Nâzım Hikmet Ran

 



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. 


Yukio Mishima


 Yukio Mishima, (January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the Tatenokai, an unarmed civilian militia.

Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, but the award went to his countryman and benefactor Yasunari Kawabata.

 His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion  and the autobiographical essay "Sun and Steel"  Mishima's work is characterized by "its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death".

Mishima's political activities were controversial, and he remains a controversial figure in modern Japan Ideologically, Mishima was a right-winger who extolled the traditional culture and spirit of Japan. He opposed what he saw as western-style materialism, along with Japan's postwar democracy, globalism, and communism, worrying that by embracing these ideas the Japanese people would lose their "national essence" and their distinctive cultural heritage (Shinto and Yamato-damashii) to become a "rootless" people.

Mishima formed the Tatenokai for the avowed purpose of restoring sacredness and dignity to the Emperor of Japan. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of his militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took its commandant hostage, and tried to inspire the Japan Self-Defense Forces to rise up and overthrow Japan's 1947 Constitution, which he called "a constitution of defeat". When his attempt failed, he committed seppuku.

Mishima’s jisei, (A jisei or death poem)

 

The sheaths of swords rattle

As after years of endurance

Brave men set out

To tread upon the first frost of the year.

Preceding those who hesitate 

                ………………….

 

A small night storm blows

Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’


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Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy, Salle Wagram

Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist and flautist. On a few occasions, he also played the clarinet and piccolo. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence around the time that he was active. His use of the bass clarinet helped to establish the instrument within jazz. Dolphy extended the vocabulary and boundaries of the alto saxophone and was among the earliest significant jazz flute soloists.

His improvisational style was characterized by the use of wide intervals, in addition to employing an array of extended techniques to emulate the sounds of human voices and animals. He used melodic lines that were "angular, zigzagging from interval to interval, taking hairpin turns at unexpected junctures, making dramatic leaps from the lower to the upper register." Although Dolphy's work is sometimes classified as free jazz, his compositions and solos were often rooted in conventional (if highly abstracted) tonal bebop harmony.