Things I Didn't Know I Loved: Selected Poems

by Nâzım Hikmet

English, Turkish (translation)

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published May 1, 1976

About the author

Nazim Hikmet was born on January 15, 1902 in Salonika, Ottoman Empire (now Thessaloníki, Greece), where his father served in the Foreign Service. He was exposed to poetry at an early age through his artist mother and poet grandfather, and had his first poems published when he was seventeen.

Raised in Istanbul, Hikmet left Allied-occupied Turkey after the First World War and ended up in Moscow, where he attended the university and met writers and artists from all over the world. After the Turkish Independence in 1924 he returned to Turkey, but was soon arrested for working on a leftist magazine. He managed to escape to Russia, where he continued to write plays and poems.

In 1928 a general amnesty allowed Hikmet to return to Turkey, and during the next ten years he published nine books of poetry—five collections and four long poems—while working as a proofreader, journalist, scriptwriter, and translator. He left Turkey for the last time in 1951, after serving a lengthy jail sentence for his radical acts, and lived in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, where he continued to work for the ideals of world Communism.

After receiving early recognition for his patriotic poems in syllabic meter, he came under the influence of the Russian Futurists in Moscow, and abandoned traditional forms while attempting to “depoetize” poetry.

Many of his works have been translated into English, including Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse (2009), Things I Didn’t Know I Loved (1975), The Day Before Tomorrow (1972), The Moscow Symphony (1970), and Selected Poems (1967). In 1936 he published Seyh Bedreddin destani (“The Epic of Shaykh Bedreddin”) and Memleketimden insan manzaralari (“Portraits of People from My Land”).

Hikmet died of a heart attack in Moscow in 1963. The first modern Turkish poet, he is recognized around the world as one of the great international poets of the twentieth century.

Reviews

[Vivian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very lyrical and smooth reading in this small compilation of Hikmet's poetry. His communist affiliation is evident in many pieces, most obviously his prison pieces feature it prominently. Born at the turn of the twentieth century in Thessaloniki what was still the Ottoman Empire, but which is now Greece and not Turkey. You live long enough and everything changes hands. He spoke in his poem entitled Autobiography that he writes of absences, and there is a poignancy to his writing that is palpable. He presents sentiments simply and beautifully.

I Stepped Out of My Thoughts of Death

I stepped out of my thoughts of death
and put on the June leaves of the boulevards
those of May after all were too young for me
a whole summer is waiting for me
a city summer with its hot stones
and asphalt with its ice-cold pop ice cream
sweaty movie houses thick-voiced actors from the provinces
with its taxis that disappear suddenly on big football days
and with its trees that turn to paper under the lights of the Hermitage garden
and maybe with Mexican songs of Ghana tom-toms
and with the poems that I’m going to read on the balcony
and with your hair cut a little shorter
a city summer is waiting for me
I put on the June leaves of the boulevards
I stepped out of my thoughts of death

24 May 1962

[Luke T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glad to have discovered Hikmet. Poems I liked: "Letters from a Man in Solitary", "A Spring Writing Left in the Middle", "26 September 1945", "Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison", "Letter from Istanbul", "The Last Bus", "Autobiography" and "Things I Didn't Know I Loved"

The poem from which the book derives its name is particularly powerful.

[M a r m a v i · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0

[Lucy Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

On living is a special poem.

“Living is no laughing matter: \ you must live with great seriousness”

[Stosch · Rating 5 out of 5]

starts off slow, almost returned it to library, glad i didnt. tremendous stuff.