Necip Fazıl Kısakürek

Ahmet Necip Fazıl Kısakürek

Full name	Ahmet Necip Fazıl Kısakürek
Born	May 26, 1904(1904-05-26) İstanbul, Turkey
Died	May 25, 1983(1983-05-25) (aged 78) İstanbul, Turkey
Era	20th century philosophy
Region	Islamic Philosophy, Poetry
School	Sufism
Main interests	Poetry, Politics, Literature
Notable ideas	Founder of Büyük Doğu
Influenced by Henri Bergson, Abdulhakim Arvasi
Influenced Salih Mirzabeyoglu

Ahmet Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (May 26, 1904 – May 25, 1983) was a Turkish poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher and activist. He is also known with his initials NFK. He was noticed by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, while Necip Fazıl had been a student of his in Sorbonne during the 1920s.

Biography

In his own words, he was born in "a huge mansion in Çemberlitaş, on one of the streets descending towards Sultanahmet" in 1904. His father was Abdülbaki Fazıl Bey who held several posts including deputy judge in Bursa, public prosecuter in Gebze and finally, judge in Kadıköy. His mother was an emigree from Crete. He was raised at the Çemberlitaş mansion of his paternal grandfather Kısakürekzade Mehmet Hilmi Efendi of Maraş who named his grandson after his own father, Ahmet Necib as well as his son, Fazıl.

Necib Fazıl learned to read and write from his grandfather at the age of five. After graduating from the French School in Gedikpaşa, he continued his education in various schools, also including Robert College of Istanbul as well as the Naval School. He received religious courses from Ahmed Hamdi of Akseki and history courses from Yahya Kemal at the Naval School but he was actually influenced by İbrahim Aşkî, whom he defined to have "penetrated into deep and private areas in many inner and outer sciences from literature and philosophy to mathematics and physics". İbrahim Aşkî provided his first contact with Sufism even at a "plan of skin over skin". "After completing candidate and combat classes" of Naval School, Kısakürek entered the Philosophy Department of Darülfünûn and graduated from there (1921–1924). One of his closest friends in philosophy was Hasan Ali Yücel. He was educated in Paris for one year with the scholarship provided by the Ministry of National Education (1924–1925). He worked at the posts of official and inspector at Holland, Osmanlı and İş Banks after returning home (1926–1939), and gave lectures at the Faculty of Linguistics and History and Geography and the State Conservatoire in Ankara and the Academy of Fine Arts in İstanbul (1939–1942). Having established a relation with the press in his youth, Kısakürek quit civil service to earn his living from writing and magazines.

Nacip Fazıl Kısakürek died in his house at Erenköy after an illness that "lasted long but did not impair his intellectual activity and writing" (25 May 1983) and was buried in the graveyard on the ridge of Eyüp after an eventful funeral.

Necip Fazıl was awarded the First Prize of C.H.P. Play Contest in 1947 with his play Sabır Taşı. Kısakürek was awarded the titles of "Great Cultural Gift" by the Ministry of Culture (25 May 1980) and "Greatest Living Poet of Turkish" by the Foundation of Turkish Literature upon the 75th anniversary of his birth.

Literary career

In his own words, having "learned to read and to write from his grandfather in very young ages", Kısakürek became "crazy about fimitless, trivia reading" until the age of twelve starting from "groups of sentences belonging to lower class writers of the French". He writes as follows: "My interest climbing up to the works such as (Pol ve Virjini), (Graziyella), (La-dam-d-kamelya), (Zavallı Necdet) claiming to be sensational and literary, eventually transformed into an illness and surrounded my nights and days as a net". Having been involved in literature with such a reading passion, Necip Fazıl states that his "poetry started at the age of twelve" and that his mother said "how much I would like you to be a poet" by showing the "poetry notebook of a girl with tuberculosis" lying on the bed next to his mother's bed when he went to visit her staying at the hospital, and adds: "My mother's wish appeared to me as something that I fed inside but I was not aware of until twelve. The motive of existence itself. I decided inside with my eyes on the snow hurling on the window of the hospital room and the wind howling; I will be a poet! And I became".

The first published poem of Necip Fazıl is "Kitabe" poem that he later included in his book Örümcek Ağı with the title "Bir Mezar Taşı" and it was published in the Yeni Mecmua dated 1 July 1923.

