Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

my fi rst poems(!). I remember that beautiful place of mine,
the peaceful National Library. In my free time I would go,
read the volumes of old art magazines and take notes. There
was a bespectacled, thin library director. He took an interest
in me in the meantime and asked why I read such serious
things. I suppose I was a bit shy; and I would survive his
questioning by making some incomprehensible reply.
Years of bread coupons and blackouts. I was studying
at the Istanbul Boysʼ Lycée. There was a large garden
in front and in back. It is a beautiful, splendid building.
Beyond the back garden is the sea. We are neighbors of
the “Sublime Porte.” Leaving school in the evenings,
many times I go down “The Incline.” The Marmara, ABC
and Incline publishing houses. I follow with attention and
passion the new poetry movement. Books of short stories
and novels too, of course. I never ever miss the publications
of the National Education Ministry. The Greek and Latin
classics and 19th century Russian literature absorb me
completely. Chekhov and Dostoyevsky are at the top of my
list. I feel the lack of freedom and the immensely restricted
press in Turkey. The Golden Chair, Women and Socialism (I
believe it would be Sabiha Sertelʼs translation), Dialectical
Materialism, Socialism and the General History of Social
Struggles. I remember that I was able to fi nd one or two
plays and one or two books of poetry by Nazım (Hikmet).
Also at school, I had a friend whose infl uence I was so
much under that I owe many things to him. Publishing
was such a nightmare that I would like to mention a brief
memory. One evening a friend who worked in one of the
bookshops I customarily visited pressed a book on me and
told me to read it at home. I did what he said. When I got
home I opened the package, and the title of the book was
The Engine of the Means of Subsistence. In those days
every poet who wrote “free verse” proclaimed himself to be
a communist.
There is no interesting incident in my school memories.
The quinces I took from the garden railing on days I
forgot and left the bread coupon at home. Likewise the
continuous games of draughts on holidays. Also there was
a girl I exchanged glances with on the tram either returning
from school or in the mornings, though I fi nished school
without our having said a single word to each other. Higher
education didnʼt interest me. Either that or I understood
that I had chosen the wrong school. Later I well remember
lamenting that I hadnʼt studied philosophy.
I started in business at my fatherʼs shop in the Covered
Bazaar (in those times, like today, there were shops
that were numbered, rather high up off the ground, with
cushions on the fl oors and wooden shutters). Although
business didnʼt interest me either. It happened that I never
liked to do business—in fact I never could claim that I did.
However that may be, there was no other way. At nineteen
I was married, and at twenty I was a young man with a
child. I was at the same time obliged to make a living, and
drawn to poetry. In any case, a few years later my shop
was destroyed in the big fi re at the Covered Bazaar. My
partner was a good-hearted man. He was in charge of sales,
while I would read and write in the mezzanine. Our true
friendship began in those days with poetry and continued
for twenty-two years. The results are in my home, my room
and among my books.
One day. Yes, one day Tanpınar wants to see my
poems. I am seventeen or eighteen years old. Yes, one day
Tanpınar wants to see me. I go to the Narmanlı Building
in the Tunnel neighborhood. He offers me coffee in a
huge teacup. After sitting down at an enormous table and
putting on his glasses, he reads all my poems without
showing any signs of getting bored. After he fi nishes
reading, thoroughly it seems to me, he raises his head and
speaks his fi rst sentence: “These poems are very nice, all
of them are quite beautiful. But not a single one of them is
a poem!” Naturally this judgment makes me feel strange
as can be, and I leave without seeming to understand. Just
before I leave he says some other things. At one point he
asks why I donʼt write in rhyme and meter. As for me I
choose just to remain silent, because he is answering his
own question again. Afterwards he lays out some pictures
in the middle of the room. He explains at great length how
pictures should be looked at. He advises me that I should
concentrate very much on pictures and love them. I should
add this: I understood subsequently that while I had not
read his books, I had encountered that day one of Turkeyʼs
most cultured artists.
What a pity it is that in 1947 I published a book, Late
Afternoon, which even today will not leave me in peace. I
couldnʼt avoid publishing my idiotic works in periodicals
like Thoughts, World of Literature, and The Spring. For
World of Literature and later, for me, it was in other ways
a turning point. It happened that two friends and I went
together to the Elite Cafe in Asmalımescit, which was
in those days a gathering place for the Young Artists, to
bring out the aforementioned periodical. Sait Faik, Otkay
Akbal, Salâh Birsel and other artists whose faces we were
seeing for the fi rst time, conversed around a long table.
We unhesitatingly cultivated all sides. We wanted articles,
poetry and stories for our journal. But we couldnʼt get a
positive response from anyone. My friends pulled out,
having lost hope. I stayed. Salâh Birsel came to my side
in a friendly way and showed a close, friendly interest in
48 Translation Review