Seyhan Kurt
Encyclopedia
Biography
Born in GrenobleGrenoble
Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...
, Isère
Isère
Isère is a department in the Rhône-Alpes region in the east of France named after the river Isère.- History :Isère is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from part of the former province of Dauphiné...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, he started his primary education at La Verpillere, Ecole Les Marronnier(Grenoble) and completed it at Ecole Jean Jaures in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
. He graduated from Dumlupinar High School in Mersin
Mersin
-Mersin today:Today, Mersin is a large city spreading out along the coast, with Turkey's second tallest skyscraper , huge hotels, an opera house, expensive real estate near the sea or up in the hills, and many other modern urban...
and continued his education in Selcuk University in Konya
Konya
Konya is a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. The metropolitan area in the entire Konya Province had a population of 1,036,027 as of 2010, making the city seventh most populous in Turkey.-Etymology:...
and studied French Language and Literature and Sociology. He is a member of the International Association of Writers (International PEN
International PEN
PEN International , the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
).
His poetical works have been published in literary magazines; Varlik, Journal, Turkish Language, Le Poete Travaille, Tohum, Cali and Turk Dili.
Kurt is a mystical,humanist,existentialist and sufist poet.All of his poems are written in Turkish and French and his work has come to form a sense of questioning the place of man and his deeds in his world.His tone of voice is severe but melodic.
His third book "Hüznün Sözyitimleri"(Speechlessness) was publishing in 1998.It consists of three parts "Deterritorial,Agnostic and Incognitae".
We are given the loneliness,alienation,individualism and rebellion created by modern world.The subject matter gives Kurt's poetry its peculiar quality.
As the author casts these subjects into his lines,he uses a sharp and complex style.His stanzas variegate in length and his poetry disturbs and re-forms the routine language.The word combinations strikingly violate the order with outstanding,unexpected images.
His free-verse often depends on the cadence or grouping of phrases, and the reading depends on either a slowing down or a speeding up till it reaches an emphasis in the final lines.There is a yearning for a better and meaningful life.He pictures man lost in a universe sometimes conscious of his own position. For Seyhan Kurt,man has made the worst of himself and therefore is helplessly lonely.
For his art, we can conclude that "the surface of the world and mankind have lost their privacy." One feels driven into a world which he has no control of.
Fighting Without Weapons in Kurt's Poetry
For Seyhan Kurt the ideologies of profiteering for war is the most dangerous paradigm in this age. Kurt processed; human freedom, destructiveness of war, fascism, capitalism,racism and sexual discrimination, loneliness and pure love, basically in his works. Has worked to implement the theory of the "superior love" against the Nietzsche's idea of "superior human" in his poems. According to him,love is over religion and do not have nationality, race and have no country. In this regard; he emphasizes the need to oppose the war and every kind of oppression, discrimination. According to Kurt, the 20th century is the most brutal century in human history. But the poet is not hopeless: is trying to explain that, the thing which liberate, people is critical thinking and empathy. He sees art and philosophy as an aim rather than as a tool, just as SocratesSocrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
, Gandhi, Rumi and other sufists.
Revolt in Seyhan Kurt's Speechlessness of Sadness
The subject that is treated densely from the beginning to the end of the work is revolt. In order to manage to explain his rebelliousness, the poet appeals to complex images. He is like wanting to "slap" the readers. This is why the expressions are sharp and hard. We come across the manner of Rimbaud in his "Une Saison en Enfer", the expression of the union of the subject treated in "Les Chants de MaldororLes Chants de Maldoror
Les Chants de Maldoror is a poetic novel consisting of six cantos. It was written between 1868 and 1869 by the Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse...
" of Lautréamont in "Hüznün Sözyitimleri". The situation in which the earth is and the powers of evil have whipped up the soul of the author. Armed men are invaded the world and innocent people are killed by their arms:
"Öldürüyorlar(ölüyorlar).Her silah için ayrı bir uzmanlık dalı, her kurşun için milimetrik sayılar yaratılıyor" (p. 23)
Death, for the poet, is going to reach everyone. But what is important is how this will occur. Seyhan Kurt complains that thousands of people are making efforts for arms.
