YAŞAR KEMAL

AqxB...ce4w

17 Feb 2024

His real name is Kemal Sadık Göğceli. His first book, Lamentations I (1943), was published under this original name. He also used the pseudonyms Alageyik and Yusuf Karataylı. Turkmens lived in the village where he was born, who were settled there in 1895. Yaşar Kemal's family settled in this village in 1915. He lost his right eye in an accident when he was three and a half years old. When he was five years old, his father was killed by his son. After this incident, he became a stutterer and his stuttering lasted until he was twelve years old. However, as the only child of the family, he had a rich childhood and early youth in the natural environment of Çukurova. One day he sat at the feet of the saz poets, the other day he ran after a treasure hunter. He was equipped with the culture of Dadaloğlu, who sang the poem of the Karacaoğlan and Kozanoğlu rebellion (1865). He could not finish telling about this rich life experience and folk culture he acquired in his novels in the following years. Yaşar Kemal graduated from Kadirli Cumhuriyet Primary School (1938). He left the last year of Adana 1st Secondary School (1941). He worked in about forty jobs in Adana and its surroundings, such as farmhand, water guard, clerk, construction inspector, draftsman, shoemaker apprentice, and substitute teacher.

Yaşar Kemal married Tilda Hanım, a Spanish immigrant and the granddaughter of Abdulhamid's chief physician, Jak Mandil Pasha. From this marriage, which lasted about fifty years, a son named Raşit Gökçeli was born. Nine months after Tilda Hanım's death, he married Ayşe Seniha Baban (11 August 2001).

Yaşar Kemal, who spent his youth under police and gendarmerie pressure, was arrested in 1950 on the grounds that he was the founder of the Communist Party, was tried in the Kozan Criminal Court (April-May 1950), and was released after a while. He was prosecuted and tried for his articles in Ant magazine between 1967-69 . He was acquitted after being tried for five years in the High Criminal Court for his articles titled "Partners of the Bloody Power" and "Mosques Became Barracks" . Since his name was included in the wanted list following the Memorandum of March 12, 1971, he surrendered and spent a month in prison without question. A few days later, despite not knowing a foreign language, he was tried as the translator of the Fundamental Book of Marxism and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. This decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeals. The book was confiscated due to "Let the Cruelty Increase", one of his two articles in the book titled Freedom of Thought and Turkey, which consists of the writings of twenty-four authors, and he was tried together with other authors in the State Security Court on July 12, 1995, and was acquitted a few days later. He was tried on March 7, 1996 for his article "The Dark Sky Above Turkey" , and although the prosecutor requested acquittal at the first trial, the court sentenced him to one year and eight months in prison and a fine, but this sentence was later postponed. Yaşar Kemal was active in the Turkish Workers' Party (TİP) from its establishment until its closure.

During his childhood, Karacaoğlan grew up in Çukurova, where people who did not know poetry were shamed, listening to the folk poets and epic writers of the region. He also started singing poems when he was six or seven years old. At first, only children were listening to him, but then adults started to listen too. However, his mother did not want him to become a folk poet. However, even before his family migrated to Çukurova, the family was proudly talking about the fact that the famous Kurdish folk poet Abdale Zeyniki was a guest in their home. Yaşar Kemal, too, was influenced by Abdale Zeyniki in the house and the folk poets around him, and continued to write poetry. Thus, his name came to be Âşık Kemal. No one had any doubt that he would fall in love like Karacaoğlan. When he finished primary school, he had two options: He would either start secondary school in Adana or head to the mountains like other folk poets in the region. He made his decision to start secondary school. After writing poems in the path of folk poets for a short time, he decided to give up on this and follow the path of contemporary poets of the period.

Yaşar Kemal started to compile elegies from the public and other types of folklore in 1939-43. During this period, Köroğlu, like a dengbej (folk storyteller) wherever he went, would start by telling about his branches. Then he would compile them, especially by having women sing laments and stories. His literary life began with a poem published in Görüşler (1939), the magazine of Adana Community Center. His folklore compilation works, which he worked on for a long time, were also published in the same magazine. He published his poems under his real name in Ülkü, Kovan, Millet, Başpınar magazines (1942-43).