After this date Kısakürek expanded his reputation until 1939 with his poems and articles published in magazines such as Yeni Mecmua, Milhi Mecmua, Anadolu, Hayat and Varlık and Cumhuriyet newspaper.

After returning home from Paris in 1925, Necip Fazıl stayed in Ankara intermittently but during long periods and in his third visit he published a magazine called Ağaç on 14 March 1936 by providing the support of some banks. Ağaç, the writers of which included Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Ahmet Kutsi Tecer and Mustafa Şekip Tunç, decided to follow a spiritualist and idealist line on the contrary to the materialist and Marxian ideas supported by the writers such as Burhan Belge, Vedat Nedim Tör, Şevket Süreyya Aydemir and İsmail Husrev Tökin of closed Kadro magazine owned by Yakup Kadri and which influenced the intellectuals of the time greatly. Kısakürek later transferred to Ağaç magazine published during six volumes in Ankara to İstanbul, however, unable to establish a viable reader base, the magazine was closed at the 17th volume.

Necip Fazıl this time published the magazine called Büyük Doğu in 1943 which also had religious and political identity, fronted the rulers with Büyük Doğu that he published intermittently as weekly, daily and monthly until 1978, he was prosecuted because of his articles and publications and the magazine was closed several times. Particularly objecting to secularism and supporting Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Necip Fazıl gradually became one of the leaders of the Islamist section. It should be stated that as in Ağaç, the writers' cadre is quite cosmopolitan in the first volumes of Büyük Doğu as well. From Bedri Rahmi to Sait Faik, many signatures of the new literature are seen on the pages of the magazine.

However, as Necip Fazıl transformed Büyük Doğu into an outlet of particularly religious quarrel, these writers withdrew from the pages one after another. Upon the collection of Büyük Doğu in 1947, Necip Fazıl also published a political humor magazine called Borazan, which he could publish only three volumes between November–December.

Bibliography

Poetry

• Örümcek Ağı (1925) (Spider Web)
• Kaldırımlar (1928) (Pavements)
• Ben ve Ötesi (1932) (Me and Beyond)
• Sonsuzluk Kervanı (1955) (Caravan of Infinity)
• Çile (1962) (Pain)
• Şiirlerim (My poems) (1969)
• Esselâm (1973) (Welcome)
• Çile (1974) (Pain)
• Bu Yağmur (This rain)
• Canim Istanbul (Dear Istanbul)

Novels

• Aynadaki Yalan (1980) (The Lie in the Mirror)
• Kafa Kağıdı (1984-Published as a series in Milliyet newspaper)

Stories

• Birkaç Hikaye Birkaç Tahlil (1932) (Some Stories and Some Analysises)
• Ruh Burkuntularından Hikayeler (1964) (Stories From Broken Souls)
• Hikayelerim (1970) (My Stories)

Memoirs

• Cinnet Mustatili (1955) (Rectangle of the Possessed)
• Hac (1973) (Hajj)
• O ve Ben (1974) (It/He and I)
• Bâbıâli (1975) (The Sublime Porte)

Plays

• Bir Adam Yaratmak (Creating A Man)
• Tohum (Seed)
• Reis Bey (Mr. President)
• Para (The Money)
• Sabır Taşı
• Ahşap Konak (Wooden Mansion)
• Kanlı Sarık (Bloody Turban)
• Püf Noktası (The Ropes)
• İbrahim Ethem
• Yunus Emre
• Abdülhamin Han (Abdulhamid Khan)
• Mukaddes Emanet (The Holy Escrow)
• Siyah Pelerinli Adam (The Man Under Black Cloak)
• Parmaksız Salih

See also

• List of contemporary Turkish poets

References

• Biyografi.net - Biography of Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (Turkish)
• Antoloji.com - Necip Fazıl Kısakürek : Selected poetry
• Biyografi.info - Biography of Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (Turkish)

External links

• Necipfazil.com - A website dedicated to Necip Fazıl Kısakürek
• Necip Fazıl Kısakürek's Life and Works
• Necip Fazıl Kısakürek
• [1]
• Listen NFK

Persondata
Name	Kisakurek, Necip Fazil
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	May 26, 1904
Place of birth	İstanbul, Turkey
Date of death	May 25, 1983
Place of death	İstanbul, Turkey