He thinks that mankind is unaware of what kind of a disaster they are able to cause. Besides this, the poet is restless of the comfort he has while expressing this:
"Korkunçluk burada değil; bunu yazabilmemdeki rahatlıkta" (p. 23)
He is trying, too to express the dangers for the future of children. The arms from now on are reaching children, too. There is no importance of this for capital owners. When we look at page 34, we have children facing arms more dangerous than G3 or M16. These arms are what technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
brings and they symbolize the degeneration of cultures.
A Critique of Technofascism in Seyhan Kurt's Speechlessness of Sadness
When we look at the base of the work, we see that it is full of images of longing to return to nature. For Seyhan Kurt, mankind should return to his own essential in his world full of cables and computersThe poet starts his criticism
Criticism
Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...
on hypertechnology in a bitter tone page 25. He thinks that world languages are in such a situation that they became unable to explain this chaotic development. He emphasizes that people who worship on technology will not be able to see the natural beauties of the world. He gives the native Africans and the Woodoos as examples. He indicates that such authentic components will only take place in colored glossy printed books.
Technology spreads so rapidly that there will remain nothing to enter the imaginary world. In this artificiality, man is not going to turn his face to man but to machines. Instead of forming things fort he sake of mankind, men are using up themselves, even the earth.
The poet attracts our attention first to television as an agent to cause all of these negative forces. He brings a criticism on television on page 35. The future is under the danger of technology. There is no use of the great media establishments or ideal personalities fort he adventure of man towards his essential. The poet thinks that future of mankind is in danger by possibilities that media offers. But what really upsets us is that people are not sensible enough about it.
In page 56, he explains that individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
loneliness is nothing in the eyes of political sayings, advertisements, and capital owners that “play their noses”. Nobody takes care of the other one’s existential loneliness. People who can not take up whit these technological powers are sentenced to be erased from the earth’s surface.
The poet states in pages 74,75, and 76 what a situation the nature has fallen into by use of the trembling legs of the cities. The birds are affected by the poisons spread by factories. Poison prevents bird’s singing in the way that mankind long them to sing. The birds, like men, are down in this dense smoke and disorder. In page 74, the poet mentions the capital
Capital (economics)
In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...
owners these negativities with them.
He mentions in page 81 to the man who wants to return to his own essential being, who wants to get rid of the chains of technologic
Technologic
"Technologic" is a song by French duo Daft Punk from the album Human After All. It was released as the second single on June 14, 2005. The music video for "Technologic" was directed by Daft Punk.-Composition:...
fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
. He makes a wish against them. He says man should react against turbidity and power. He emphasizes that man should not remain unable to act.
“Bugün işçileri değil, başı dertte insanları, mutsuzları, yani aşıkları birleştiriveririz.” (p. 81) The poet, instead of the speech that is “All Workers of the World, Unite!”, wishes unhappy people, lovers to unite.
The fascinating city of a time of the 1968’s Katmandu (Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
) and the castle of socialists and liberalists that was Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
have now lost their charm. What is meant by this is that man should return to his own essential being more than a city, a geographical place. As a result, technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
has inserted mankind in an invisible prison. But in spite of all the evil he mentions and his pessimistic and humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
mode, the poet is not hopeless. He also defends, that man should not be hopeless.
For him, “Polyanna died”, but there is always a jewel living in man’s heart. Man who created technologic pressure should find the way to get rid of it.
Influences
- HumanismHumanismHumanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
, ExistentialismExistentialismExistentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, GandhismGandhismGandhism is the collection of inspirations, principles, beliefs and philosophy of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , who was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian Independence Movement....
, VoluntaryismVoluntaryismVoluntarism, or voluntaryism, is a philosophy according to which all forms of human association should be voluntary. This moral principle is called the non-aggression principle, which prohibits the initiation of aggressive force or coercion...
, NaturalismNaturalismNaturalism is any of several philosophical stances wherein all phenomena or hypotheses, commonly labeled as supernatural, are either false or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses.Naturalism may also refer to:-In the arts:...
, SufismSufismSufism or ' is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a '...
, IslamIslamIslam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
and BuddhismBuddhismBuddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, PacifismPacifismPacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
, FuturismFuturismFuturism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
, SocialismSocialismSocialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, SurrealismSurrealismSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, MysticismMysticismMysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
.