His first story was Dirty Story (1946), which he wrote at the age of twenty-three. In Kayseri, where he did his military service in those years, he had the opportunity to read the masterpieces of modern world literature. After his military service, he went to Istanbul and worked as a control officer in a French gas company for a year. He returned to Kadirli in 1948 and worked as a water guard in the rice fields. He wrote the story "Baby" and then "Dükkâncı" with the typewriter he bought at that time . In 1950, the townspeople reported that he was spying for Russia and he was arrested and tried, and he was imprisoned in Kozan for a while. After his release, he worked on folklore and wrote the novel Pomegranate Tree in the Mound in 1951. In the same year, he went to Istanbul again and worked at Cumhuriyet newspaper. He became widely known for his interviews published in this newspaper. He was among the founders of the weekly magazine Ant (1967-71) with his friends .

He increasingly turned to stories and novels. In 1950, he won the Varlık Novel Award with İnce Memed (first published in 1955), whose selection committee included Yakup Kadri, Ataç, Tanpınar, Reşat Nuri and Suut Kemal Yetkin. He became a world-renowned writer with the success of his first novel , İnce Memed, which was translated and published into twenty-three languages . He later wrote the second, third (1984) and fourth (1987) volumes of this novel. This novel, which reached its eighteenth edition in 1983, was filmed by Peter Ustinov in England the same year. Yaşar Kemal's success in this and his subsequent novels, as Hüseyin Atabaş stated in one of his articles; In addition to its linguistic virtuosity, it captures the people in the period of dissolution of feudalism, that is, in the 'historical transition process' ( Turkish Story and Novel in 2000 , 2000). On the other hand , in the background of İnce Memed , there are traces of Yaşar Kemal's childhood, which was spent in an environment where banditry was rampant.

As in Yaşar Kemal's novel Ortadirek , there is humanity's resistance in almost all of his novels. In Yer Demir Gök Bakır and Ölmezoto , the story of a person and a society creating a world of myth, a world of dreams to take shelter in when they are stuck in the face of reality, and the story of taking refuge in it is told. In summary, in almost all of his novels, Yaşar Kemal asks, in his own words, "How much do human beings live in dreams and how much do they live in the material realities we live in?" He searches for the answer to the question and comes to the conclusion that both are intertwined. In the Legend of Ağrıdağı, the Legend of Binboğalar, and even in Akçasazın Ağaları ; He wants to convey the limitlessness and interconnectedness of human beings' life in this dream, myth, tale, that is, a second world he creates: "If I consider myself a bit of a writer, it is because I consciously bring myth and dream to human reality. When people get stuck, they create a dream, a myth world for themselves and take shelter there. Man will continue to take refuge in myth and dreams until he finds out where he comes from and where he is going and until he overcomes his dissatisfaction. After that it will continue again. Because a person cannot get enough of the joy of life and the beauty of the world, even if he runs out and sinks..." (Alpay Kabacalı / Yaşar Kemal from A to Z, 2004). However, while doing this, he never broke away from the reality of life. He did not break away from the realities of life and his passion for nature until his trilogy of novels, Bir Ada Hikâyesi (An Island Story), the last of which was published in 2002 ( Look Where the Euphrates Water is Flowing Blood , When the Ant Drinks Water, Tanyeri Roosters ). “If you look at my novels and stories, there are two types of people who have weight. One for children, one for the elderly. I love children very much. I try to understand them more than loving them. (...) I don't look at it like a child, I don't look at it like a separate human species. Why? "I never believed that children were children the way people treated them." says.

Yaşar Kemal, İnce Memed was included among the six most successful novels by International PEN CLUB. It was published in Bulgarian in 1957 and in Russian in 1959. It was published in Braille alphabet. Yaşar Kemal, who won the 1974 Madaralı Novel Award for The Blacksmiths' Bazaar Murder , was given the French International Del Duca award in 1982 and the "Legion d'Honneur" medal by French President Mitterand in 1984. He also won the 1986 Orhan Kemal Novel Award with his novel Kale Kapısı . Some of the other awards he received: Commandeur Des Arts Et Des Lettres medal given by the French Minister of Culture (1988), TÜYAP People's Award (for the second time, 1988), Grand Prize of the Ministry of Culture (1993), Rüştü Koray Gift of the Civil Service Association (1994) etc. Journalists Association of Turkey, PEN Association, Writers Union of Turkey, Akademie Universalle des Cultures etc. is a member. He was among the world-famous Turkish writers in the 20th century. His works have been translated into many languages of the world.

