Nâzım Hikmet Ran (January 15,
1902 – June 3, 1963) commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet was a Turkish poet,
playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director and memoirist. He was acclaimed
for the "lyrical flow of his statements".
Described as a "romantic communist"
and "romantic revolutionary", he was repeatedly arrested for his
political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. His
poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages.
On Living
Nazim Hikmet
I
Living is no laughing matter:
you must live
with great seriousness
like
a squirrel, for example—
I mean without
looking for something beyond and above living,
I
mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take
it seriously,
so much so
and to such a degree
that, for example,
your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a
laboratory
in your white
coat and safety glasses,
you can die
for people—
even for people whose
faces you've never seen,
even though you know
living
is the most
real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy,
for example, you'll plant olive trees—
and not for your
children, either,
but because although
you fear death you don't believe it,
because living, I
mean, weighs heavier.
II
Let's say we're seriously ill, need surgery—
which is to say we might not get up
from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
about
going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see if it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
for
the latest newscast. . .
Let's say we're at the front—
for something
worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall
on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
but we'll still
worry ourselves to death
about the
outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind—
I mean with the outside beyond
the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as
if we will never die.
III
This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived". . .
From Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and
Mutlu Konuk, published by Persea Books.