Mehmet Yashin (Yaşın) was born in Nicosia in 1958. An author of contemporary Turkish poetry, he is one of Cyprus’s internationally known writers. Born into a cosmopolitan Turkish Cypriot family, he witnessed the island’s intercommunal conflicts during his childhood. In 1976, two years after the Turkish invasion divided the island, he went to Turkey to study international relations at Ankara University. He then completed a master’s degree in political history at Istanbul University. His first poetry collection was banned by the Turkish military junta that carried out the 1980 coup d’état. After his deportation from Turkey in 1986 for what was described as his “subversive” poetry, he went to Britain, where he began postgraduate studies at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at Birmingham University. He worked on Cypriot and Turkish literatures and cultures and received a postgraduate degree from Middlesex University, London. He also studied Greek language and literature at the University of Athens. In 1993, following the lifting of his deportation order, he returned to Istanbul, but left for London in 1996. He has taught comparative literature, translation studies, creative writing, Cypriot studies, and contemporary Turkish literature at various universities in Britain, Turkey, and Cyprus. Since 2002 he has been living in Cambridge, Nicosia, and Istanbul.

Yashin has published nine poetry collections, three novels, three essay collections, three anthologies, and studies of Cypriot poetry in Istanbul. His books have played an important role in redefining the literary traditions of Cyprus and Turkey. He is known as one of the leading figures of post-1974 Cypriot poetry and literature as well as post-1980s Turkish poetry. In his poems and critical essays, which reflect a different understanding of post-1980 Turkey, he develops concepts and approaches to literature such as “stepmother tongue,” “the center-periphery,” and “Turkish minority literature.” He is the first “outside” poet and author to have been widely recognized as a contemporary author of Turkish literature, despite not having been born in Turkey and not being a Turkish citizen. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages, and his books have been published in various countries. His poems have been set to music and adapted for the stage as well as the visual arts. In 1985 Yashin won the Turkish Academy Prize for Poetry and the A. Kadir Poetry Prize. In 1995 he received the Cevdet Kudret Novel Prize, and in 2005 he won the Memet Fuat Literary Criticism and Study Prize.

Mehmet Yashin: He Could Never Be a Poet of One Country[i]

Zohar Kohavi

Mehmet Yashin (Yaşın) was born in Nicosia in 1958. An author of contemporary Turkish poetry, he is one of Cyprus’s internationally known writers. Born into a cosmopolitan Turkish Cypriot family, he witnessed the island’s intercommunal conflicts during his childhood. In 1976, two years after the Turkish invasion divided the island, he went to Turkey to study international relations at Ankara University. He then completed a master’s degree in political history at Istanbul University. His first poetry collection was banned by the Turkish military junta that carried out the 1980 coup d’état. After his deportation from Turkey in 1986 for what was described as his “subversive” poetry, he went to Britain, where he began postgraduate studies at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at Birmingham University. He worked on Cypriot and Turkish literatures and cultures and received a postgraduate degree from Middlesex University, London. He also studied Greek language and literature at the University of Athens. In 1993, following the lifting of his deportation order, he returned to Istanbul, but left for London in 1996. He has taught comparative literature, translation studies, creative writing, Cypriot studies, and contemporary Turkish literature at various universities in Britain, Turkey, and Cyprus. Since 2002 he has been living in Cambridge, Nicosia, and Istanbul.

Yashin has published nine poetry collections, three novels, three essay collections, three anthologies, and studies of Cypriot poetry in Istanbul. His books have played an important role in redefining the literary traditions of Cyprus and Turkey. He is known as one of the leading figures of post-1974 Cypriot poetry and literature as well as post-1980s Turkish poetry. In his poems and critical essays, which reflect a different understanding of post-1980 Turkey, he develops concepts and approaches to literature such as “stepmother tongue,” “the center-periphery,” and “Turkish minority literature.” He is the first “outside” poet and author to have been widely recognized as a contemporary author of Turkish literature, despite not having been born in Turkey and not being a Turkish citizen. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages, and his books have been published in various countries. His poems have been set to music and adapted for the stage as well as the visual arts. In 1985 Yashin won the Turkish Academy Prize for Poetry and the A. Kadir Poetry Prize. In 1995 he received the Cevdet Kudret Novel Prize, and in 2005 he won the Memet Fuat Literary Criticism and Study Prize.

