Walt Whitman begins Leaves of Grass (deathbed edition) with:
One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far
The Female equally with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.
Nazim Hikmet begins his epic poem, Human Landscapes from my Country, with:
Haydar Pasha Station,
spring 1941,
********3 p.m.
On the steps, sun
****************fatigue
**********************and confusion.
A man
*****stops on the steps,
********thinking about something.
Thin.
Scared.
His nose is long and pointed,
and his cheeks are pockmarked.
The man on the steps,
*********Master Galip,
***************is famous for thinking strange thoughts:
Over the past year, year and a half, I have been spending a good amount of my energies reading up on Turkish literature and Turkish history. During the course of all this reading the thought has kept arising of the parallel between the US and Turkey. Now, as with any connection of this sort, the differences far outweigh any similarities. But I think the similarities are kind of interesting. So now to oversimplify both US and Turkish history…
First is the origin of the US and Turkey. The US was a secular nation that came out of a highly religious background; an early European culture moving (the government at least) away from the church. Turkey, likewise, is the first major Muslim country to become secular at the governmental level. Both countries have, ever since, dealt with the many complications and difficulties that arise from this decision to attempt a move towards secularity. Second is the founding father mythos. We have George Washington–the great general who fought off the British and became the first President. Turkey has Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who fought off the occupying forces after World War I and became the first President. These are two countries that identify (though still in a tug-of-war for both) with an ideal of secularity, that arose out of a fight for their own existence via expulsion, and consider a single figure as being the ‘father’ of the nation.
Now, let me start moving towards literature and poetry. Both America and Turkey come out of a rich literary history, but a history that both countries have also been separated from. Though British literature is connected to American history, there is also an otherness that we don’t identify with in the same way as a Brit. For Turkey, that literary history is Ottoman literature. Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has changed to the Latin alphabet and become a secular country. I am not knowledgeable enough to know the extent to which Ottoman literature has been disconnected, but from everything I’ve read there is a noticeable disconnect.
Both America and Turkey have poets that are, rightly or wrongly, considered the father-poet. What makes them this type of figure? Both Whitman and Hikmet took it upon themselves, at least to some extent, to define specifically what it is to be an American or a Turk, respectively. In both Whitman and Hikmet the idea of the individual becomes a primary focus. But how each poet deals with it is distinctly different.
So let’s go back to the Whitman opening. In these lines, and throughout Leaves of Grass, Whitman salutes the individual, the “I”. A “simple separate person” he claims. Except, other than Abraham Lincoln, there is almost never an individual mentioned, much less named. He might in a way gesture towards an actual individual:
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market,
I loiter injoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.
That seems like the creation of an individual. Except something is missing. This isn’t one specific butcher-boy. It is any butcher-boy. It is the archetype of a butcher-boy. Whitman includes no identifying characteristics, nothing that actually individuates this specific butcher-boy from any other butcher-boy anywhere else. An odd paradox begins to form, which becomes in Whitman a dialectic between the individual and the “en-masse”. This makes sense, in its own way, as a dealing with the paradox of democracy itself. But the individual in Whitman has very few individual markers. The individual, despite the supposed focus of “One’s Self I sing”, is quickly secondary to the union, as we see no individuals in any individual way.
How does Hikmet deal with the individual? Instead of creating the individual and immediately subsuming the individual into the group, instead of dealing with generalities and imprecise terms, Hikmet begins by naming a specific train station, a specific time, a specific train, and most importantly he names the first person who is seen. There is no group that the individuals completely identify with in Hikmet’s poem. There are a number of individuals who relate in different ways with the Turkish government–there are rich and educated, lower class service workers, peasants, and prisoners all included, with their various perspectives on their surrounding worlds acknowledged. Master Galip is not only named, he is specifically defined as a unique individual: he has a long nose, pockmarks on his cheek, is at this precise moment sitting on the steps, and moreover is known “for thinking strange thoughts.” The subsequent 30 or so lines give Galip’s life history from his birth up to the specific moment, 3 p.m., that the poem begins.
In Hikmet’s poem, characters continuously are introduced and almost without fail are described until they become a sharpened individual, distinct, with edges. What comes of this difference? The passage in time and history likely accounts for some of it. It is more difficult to write the largely hopeful poetry of Whitman after World War I and II. Hikmet also had a much different relationship with his country than Whitman did. Whereas Whitman was, though controversial, at the least an accepted citizen, Hikmet was forced into exile due to his socialist leanings. He is writing of Turkey and Turkishness as one who is not allowed to be Turkish any more.
The difference in political leanings I think might be at least partially a source of this difference. Democracy is in the power of the multitude specifically as one. There is the assumption that the end result is towards a singular unity. Communism/socialism also focuses on the group and on the many, but it is of the many as many, not as one. There is, of course, still the unity of the nation, but that unity doesn’t seem as tied to the idea of everyone seeing themselves. Democracy does not make the claim for everyone as being truly equal–just receiving equal rights and opportunities. Communism, to a greater degree at least, makes the claim that everything should be equal (or more equal) and equivalent. The process of individuating, in that theoretical democratic environment, can be through what you are, not who you are–the butcher-boy, for instance. The details of the individual as a human, though, are necessary to differentiate the individual in a socialist frame of mind. Socialism encourages, or at least can encourage, the desire to see each individual as an individual in order to give the formerly dispossessed the belief that they are the same through their individuality as those who hold power.
I’m not sure to what extend my argument works, as communist states seem to be the ones that tend towards a rhetoric of group-as-individual, whereas America and many other democratic nations have embraced the individual to an extreme degree…But that would be assuming that Whitman and Hikmet were seers, not poets responding to their local. And I’m not entirely sure that my cribbing of democratic and socialist perspectives are entirely accurate. But it is all just a thought experiment, a comparative discussion (I wouldn’t even go so far as to call this an analysis…)
I don’t mean, then, to in any way compare the two as if they are writing from the same place. This quandary has always been a difficulty with comparative analysis, I think. There is no justification that could be considered, well, justifiable. A study of this sort is inherently purposeless except, perhaps, in a better understanding of each body of work in their own individuality. I had not realized the absolute lack of individuality in Whitman until I looked at him in comparison to Hikmet. The buzz-words of Whitman’s individualism had veiled how little he really constructs an individual in an individual manner.
The American poet, actually, now that I think about it that in some ways Hikmet might seem more akin to is Frank O’Hara, a complete insistence on the particular surroundings, on naming, specifying, and individuating…I think that it is interesting how looking at American poetry after especially William Carlos Williams, such as the work of the New York School poets, many of these same ideas of viewing the individual crop up. That comparison from the similar time-periods would probably be rather productive as well…
Filed under: Poetry , Frank O'Hara, Nazim Hikmet, Poetry, The Individual, Turkish Poetry, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams
