyordu. 
    "Serbest Nâzım, özellikle başlangıçta, hece kalıplarının serbest kullanılışı diye nitelenebilir. Üçlü, dörtlü, beşli hecelerle sıralanan basamaklı dizelere örnekler verelim: Bakmıyor/kayığa/sarılan/sulara; /Bakmıyor/çatlayıp/yarılan/sulara! (3). Değil bir kaç/değil beş on/ otuz milyon/otuz milyon (4). Dalga bir dağdır/Kayık bir geyik!/Dalga bir kuyu/Kayık bir kova!/Çıkıyor kayık/İniyor kayık, (5). 
    "Nâzım Hikmet'in eski şiirin güzelliklerinden yararlanışı her zaman çok açık da değildi. Örnekse 'ustam' diye andığı Yahya Kemal'in 'Bendim geçen ey sevgili sandalla denizden' dizesi ile Nâzım'ın 'Hazer'de dost gezer, e...y!../düşman gezer!' dizeleri arasındaki benzerliği herkesin görmesi beklenemez. 
    "Çok aşırı görünen bir yeniliğin böylesine kolay benimsenmiş olması Nâzım Hikmet'in Türk şiir geleneğine bağlılığından, bu geleneği çok iyi özümlemesinden doğmuştur. 
    "Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı Divan şiirinden, Halk şiirinden aldığı etkilerle şairin özlediği bireşimin çok başarılı bir örneği olduğu gibi, 'Yağmur çiseliyor' bölümüyle de şiirimizin sonraki gelişmelerine işaret eder gibidir. 
    "1938'de başlayan cezaevi yıllarında ise, şiirini 'fazla haykıran bir propaganda edası'ndan kurtarmak amacıyla, yeni arayışlara giren şair, bir yandan daha alçak tonda lirik şiirler yazarken, bir yandan da yakın tarihin bir panoraması niteliğindeki Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları'nı yazmaya başlamış, zamanla, bu büyük yapıtın şiir, tarih, roman, öykü, oyun, senaryo türlerini birleştiren 'yeni bir anlatı türü' niteliğine büründüğünü görmüştür. 
    "Türkiye'den ayrılmak zorunda kaldığı 1950 yılı sonrasında ise, bir süre ustalığına yaslanarak şiirlerini herhangi bir atılım yapmadan çoğalttığı söylenebilir. Kolay kullandığı bir araçla düşüncelerini, duygularını iletir gibidir. Ama 1960'lara doğru 'Saçları saman sarısı kirpikleri mavi' şiirleri diye anılan uzun dizeli şiirleriyle yepyeni bir çoşkuyu yaşadığı görülür. 
    "Nâzım Hikmet sanat yaşamının değişik dönemlerinde değişik anlayışlarla şiir yazmış, denemekten, yeni aranışlara girmekten hiç vazgeçmemiş, hep yenilikçi kalmıştır. Türk şiir geleneğinin dışına düşmeden sürekli yenilenmiş, değişmiştir. Değişmeyen yanı düşünceleri, bir de gerektiğinde memleketi için hiçbir şeyi göze almaktan kaçınmayan özverili kişiliği olmuştur." (Memet Fuat'ın Özgünlük Avı adlı kitabında yer alan 18 Ocak 1990 tarihli yazısı.)
 

    - Yukarı - 

    Mr. Fitzgerald came of an old Southern family. His great-grandfather’s brother was Francis Scott Key, composer of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The author was named after him. His father’s aunt was Mrs. Suratt, one of the conspirators hanged for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

    Mr. Fitzgerald’s father went through several severe financial reverses, which gave his son an understandable fear of poverty. The family, however, was able to send him to Princeton University, where his undergraduate escapades are still remembered. He passed his entire freshman year writing a show for the Triangle Club, which was accepted, and then tutored in the subjects in which he had failed so he could come back and act in it.

Quit to Join Army
    In 1917, in his senior year, he quit college to join the Army as a second lieutenant. He missed the train which was to take his regiment to Camp Sheridan, Ala., and according to the story he told friends, commandeered an engine and cab by telling Pennsylvania Railroad officials that he possessed confidential papers for President Wilson. He caught up with the troops in Washington. In camp he wrote his first novel, first titled “The Romantic Egotist.”

    The war ended before his unit saw service and Mr. Fitzgerald tried to sell the novel. It was rejected. After holding a job in advertising in New York a few months, he quit and returned to St. Paul, where his family was living, and rewrote “The Romantic Egotist” under the title “This Side of Paradise.”

