Tevfik Fikret (1867-1915)
The most important representative of the New Literature (Servet-i Fünun) community, which plays a major role in the establishment of the Western understanding of art in our literature, and leaves permanent marks with its intellectual personality, is a poet, writer, painter. Fikret, who wrote his first poems in the style of Divan Literature, wrote poems that highlight the individual with the understanding of "art for art" in this period. Fikret, who worked as a Turkish teacher and principal in Galatasaray for a period, lived in Rumelihisarı until the end of his life, with the effect of both the oppressive environment of the tyranny period and his melancholic mood. He worked as a teacher at Robert College, next to the house he drew and named "Aşiyan", which is a museum today.
Tevfik Fikret, one of the leading names of Turkish literature in the period of innovation under the influence of the West after the Tanzimat (Ottoman Political Reforms), with his poems, art and literary understanding, is an important personality who influenced many poets both while he was alive and after his death. Tevfik Fikret, who attempted some attempts to find his real personality in poetry, determined his real direction after meeting Charles Baudelaire, Sully Prudhomme and especially François Coppee, whom he coincidentally came across in an anthology he took with him while he was going to Çamlık in Burgaz island and whom he would take as an example throughout his life. I convey the story of this coincidence from the pen of Tevfik Fikret, published in the 26th issue of Malumat Newspaper on 11 August 1310 [23 August 1894] p.203-4.
We are all novice students of nature * I took a French anthology magazine with me and climbed towards the pine tree. There was one o'clock. That fiery light of the July sun, which is typical of the midday afternoon, brings a faintness to colors and a dryness to shapes, rendering landscapes almost unrecognizable - according to their freshness three or four hours ago. There are such places that when the morning is a sweet paradise, the sun loses its beauty as the sun rises, and the piles of weeds finally turn yellow and bear traces of hell with cracked leaves. This is not just the effect of heat. The excess and sharpness of light translate many colors, especially the most gentle and sweet ones; burns shadows, finishes. The glamorousness arising from the intertwined harmony of light and shadow in nature's paintings disappears thereby of course. The eye feels an emptiness before it. Nature seems soulless as if it is asleep. However, the reflections of the midday sun are so rare, so bright that one cannot get enough of it in the vast seas and the crop fields - which means a gilded sea. As I was walking fast through the heath, a steep, thin road - scattering locusts on both sides - I could not see anything. There aren't many things like crops around anyway. Even if it did, the sun was scorching my brain; I was not in a position to look, to see. Fortunately, I entered the pine grove. I know a place here that sees the magnificent painting presented by the sunset off Ayastefanos very well.
I chose the chair for this performance the day I arrived in Burgaz. He runs there in the evening whenever he has time; by throwing fiery dimples through the sun's colors and lights in the clouds, or by throwing fiery dimples through the golden lashes in the open air, sometimes - as if not wanting not to affect anyone, something, not to spoil the blue of the sky and the celestiality of the sea - to the point where it sinks without any change, and look around with longing; I watch the sea dive into its still, sometimes wavy, but always pure and shining waters. As I had slowed down my steps after entering the pine grove, when I reached my podium, I did not feel any tiredness in my body. No one had touched the pillow I had made with branches and pine leaves two evenings ago. I reached out and opened my book. This work is an anthology of poetry and prose by the most famous French literati. Lamartine's "Lac" (1) was on the first leaf I translated. After repeating that elegant poem half book, half by rote, who knows how many times, I considered three or five pages from romantic and realist artists such as Baudelaire, Musset, Hugo, Banville, Prudhomme, Coppee. As I turned every leaf, I was as if I had put a world of lore in my mind. I was looking for a precedent among Ottoman literary works for the wonderful things I read, and took pride as much as I could. I wanted to turn some verses and couplets into Turkish, and I was happy as I succeeded. Then again I came across a prose fragment of Lamartine, a lofty poem depicting a sunset in the Alps.
The poet that pink, blue, lilac dawns formed by the reflection of the scattered light particles of the setting sun on the snow and ice on the mountain tops; The beauty of those pure and clear lakes that shine like a mirror decorated with jewels on the magnificent foothills of the mountains; he described and embodied the sky in color thousands of times every second so that when I read the last words, I saw myself across those snowy mountains, among those colorful dawn (!).
In fact, I felt a strangeness at that moment and wanted to give it a blackout caused by the euphoria of my emotions. However, time was delayed, it was evening and the sun was setting. As soon as I see the real and magnificent painting before my eyes ... Oh my dear! That magical landscape that drowned my dream with dreams full of lights - like the last glimmer of the last lights of the feast that could not hold against the sunrise - was fading. Those mountains, those lakes, those dawn, those huts - like pieces of colored paper that had fallen in front of a hurricane - were flying away.
A gentle wind turns the leaves of the book that has fallen out of my hand on the land; the voice that came out of this was like moans of helplessness.
On the way home, I was saying to myself: "No doubt; the most powerful writers are also novice disciples of the place where power is manifested! ''
Mehmet Tevfik
Tevfik Fikret's real name is Mehmet and his pen name is Tevfik. In his early years, he used Mehmet Fikret instead of Tevfik Fikret.
(1) The poem "Le Lac" (Lake) by Lamartine, one of the leading names of French romanticism.
* Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem, Takdir-i Elhan, p.11. (Author's note) [Mahmut Bey Printing House, 1301 (1886)]
Photograph: Servet-i Fünun (thinking that it will reflect the period - Arabas Sevdası '' Bihruz was a traveler on the countryside '') signature - Diran Çırakyan
Source
Turkish Literature Classics - 43, Tevfik Fikret Collective Stories - For You
Turkey Isbank Cultural Publications.
https://www.iskultur.com.tr/senin-icin.aspx
After taking this book with you, which allows us to reach original text in today's Turkish, hope that you go on a tour in Burgaz island and search for Tevfik Fikret's observation place where he watched the sunset off Ayastefanos (Yeşilköy), perhaps with broken branches and pine leaves for the pillow he has prepared., which are still untouched.
Thanks & AÅŸiyan Museum I would like to thank my collector friend AÅŸiyan Museum Manager Ata Yersu for his kind help in finding the relevant issue of Malumat Newspaper.
After the Burgaz island tour, you can continue the traces of Tevfik Fikret with AÅŸiyan Museum, where the poet revealed parts of his own soul while drawing the house plans.
Museum info: https://istanbul.ktb.gov.tr/TR-165467/asiyan-muzesi.html