***

Mehmet Yashin’s biography appears here not as an independent paragraph, but at the beginning of my text. Although one could say that an author’s background is always relevant to his or her poetry, in the case of Yashin, his background is particularly present, and Yashin himself argues that much more attention should be paid to the author’s personal experiences.[ii]

Yashin has wandered between languages, nationalities, cultures, and countries. He is a wanderer, and like many wanderers Yashin has experienced exile. Wanderers are both insiders and outsiders, and thus two of their characteristics are the ability to absorb language, customs, and culture and the ability to question conventions. One can describe the wanderer as an “unraveling type,” as Yashin does in his work, who lives on the “imaginary seam” between cities, states, and countries, and between the local and the global. This characteristic makes the wanderer a permanent stranger in the local dimension, which is populated by native people with native customs. But it also makes him at home in the cosmopolitan dimension—that very place that is a hodgepodge of all places—whose customs come from somewhere else, whose people and customs belong mainly to a place where they are the locals, a dimension with jumbled borders that from the outset is considerably “unraveled.”

The problem is that being a family member of this cosmopolitan dimension is like wandering the world without being a citizen of any state. At the outset of his journey, the wanderer sets out for the world from a particular locality in which he is at home. But what is that local experience for Yashin? On the face of it, it seems that Yashin has found a cosmopolitan citizenship, because he testifies that for him “cosmopolitanism” refers to the people in his place of birth and their way of life.[iii] Yashin grew up in Neapolis, a mixed neighborhood on the outskirts of Nicosia, alongside Armenians, Maronites, Britons, Italians, Greeks, and others. Sometimes they intermarried, and so it happened that his relatives were from different communities. In this sense one might say that part of Yashin’s biography—the multilingual neighborhood he lived in, with its various cultures and nationalities (which recreated to a great extent the diversity of his family)—made him into a person whose cosmopolitanism seemed to have an element of home and homeland that gave him a kind of place in which it would seem he could feel comfortable, at home.

But perusal of Yashin’s words—both written and verbal—leads to the conclusion that he does not see cosmopolitanism as a home. For example, in “Someone Else’s Father,” which appears in this issue, he writes:

When you lift the cover of the book you wrote, you enter your own country

and page after page, in the streets of London and Paris,

you will walk as if prowling through their colonies,

and then the crowds will come into desolation . . .

It seems as if the crowd, the hodgepodge of people, the diversity, becomes a wasteland, as the lack of localization wreaks disaster. That is because, in a certain sense, precisely since cosmopolitanism is “every place,” it is also “no place.” We can remember fondly many places we have lived, whether by choice or by coercion, but we can feel belonging and deep yearning for only a few places. Language is also a problem in this context because although Yashin has a mother tongue in its usual sense, it seems that he has other very close languages, “uncle tongues.” Here too one finds the principle of otherness in Yashin. In his poem “Wartime” he writes:

. . . I was often unsure in which language to shed tears,
the life I lived wasn’t foreign, but one of translation—
my mother-tongue one thing, my motherland another,
and I, again, altogether different . . .

And indeed, Yashin argues that the stance of his oeuvre is that of “the other.” He says that in every place he is “the other,” and he stresses that his “otherness” does not change as he moves from place to place.[iv] Wandering too finds expression here, because this otherness, unlike that of the tourist, is perpetually restless, moving hither and thither because it has no stable anchor, or any anchor at all.