    It was published in 1920 and was tremendously successful. The hero, Amory Blaine, a young Princeton undergraduate like Mr. Fitzgerald, was considered a composite of all the sad young men of the post-war flapper era, and the novel became a sort of social document of its time. Mr. Fitzgerald, who was only twenty-three years of age, was greeted as one of the most promising of young writers. 

    Fitzgerald, who died yesterday at the tragically early age of forty-four, continued to show “promise” all through his tortured career. He turned out many glittering short stories which were commercial successes. His admirers kept hoping for the elusive something which would be called great. In 1925, with a compact and brilliant novel, “The Great Gatsby,” the story of the rise and fall of a Long Island bootlegger, he renewed their faith. As literature it was perhaps the best thing he ever did. Then came long periods when he did little, or nothing. He was ill, troubled, unhappy. In 1934, with “Tender Is the Night,” he had another successòbut again the critics, while admiring much of it, confessed that they had been expecting something better. Once more he had shown the high promise that somehow always fell just short of fulfillment. And yet, it cannot be taken away from him that he left a substantial literary legacy. He could write prose that was extraordinarily smooth, but it was never soft. It had, as the saying has it, “bones” in it.

    The gaudy world of which Fitzgerald wroteòthe penthouses, the long week-end drunks, the young people who were always on the brink of madness, the vacuous conversation, the lush intoxication of easy moneyòhas in large measure been swept away. But Fitzgerald understood this world perhaps better than any of his contemporaries. And as a literary craftsman he described it, accurately and sometimes poignantly, in work that deserves respect.

òNew York Herald Tribune, 23 December 1940, p. 18.
Death Takes Fitzgerald, Noted Author
Heart Attack Fatal to Eloquent Voice of
World War Generation
    All the sad young menòthose now grown-up members of the World War generationòhad lost their spokesman yesterday.

    F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in Hollywood at the age of 44.

    Immediately after word of the death of the author of “This Side of Paradise” was telegraphed to his wife at Montgomery, Ala., arrangements were made through Pierce Bros. mortuary to send his body to Baltimore, Md., his family home, for burial.

    Readers of the 1930’s did not know Fitzgerald as did those of the postwar era.

    For he was the latters’ most articulate voice.

    His own early life paralleled that of his recurrent protagonist: the young man, caught in a turbulent age, uncertain, seeking.

Composer’s Descendant
    Born at St. Paul, Minn., on Sept. 24, 1896, he was christened Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, after the composer of “The Star Spangled Banner,” an ancestor on his mother’s side. He was first educated at Hackensack, N.J. Then he attended Princeton.

    There he found much of the atmosphere which fills his first books.

    It was wartime. In 1917, deserting the university in his senior year, he entered the Army as a second lieutenant in the 45th Infantry. Two years later he left the service. He was 23. 

BASLANGIC

Nereden gelip nereye gidiyoruz?
Belimizi dogrultup kalktigimizdan beri iki ayak ustune,
kolumuzu bir sopa boyu uzattigimizdan beri,
      tasi yonttugumuzdan beri yikan da yaratan da biziz
yikan da yaratan da biziz bu guzelim, bu yasaasi dunyada.
Nereden gelip nereye gidiyoruz?
Arkamizda kalan yollarda ayak izlerimiz kanli,
arkamizda kalan yollarda ulu uyumlari ellerimizin, aklimizin,
yuregimizin,
toprakta, tasta, tuncta, tuvalde, celikte ve plastikte.
Nereden gelip nereye gidiyoruz?
Kanli ayak izlerimiz midir onumuzdeki yollarda duran?
Bir cehennem cikmazinda mi sona erecek onumuzdeki yollar?
Nereden gelip nereye gidiyoruz?
Cocuklarin avuclarinda gunlerimiz sira bekler,
gunlerimiz tohumlardir avuclarinda cocuklarin.
cocuklarin avuclarinda yeserecekler.
Cocuklar olebilir yarin,
hem de ne sitmadan ne kuspalazindan,
duserek de degil kuyulara filan;
cocuklar olebilir yarin,
cocuklar olebilir yarin atom bulutlarinin isiginda,
ne bir santim kemik, ne bir damla kan,
cocuklar olebilir yarin atom bulutlarinin isiginda,
arkalarinda bir avuc ku"l bile degil
     arkalarinda golgelerinden baska bir sey birakmadan.
Negatif resimcikler boslugun karanliginda
Krematoryum, krematoryum, krematoryum.
Bir deniz goruyorum
    olu baliklarla ortulu bir deniz.
Negatif resimcikler boslugun karanliginda;
yasanmamis gunlerimiz
  cocuklarin avuclariyla birlikte yok olan.