Yaşar Kemal, one of the most famous writers of Turkish literature of the Republican period, died in Istanbul on February 28, 2015, in the hospital where he was treated. His body was buried in Zincirlikuyu Cemetery after the noon prayer at Teşvikiye Mosque.

“Yaşar Kemal started writing while he was in exchange with the folk literature of Anatolia. Since he was a true writer, he knew how to be inspired by the sensitivity of the language and the culture of the Turkish people, the only hero of his poetic epic.” (Jelila Hafsia,The Press, France)

“Yasar Kemal is not only Turkey's greatest novelist, but also a giant of world literature.” (Alain Bosquet, Magazine Littéraire , France)

“An open letter to the Nobel jury. Cast your vote for Yaşar Kemal... Today I will tell you about a novelist who I consider to be one of the greatest writers of his generation and age. I have no doubt that he will be mentioned together with Thomas Mann, Nikos Kazantzakis or Sinclair Lewis in the future. So powerful, so convincing...” (Alain Bosquet, Le Quotidien de Paris , France)

“Once again, it must be acknowledged that Yaşar Kemal is much more than an original, skillful or wise narrator. "The fact that there is no distance between the characters and what they say is perhaps due to the fact that his writing was born in relation to oral folk literature." ( Journal du Centre , France)

“Yaşar Kemal is a fearless critic of society. And a unique poet. “Anyone who reads it will be struck by his captivating, powerful storytelling ability.” ( Dagens Nyheter , Switzerland)

WORKS:

COMPILE: Laments I (under the name of Kemal Sadık Göğçeli, 1943) , The Sky Remained Blue (selections from folk literature, with Sabahattin Eyuboğlu, 1978) , Laments (1992) .

STORY: Sarı Hot (1952) , Teneke (long story, 1955) , All Stories (1962) , Tanyeri Horozları (2002).

NOVEL: İnce Memed I (1955) , Ortadirek (The Other Side of the Mountain: 1, 1960) , Yer Demir Gök Bakır (The Other Side of the Mountain: 2, 1963) , Three Anatolian Legends (1967) , Ölmez Otu (The Other Side of the Mountain: 3, 1968) , İnce Memed II (1969) , The Legend of Ağrıdağı (1970) , The Legend of Binboğalar (1971) , Çakırcalı Efe (1972) , Demirciler Çarşısı Cinayeti (Akçasazın Ağaları: 1, 1973) , Yusufçuk Yusuf (Akçasazın Ağaları: 2, 1975) , Al Gözlüm Seyreyle Salih (1976) , If They Kill the Snake (1976) , Birds Are Gone Too (1978) , Deniz Küstü (1978) , Yağmurcuk Kuşu (Kimsecik I, 1980) , Pomegranate Tree on the Mound (1982) , İnce Memed III (1984) , Kale Kapısı (Kimsecik II, 1985) , İnce Memed IV (1987) , Voice of Blood (Kimsecik III, 1991) , Euphrates Water is Flowing Blood, Look - Bir Ada Hikâyesi 1 (1998), Where the Ant Drinks Water - Bir Ada Hikâyesi 2 (2002) ) , Tanyeri Roosters - An Island Story 3 (2002) .

INTERVIEW: 50 Days in the Burning Forests (1955) , Çukurova Side by Side (1955) , Fairy Chimneys (1957) , This Land from End to End (1971) , A Cloud is Boiling (1974) , Soldiers of Allah (1978) , Conversations with Alain Bosquet (trans. Altan Gökalp, 1992) .

ESSAY: If the Stone Cracked (1961) , Salt in Honey (1974) , The Rot of the Tree (1980) , Those in the Yellow Notebook-Folklore Essays (ed. Alpay Kabacalı (2002) .