Poet (b. 24 December 1867, İstanbul - d. 19
August 1915, Istanbul). He began his education in
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
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Şiirleri (Tevfik Fikret and His Unpublished Poems, edited by.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).