In a certain technical sense, one might refer to Yashin’s “otherness” principle as a “metasimile,” as if the only constant thing about him is mixture. This is apparent in his words:

Today’s national, ethnic and religious identity definitions have been internalized and normalized by many people, as if they were natural. But I have no memory about those defined identities from my early childhood. For instance, I didn’t know that we were Turkish before the EOKA attacks. Because languages and religions were also mixed. While our Armenian neighbours spoke perfect Turkish, my cousin’s wife didn’t know Turkish, only English. I remembered how frequently we went to Agios Andreas, the Greek Orthodox church, for the wedding and baptism ceremonies of our neighbours. In turn, because of Turkish secularism, none of the social occasions we attended involved us going to the mosque. I went to a mosque for the first time while I was in secondary school, together with my class to make a painting of the Saint Sophia Cathedral, which was converted into a mosque by the Ottomans in the 16th century.[v]

In other words, again everything is jumbled; even basic concepts such as “nationality,” “language,” and “sovereign” take on a different flavor, as if it were molecular food—a dish whose form is familiar but surprises you with a taste that is totally different from what you expected.

Yashin’s argument regarding the naturalness we ascribe to the definitions and divisions of identities goes well with his argument taken from the same lecture cited above on the relation between literature and theory. In his lecture Yashin argues that his students obstinately continue analyzing texts according to theory, and that if the text does not fit the theory, something is wrong with the book or novel, but not with the theory. This is a significant statement on the basis of which one could develop an interesting discussion, but in our context we must notice the depth of the problem he is pointing out because he uses the word “wrong” and not, for example, “incompatible.” Yashin thinks that the reason for this situation is that theory apparently takes precedence, at least perceptually, over literature. He says that the students do not usually use a book as a source of inspiration that is contrary to the theory; they prefer to pigeonhole the author in advance. He adds that the students are not seeking new ideas or styles; instead, they search for a discourse to which the work can be ascribed—a discourse that already exists in their consciousness, a discourse that is bounded like localization. These two arguments, one of which appears in the quotation above and the other that I have just mentioned, are compatible with the nomadic foundation that I point out in Yashin, which refuses to surrender to borders laid out by humans—such as the borders between countries and between nations—and he can only adhere to the independence of thought. In Yashin’s case a large part of the questioning of what exists, and the unraveling of it, is conducted in various languages that sometimes generate wordplay, and also—as in one of the poems that appear in this issue—by writing one language in the alphabet of another.

Above I argued that being at home in the cosmopolitan dimension is like roaming the world without being a citizen of any country. Sometimes it seems that Yashin’s writing, with its strong biographical basis, is an attempt to give cosmopolitanism content, to issue himself a cosmopolitan passport—that is, a document that will grant him not only cosmopolitanism but also citizenship, or localization, in this dimension.

Notes:

[i] The title is a paraphrase of a verse in one of Yashin’s poems, “Wartime,” part of which is quoted below. The original verse is, “I could never be the poet of any country.”

[ii] See Yashin’s lecture, “Writing from a Mediterranean Island: In-Between Languages and Literary Spaces,” Mediterranean Topographies Workshop, Center for European Studies, University of Michigan, March 22, 2012, http://youtu.be/E63PS3O9IqQ.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Quoted from a summary of Yashin’s lecture (see note 2), http://www.academia.edu/7201891/writing_from_a_mediterranean_island_between_languages_and_literary_spaces.

Someone Else’s Father

Mehmet Yashin

Translated by Linda Stark

“Look,” he said as if whispering with a metallic voice from the back of his throat, “a poet can’t have a father; if he does he won’t have any poetry.” And then, looking into my eyes, he added with a voice whose light was fading, “It’s much more fitting to converse with someone else’s father.” . . . I laughed it off: “If the father is into poetry, he wouldn’t want his son to be a better poet than himself; if he’s outside it, he wouldn’t want it anyway.” And he replied, half jokingly, “But he might want his daughter to be a poetess.” I was afraid that he might start talking about Oedipus as he struggled with the saline tube going down his throat, so I struck up a conversation on how, as a child, he took care of his daughter, whom he stopped seeing ages ago. . . . I think he wanted to speak in Turkish, in the “languageofthedead.” Because, even though it really wasn’t the right time, instead of his daughter he started talking about my mother, who is his cousin.

i.

