A Picture of Happiness

Aysel K. Basci

This is the story of a poetic dialog between two close friends: one a renowned poet, the other a brilliant painter.

Nâzım Hikmet Ran’s (1902-1963) life story reads like a fascinating suspense novel. The son of an Ottoman government official, Nâzım was born in Salonica (Thessaloniki in today’s Greece) and educated in Istanbul, where he graduated from the Ottoman Naval Academy in 1918. After briefly serving in the navy, he became seriously ill and was exempted from military service. He became a poet and writer instead. 

In 1921, Nâzım left Istanbul with his good friend Vâlâ Nûreddin, who was also a poet and a writer. The two went to Ankara, headquarters of the Turkish liberation movement, to join the Turkish War of Independence. There, they met the leader of the movement, Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), who asked them to write a poem that would inspire Turkish volunteers in Istanbul and elsewhere to join their struggle. The poem they wrote was much appreciated and, rather than being sent to the front as soldiers, they were appointed teachers in a college in Bolu. Because of their communist views, however, Nâzım and Vâlâ did not get along with the conservative officials in Bolu. After a few months, they decided to go to Batumi in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. From there, in 1922, they went to Moscow, where Nâzım began to study Economics and Sociology. During this period, he was highly influenced by the ideological vision of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

Nâzım returned to Istanbul in 1928. As a poet, the 1930s were his most prolific years, and his poetry became very popular. But in 1938, when his work began circulating among naval cadets, he was arrested and sentenced to 28 years in prison for ‘inciting the military to communism.’ Many of his poems, screenplays, and memoirs were written while serving time in prison. In 1950, an ongoing campaign to free Nâzım became an international affair and achieved its goal with the support of many artists, including Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Months after his release from prison, fearing for his life, Nâzım escaped from Turkey in a small fishing boat and was rescued by a Romanian freighter in the Black Sea. Although he lived the rest of his life in Moscow, Nâzım never stopped longing for his homeland.

In his lengthy 1961 poem, Straw-Blond, which he wrote as a tribute to his beloved wife while visiting Paris, Nâzım Hikmet asked his friend Abidin Dino if he could paint the picture of happiness. Here are Nâzım’s words: 

[…]

Can you paint the picture of happiness, Abidin?

But without taking the easy way

Not the picture of an angelic mother nursing her rosy-cheeked baby

Nor of apples on top of a white cloth

Nor of a red fish darting through water bubbles in an aquarium

Can you paint the picture of happiness, Abidin?

[…]

Abidin Dino (1913-1993) was a pioneer of modern Turkish art who left his mark not only as a painter and caricaturist, but also as a literary figure. He was born in Istanbul to art-loving parents of Albanian descent. His father was a civil servant at the Ottoman court. Soon after Abidin’s birth, his father was posted to Geneva, and then to Paris, where Abidin spent his childhood. He returned to Istanbul in 1925. After the early death of both his parents, he dropped out of school and began to paint, draw caricatures, and write literature.

In 1930, Abidin met Nâzım Hikmet, who was already an accomplished poet. They soon became good friends. Abidin designed covers and illustrations for some of Nâzım’s poetry books. A few years later, Abidin decided to go to the Soviet Union to receive formal training in art and all aspects of cinematic art forms. For the next four years, he lived in Leningrad (today’s St. Petersburg). There, along with his training, he embraced the ideals of socialism and lived by them for the rest of his life. 

Before the onset of World War II, all foreign students studying art in the Soviet Union were expelled – so Abidin had to leave the Soviet Union without completing his studies. He moved to Paris where he met and worked with many accomplished painters for the next two years. The most prominent of these was Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. In a 1979 article in Milliyet Sanat, a Turkish magazine, Abidin recalled his time working with Picasso on the French Riviera. 

“I was out of money when I arrived in Paris. Picasso invited me to work at his studio in Vallauris on the French Mediterranean, next to Cannes. I went there. I was working in the ceramics studio, but wasn’t a ceramics artist. It was a brief sojourn in my art life. Of course, it was an extraordinary privilege to work at the same table with Picasso every day and with Chagall three days a week. On more than one occasion, Picasso complimented me saying, ‘It is only you and I who know how to draw a proper hand pattern.’ He liked my hand drawings very much.”

In 1939 Abidin returned to Turkey, where he would pay a heavy toll for his political sentiments and for being a member of the Turkish Communist Party. He lived under constant surveillance and his creations, especially his writings, were censored or banned. Two years later, he was exiled to Anatolia. His exile in central and southeastern Turkey had the unintended benefit of bringing him closer to the people of Anatolia, which resulted in the creation of some of his best paintings. He first served time in Çorum, and then in Adana, where he became friends with famous Turkish writer Yaşar Kemal. After his exile ended and he was able to leave the country, he returned to Paris, where his home became a frequent meeting place for prominent Turkish artists (including Ara Güler, Nâzım Hikmet, Yaşar Kemal, and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar), who were living abroad or visiting Paris. 

In 1961, when Abidin read Nâzım’s question about ‘painting the picture of happiness,’ he was deeply moved. He agonized about how to respond to it in a meaningful way. According to Abidin’s biographer, journalist Zeynep Avcı, in reply to Nâzım’s request, Abidin said, “Happiness is a weird notion. It requires continuity. In fact, there cannot be enough of it. Can happiness be painted? I do not know. Has anyone succeeded in painting it? I doubt it. Fear, sadness, hopelessness, despair, and misery, these notions have all been painted before, but not happiness!” 

Eventually, Abidin responded to Nâzım not by painting a picture, but through a poem of his own, Picture of Happiness. As indicated at the end of his poem, he did not think it was possible to ‘paint a picture of happiness.’ 

At the harbor, kids are selling freshly baked simits

The seagulls are anxiously fussy today

The dockworkers are looking out for you.

If only you stepped down from the next steamboat

With Varna’s dust on your boots

And a little ache in your heart.

If I could embrace you, once again,

With that burning longing

In your blue eyes.

If davuls played and zurnas spoke

If we could hold you on our bosoms, Nâzım,

I would paint the picture of happiness.

Wearing your boyhood hat

Sleeves rolled up, ready for a brawl,

If we could walk with sailor-steps

And go to Meserret Cafe,

Where we first met.

There, I would treat you to a bitter coffee.

If we could speak of those days,

The ones past, the ones in the future,

Neither days nor nights would be enough.

All pains would seize with you

Our separation would be only a dream,

Left in memories.

If we could wander through Turkey

From one end to the other

The places where we once stayed, now museums

The cities of our exile, now heaven.

Only then, Nâzım,

Would I paint the picture of happiness

Neither canvas nor paint would be enough, to do so.

Just three years after asking his friend ‘to paint the picture of happiness,’ in 1963, Nâzım Hikmet died of a heart attack in Moscow, and was buried there. He had asked to be buried under a tree in any village cemetery in Anatolia, but his wish was never carried out. Despite his persecution by the Turkish state, Nâzım Hikmet has always been revered by the Turkish nation. His poems depicting the people of the countryside, villages, towns, and cities of his homeland, as well as the Turkish War of Independence and the Turkish revolutionaries, are considered among Turkey’s greatest patriotic literary works. To date, Nâzım’s poetry has been translated into more than 50 languages, and in 1950 the World Council of Peace awarded him the International Peace Prize. 

In 1990, while living in Paris, Abidin was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and three years later that’s where he died. After his death, his body was transported to Istanbul and buried at his family grave in Aşiyan Cemetery as he had requested. Today, Abidin is remembered as a great painter and for his overall artistry, as well as for his never-ending love and longing for his homeland. His own words express these sentiments best: “Although we live in Paris –the heart of art– and breathe its air, in reality, what we live and what we feel have always been just Turkey.”

*

Aysel K. Basci is a writer and literary translator currently working on various nonfiction titles. She was born and raised in Cyprus and moved to the United States, in 1975. Aysel is retired and currently resides in the Washington DC area. Her writing recently appeared or is forthcoming in the Michigan Quarterly Review, the Bosphorus Review of Books, the Adelaide Literary Magazine and Entropy. 

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