Bir sehir vardi.
Yeller eser yerinde,
Bes sehir vardi,
Yeller eser yerinde,
Yuz sehir vardi,
Yeller eser yerinde,
Siirler yazilmayacak yok olan sehirlere,
Siir kalmayacak ki.

Pencerende bir sokak bulvarli,
Odan sicak,
Ak yastikta uzum karasi, saclar,
Adamlar paltolu, agaclar karli,
Penceren kalmayacak,
ne bulvarli sokak,
ne ak yastikta uzum karasi saclar,
ne paltolu adamlar, ne karli agaclar.
Olulere aglanmayacak,
olulere aglayacak gozler kalmayacak ki.
Eller kalmayacak.

Negatif resimcikler dallarin altindaki
   yok olmus olan dallarin altindaki.
Yok olmus olan dallarin ustunden
   o bulutlardir gecen.
Guneye goturmeyin beni,
olmek istemiyorum.
Olmek istemiyorum,
kuzeye goturmeyin beni.
Doguya goturmeyin beni,
olmek istemiyorum.
Olmek istemiyorum.
batiya goturmeyin beni.
Beni burda birakmayin,
goturun bir yerlere.
Olmek istemiyorum,
olmek istemiyorum.
O bulutlardir gecen
yok olmus dallarin ustunden.
Tahta, beton, teneke, toprak damlarimizla iki milyardan 
             artigiz   
kadin, erkek, coluk, cocuk.
Ekmek hepimize yetmiyor,
kitap ta yetmiyor,
    ama keder
  diledigin kadar,
yorgunlk da goz alabildigine.
Hurriyet hepimize yetmiyor.
Hurriyet hepimize yetebilir
ve sevda kederi,
     hastalik kederi,
   ayrilik kederi,
kocalmak kederinden gayrisi a$mayabilir esigimizi.
Kitap hepimize yetebilir.
Ormanlarinki kadar uzun olabilir omrumuz.
Yeter ki birakmayalim
    yasanmamis gunlerimiz yok olmasin cocuklarin
avuclariyla birlikte,
boslugun karanligina cikmasin negatif resimcikler,
yeter ki ekmek ve hurriyet yolunda dovusebilmek icin
          yasayabilelim.
 

                              Nazim Hikmet
 
 

Bugun pazar.
Bugun beni ilk defa gunese cikardilar.
Ve ben omrumde ilk defa gokyuzunun
                  bu kadar benden uzak
           bu kadar mavi
           bu kadar genis olduguna sasarak
           kimildamadan durdum.
Sonra saygiyla topraga oturdum,
dayadim sirtimi duvara.
Bu anda ne dusmek dalgalara,
bu anda ne kavga, ne hurriyet, ne karim.
Toprak, gunes ve ben...
Bahtiyarim...

                         NAZIM HIKMET

    All four novels were characterized by rich, loose-living characters, who grew older as Mr. Fitzgerald grew older. Invariably they met disillusionment and despair. In commenting on Mr. Fitzgerald’s last novel, “Tender Is the Night,” Clifton Fadiman, book critic for “The New Yorker,” summed up Mr. Fitzgerald’s career with the words:

    “In Mr. Fitzgerald’s case, at any rate, money is the root of all novels. In ‘This Side of Paradise,’ Mr. Fitzgerald’s first and most successful novel, the world of super-wealth was viewed through the glass of undergraduate gayety, sentiment and satire. With ‘The Great Gatsby’ the good-time note was dropped, to be replaced by a darker accent of tragic questioning.”

“Questions Become Sharper”
    “The questions have become sharper, bitterer in ‘Tender Is the Night,’ but the world of luxurious living remains his only world. This universe he both loves and despises. It is the contradictoriness of this emotional attitude that gives his novels their special quality, and is also in part responsible for some of their weaknesses.”

    Mr. Fitzgerald came of an old Southern family. His great-grandfather’s brother was Francis Scott Key, composer of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The author was named after him. His father’s aunt was Mrs. Suratt, one of the conspirators hanged for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

    Mr. Fitzgerald’s father went through several severe financial reverses, which gave his son an understandable fear of poverty. The family, however, was able to send him to Princeton University, where his undergraduate escapades are still remembered. He passed his entire freshman year writing a show for the Triangle Club, which was accepted, and then tutored in the subjects in which he had failed so he could come back and act in it.

Quit to Join Army
    In 1917, in his senior year, he quit college to join the Army as a second lieutenant. He missed the train which was to take his regiment to Camp Sheridan, Ala., and according to the story he told friends, commandeered an engine and cab by telling Pennsylvania Railroad officials that he possessed confidential papers for President Wilson. He caught up with the troops in Washington. In camp he wrote his first novel, first titled “The Romantic Egotist.”

    The war ended before his unit saw service and Mr. Fitzgerald tried to sell the novel. It was rejected. After holding a job in advertising in New York a few months, he quit and returned to St. Paul, where his family was living, and rewrote “The Romantic Egotist” under the title “This Side of Paradise.”

    It was published in 1920 and was tremendously successful. The hero, Amory Blaine, a young Princeton undergraduate like Mr. Fitzgerald, was considered a composite of all the sad young men of the post-war flapper era, and the novel became a sort of social document of its time. Mr. Fitzgerald, who was only twenty-three years of age, was greeted as one of the most promising of young writers.

Married in Same Year
    The same year Mr. Fitzgerald was married to Miss Zelda Sayre, daughter of Anthony D. Sayre, an Alabama Supreme Court Justice. In 1922 his second novel, “The Beautiful and Damned,” appeared. It was the story of a rich young married couple dancing on the edge of doom, and Mrs. Fitzgerald in a newspaper article said that several of the passages appeared to have come from her diary.

    In 1923 he wrote “The Vegetable,” a satire in play form, and in 1925 “The Great Gatsby,” which was generally regarded as his best novel. It is the story of a mysterious man, whose money, it is implied, comes from something dishonest. In the end he is broken, not by his sins, but by his aspirations. Mr. Fitzgerald’s “Tales of the Jazz Age,” a book of short stories, was also popular.

    The Fitzgeralds lived in France from 1925 to 1928, where Mr. Fitzgerald wrote short stories later incorporated in “All the Sad Young Men.” Returning in 1928, he said that “the French are as far above us as we are above the African Negro.” After an interval of nine years his last novel, “Tender Is the Night,” was published in 1934. Critics commented that he had never quite lived up to his early promise.

Called Himself “Cracked Plate”
    In 1936, in a magazine article, Mr. Fitzgerald described himself as “a cracked plate.”

    “Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering,” he wrote. “This is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general, but at 3 o’clock in the morning the cure doesn’t workòand in a real dark night of the soul it is always 3 o’clock in the morning.”

    A reporter once asked him what he thought had become of the jazz-mad, gin-drinking generation he wrote of in “This Side of Paradise.”

    His answer was: “Some became brokers and threw themselves out of windows. Others became bankers and shot themselves. Still others became newspaper reporters. And a few became successful authors.”

    For the last three years, Mr. Fitzgerald had been in Hollywood. He had done little screen work recently, however, and his writing consisted of a few short stories for magazines and a play he was working on.

    Surviving, besides his wife, who is living in Montgomery, Ala., is a daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald.

òNew York Herald Tribune, 23 December 1940, p. 14.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
    It was only twenty years ago that a novel called “This Side of Paradise” was published, and the world became aware of the existence of the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young man of rare talent. The story was deft, romantic, gay, alcoholic and bitter. It was the first year of prohibition. Flaming youth was rampant. People talked of the post-war moral let-down. Raccoon coats were coming in. There were rumors of strange goings-on in the colleges. It was the beginning of a fantastic era (how long ago it seems!), and Fitzgerald, handsome, insouciant and possessing unusual gifts for story telling, instantly became its prophet and its interpreter. Flappers adored him; moreover, the grave gentlemen who sit in judgment on literary products agreed that here, indeed, was one who showed magnificent “promise.”

    Fitzgerald, who died yesterday at the tragically early age of forty-four, continued to show “promise” all through his tortured career. He turned out many glittering short stories which were commercial successes. His admirers kept hoping for the elusive something which would be called great. In 1925, with a compact and brilliant novel, “The Great Gatsby,” the story of the rise and fall of a Long Island bootlegger, he renewed their faith. As literature it was perhaps the best thing he ever did. Then came long periods when he did little, or nothing. He was ill, troubled, unhappy. In 1934, with “Tender Is the Night,” he had another successòbut again the critics, while admiring much of it, confessed that they had been expecting something better. Once more he had shown the high promise that somehow always fell just short of fulfillment. And yet, it cannot be taken away from him that he left a substantial literary legacy. He could write prose that was extraordinarily smooth, but it was never soft. It had, as the saying has it, “bones” in it.

    The gaudy world of which Fitzgerald wroteòthe penthouses, the long week-end drunks, the young people who were always on the brink of madness, the vacuous conversation, the lush intoxication of easy moneyòhas in large measure been swept away. But Fitzgerald understood this world perhaps better than any of his contemporaries. And as a literary craftsman he described it, accurately and sometimes poignantly, in work that deserves respect.

òNew York Herald Tribune, 23 December 1940, p. 18.