You must have called

at a moment when you could see both the ghosts and me

to deliver a message to my mother . . .

The tie of blood gushing from wrists cut into

a multilingual kinship

blown like a slap on the face of the earth,

the red stain on those

who believe not to have any carnage on their hands

and the urinary tubing beneath the bed

clouds the rose-scented glory of poetry.

Maintenant la Mort est une comédienne

qui a posé une rose entre ses cheveux[1]

inside the garden of Babylon where they still distill rosewater.

ii.

You let them console themselves with their country

those who were willing to be expelled from paradise,

national tradition is a common bad

if you share it the angels take offense . . .

(If you can’t protect yourself from your own community

you can’t protect yourself from any evil.)

Where you were born, where you died, these no longer matter

for now you are elsewhere.

When you lift the cover of the book you wrote, you enter your own country

and page after page, in the streets of London and Paris,

you will walk as if prowling through their colonies,

and then the crowds will come into desolation . . .

(There must be reasons for shutting oneself up in this godforsaken place

reasons that, no doubt, are nobody’s business.)

iii.

Your own voice gives you a headache

as if others had been shouting at you,

you get tired of the movements you make.

It’s true that you are on your own here

but you can’t be yourself

and you can’t be someone else. Şu olsun bu olsun,

intihar kaçınılmazdır bir şair için[2]

and there is no way of shedding light on it

every death is murder.

iv.

You know how women have these dark places

that draw men inside . . . The way a tree hollow

can be a shelter for a fox

and a prison.

In the forest where you lost your way

if you were to learn the tricks of the trade

you wouldn’t live long enough

for all the medicinal plants with their thousands of scents

and the footprints of the small-headed animals,

and then the twin stars of the earth

if only you would raise your head.

And then there are the violets with their evening perfumes

in all sorts of bedrooms

fluids that, yet beautiful at night,

smell wretchedly by day

and there are so many other things about humankind

that you would call neither good nor bad

if only you would take a closer look . . .

. . . in the end I become you him or her and everything is one

in one universe

as souls pass from one rose garden to the next.

v.

And with your tongue you enter one’s privacy,

as you translate yourself from one tongue to the other

and as you twist and turn the tongue like a wine opener

to open your heart

so that maybe the Secret Word inside you will make itself heard

with enraptured associations,

while those who twist and turn and translate you thumb through the dictionary

as if the poet could write without a second thought

as if what you conceived were not a poem, your life story . . .

You know how they call the rose “triantafillo”

there where you smelled it for the first time,

while leaves of words that open petal after petal

allude to another word

you know how hidden verses appear

from beneath the lines concealed by the word in sight.

Hey, what child are you fooling again

by turning into a dormitory the hospital where you came to die

hoping that maybe you will be fooled as much, every evening

you read a different tale

with only pictures

from the memory book, you laugh as roses and roses of petal leafs open up

always halfway . . .

vi.

The rhythm of the sun changes on the same train rails

from north to south

the lines of a soul . . . Its image hidden, its path unknown

έtsi eίne o QάnatoV![3]

(You look at him as if asking something

just as Death is about to take you

as if there were an answer you wanted to be reminded of,

a poem? . . . So be it

and let those who die die in peace,

and those allowed to live live in peace.)

He holds you by one hand and Death by the other.

And when the three of you are like that, hand in hand, the energy

of the same life and death flows from one to the other.

But in the waiting room where Death is seated

when he throws himself out of the hospital

and the moment he sets foot on this-world

the poem is cut short . . .  Of course, it’s easy,

in the final scene of the film, to forgive someone else’s father

instead of my own.

7.

[Let’s keep this part between us

and someone else write what follows,

as you know, every child needs a father

and every fledgling poet a riddle.]

