Tevfik Fikret

Poet (b. 24 December 1867, İstanbul - d. 19 August 1915, Istanbul). He began his education in Aksaray Valide Secondary School and graduated from Galatasaray High School (1888). He worked in the Foreign Affairs Consultation Office as a civil servant. He left this position and his position at the Grand Vizier Secretary’s Office because he became uninterested (1889). However, because of the bad economical conditions, he was obliged to work again in his last place of work a year later and in addition, he gave lectures on writing and French at Gedikpaşa School of Commerce. Although he became a Turkish teacher in the primary department of Galatasaray High School (1892), he left his job, because the government reduced civil servants’ salaries in order to meet the deficit in the budget (1895). The next year, he began to manage the periodical Servet-i Fünûn, which was owned by Ahmet İhsan (7 February 1896). In the same year, he became a Turkish teacher at Robert College. He left Servet-i Fünûn, because he fell out with its owner and he retreated to Rumelihisarı to his house, which he named Aşiyan (Nest, 1901). In this period, he wrote poems that criticized the rule of Abdulhamid.

After the declaration of the Constitutional Monarchy, he began to publish the newspaper Tanîn together with Hüseyin Cahit and Hüseyin Kâzım. However, after a short time he left the newspaper because he gave up supporting the Union and Progress Party. He became the Director of Galatasaray High School (1909). He was in disagreement with the Minister of Education of the period Hayrullah Efendi, and he resigned from his post (1910). He continued to teach at Robert College until he died. First, he was buried in Eyüp Graveyard, and then he was removed to his house, Aşiyan. Aşiyan became a museum after his death.

He began writing poetry when he was a student in Galatasaray, and with the influence of Muallim Naci he produced poems in accordance with the Divan* tradition in his early times. But he was “the leader of the Scientific Wealth movement as well as a pioneer of ideas and who defended westernization and was also one of the greatest poets of the period who brought form and essential innovation to Turkish poetry” (Atilla Özkırımlı).

He was one of the two greatest poets who used prosodic meter in that period, the other was Mehmet Akif. Tevfik Fikret made Turkish poetry more natural by making verse closer to prose. His themes were motherland, nation, love of human beings and his reactions to political events. The complexity of his use of the language prevent his poems from being easily read even nowadays. Some poets (A. Kadir, Ahmet Muhip Dranas, Ceyhun Atuf Kansu) tried to adapt his poems to contemporary Turkish. Tevfik Fikret wrote all of his poems in prosodic meter, although but in his later period he compiled nearly thirty poems written in syllabic meter in the children’s book Şermin (Şermin)

WORKS:

Rübâb-ı Şikeste (The Broken Stringed Instrument, 1900; with the name Tevfik Fikret / Kırık Saz, edited by Ahmet Muhip Dranas, 1975; simplified by Asım Bezirci and in its original name, 1984), Haluk'un Defteri (Haluk’s Notebook, 1911), Rübâbın Cevabı (The Answer of the Stringed Instrument, 1912), Şermin (Şermin, 1914), Tarih-i Kadim - Doksan Beşe Doğru (Ancient History–Towards Ninety Five, 1928; simplified by A. Kadir with the name Eski Çağlar Tarihi -The History of Ancient Times, 1967), Son Şiirler (Last Poems, edited by Cevdet Kudret, 1952), Tevfik Fikret ve Kitaplarında Çıkmayan Şiirleri (Tevfik Fikret and His Unpublished Poems, edited by. Murat Uraz, 1959), Tevfik Fikret Malumat'da (Tevfik Fikret in Malumat, his poems and articles published in the periodical Malumat, edited by İ. Hikmet Ertaylan, 1965), Tevfik Fikret Mirsad'da (Tevfik Fikret in Mirsad, his poems and articles published in the periodical Mirsad, edited by İ. Hikmet Ertaylan, 1965), Bütün Şiirleri (All of His Poems, poems simplified by Asım Bezirci; I: Geçmişten Gelen (Coming from the Past); II: Rübâb-ı Şikeste (The Broken Stringed Instrument), III: Hâlûk'un Defteri (Haluk’s Notebook), Şermin (Şermin), Son Şiirler (Last Poems), 1984).