 He
read philosophy at the University of Istanbul and then worked for the
Turkish Post Office and as a literary translator for the Ministry of Education.
His main books were "Garip" (meaning "bizarre" or
"peculiar") published in 1941 with Oktay Rifat and Melih Cevdet
Anday, "Addictions" (1945) and "Like and Epic" (1946).
His "Collected Poems" were published in 1982. In the development
of Turkish poetry, his achievements should be compared with those of Hikmet.
Talking about an erroneous concept of poetry, he said: "we must end
the hegemony of 'the line' in poetry. This approach breeds the belief
that 'words' are concrete elements of poetry. As a result you have people
who look for one hundred kinds of beauty in a poem made up of one hundred
words, whereas even a thousand-word poem is written with only one mode
of beauty in mind." His direct style was admirably suited to the
translation of La Fontaine's Fables, which read as if they were part of
the poetic heritage of Turkey (from Modern Turkish Poetry, ed.
F. K. Fergar). |
