Critical Survey of Poetry: Greek Poets by Rosemary Canfield Reisman

Author:Rosemary Canfield Reisman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Salem Press
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

PRISON POEMS

During Hikmet’s longest period of imprisonment, between 1938 and 1950, works displaying other facets of his poetic consciousness were composed. His outlook seemed to become more deeply personal, though perhaps not so brash and self-assertive as in some of his first poems. His meditations on the springtime reveal a sense of yearning and melancholy that was previously absent. For a time, he was held in solitary confinement. He wrote of singing to himself and watching shadows on the wall; simple things began to matter more to him. There are a number of touching passages in prison poems that he addressed to Piraye, his second wife; brief, bittersweet phrases recall their shared joys together, aspects of her appearance, and simple pleasures that mattered most to him.

The long period of his incarceration led to some brooding reflections on the transitory and changeless issues of this life. In some poems, there is speculation on the seasons that have come and gone, children who have been conceived and grown since he entered prison; mountains in the distance, however, remain fixed points separated by specific spatial intervals. There are also some ironic musings on the fates of common criminals from among his fellow prisoners: One of them was held for murder but was paroled after seven and one-half years; after a second, much shorter, sentence for smuggling, he was released for good and eventually married. The couple’s child would be born while much of Hikmet’s term, as a political prisoner, still remained to be served.

Angina pectoris, followed by a heart attack, aroused uncertainty about the author’s physical condition. He wrote poems reaffirming the necessity to go on living, particularly with half his heart devoted to social concerns in Turkey or to political struggles in Greece and China. Some works that begin by marking the passage of time in prison contain brief but intense reactions to events of World War II, including bombing raids, the liberation of concentration camps at Dachau, and the dawn of the nuclear age.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.