Amiens-Paris-Montpellier-Béziers-Cambridge-Nicosia, 2010

[1] Now, Death is an actress

who has placed a rose in her hair

[2] This or that,

suicide is inevitable for a poet

[3] That’s what Death is!

The Lord of Laurels

Mehmet Yashin

[1]
Translated by Linda Stark

THE LORD OF LAURELS i.
I just called Yorgos to ask him what was taking them so long.
[He said he was in Larissa, striving
to decipher a Byzantine inscription on a stone, with Cybele and Maria.
The stone in a Mevlevi shrine bombed last year,
was in a tunnel entering the Ottoman cellar that had suddenly split open.]
“And we were planning to be back in Rhodes by this evening.”
Who knows how many passengers will stay on this ship
going back to Levantia [Polyxena,
our primary school principal Savalaş Bey and his older sister Mürüde ’anım,
Aunt Miranda that is; and a few more Thessalonians,
Angeliki and family, and the neighbors who, on occasion,
could return to the closed family house on the Princes’ Islands . . .] We are souls,
light, left suspended in the air, from a life whose star was extinguished, i n t h e w a t e r
guided by the wisdom of a stone, round and round we turn in our own void.
Oh dear, said a voice as I was on the phone with Yorgos,
“Watch out for the wall!” Byzantium continues to collapse and we,
the star, cross, and moon engraved on the stone in the void
of a spiral stairwell. [Those souls of Rûmi, turned Turks, made Hellenes,
the English daughter of a Mevlevi who came turning
and whirling from Karaman, that’s who my mother was,
Akhi on one side, beloved grandchild of Mufti Raci Efendi
esteemed poet of the Shu’ara
on the other side, a blond landlord from the Promised Land
brought down by the Lusignans on the way back to Paris.]
On the Athalassa Farm the crows would chase him, turning, whirling above him “Ata’s Halo! Auntie’s Halo! . . .” I am sick and tired of your legends Gentlemen
and that is my conundrum.

LORD OF LAURELS ii.
Riding a field seahorse, donned in his fish scale armor, like Khidr
my dear friend Yorgos came to the rescue with one phone call: We’re still on our way, he said,
we’ll talk at length later. In a marshy green place
there is a rocky gorge where the goats await,
you know, the way a knight waits for his savior, the lord of dates, carob,
and laurels. Alright, I said, I’ll wait. [God,
I am so lonely.]
iii.




If only the grass of immortality did not grow on my grave,
And in my eternal sleep, words in their letters appeared to me all dressed up

I was alone, but those around me pretended to know me.

LORD OF LAURELS iv.
[I am still here . . . but where is this?]
I am the Princess who waits by herself and her knight
who vanished, at a loss with his horse, I, the very dragon itself.
Were I to kill the dragon I would become the very dragon itself
so as to muster the strength to kill myself.
I am all that has been depicted: the princess, the castle, the marsh in the valley,
the knight, like Khidr, approaching in a dancing stride; in a dance with the dragon . . .
the lance, the crimson cape, and the invisible phone in his pocket.
I am an empty table for one, the fairy-tale bookcase that was burned
and a signed poem left hanging on the wall
[Yorgos, I, a poem from who knows where . . .]
A poem like death beyond all control
which is no longer threatened by the wicked king who had me killed,
which, by death born from the dragon-teeth, is liberated.
With wingedfish ghosts in the air we are dancing
the canopied sea and smell of laurel on the water wafting.
[I am at a loss, one with loss, loss is within me, I am within.]
The universe flows into the Nile, in the empty void full of souls all green
the merman, that’s what I am, a tongue like a tail that has lost its body.

-Bethlehem-Antioch-the village of Karor/Upper Nile-
Alexandria-London, 1999–2000

Notes:

[1] I am unable to die, said Khidr, I can’t keep up with death, even though I was slain!
Is it the murderer God is punishing, or is it me . . . Though I want to, I can’t pass away.
(Note: These lines are written in Karamanid: Turkish written in Greek script.)

[2] Apparently I was in another time when they woke me up.