Poetry
Kaldırımlar
Not translated into English
Necip Fazıl Kısakürek · 1928
Synopsis
A selection of poems from the twenties, named after the poem “Kaldırımlar”, written in 1927. In this poem in three parts, a man walks alone at night in a deserted street, with his fear. The houses with black windows look like blind people, the street lamps flow like a torrent, and the pavements become a living being, “mother of the suffering lonely”, a tongue that coils up inside him. According to turkedebiyati.org, the last part expresses the desire for a dark-haired woman glimpsed in the street.
Context
The collection was published in Istanbul in 1928, after a first book of 1925, and brings together poems previously given to journals. The poem that gives it its title made the author famous at a stroke and earned him the nickname poet of the pavements, which the Küre encyclopaedia and the University of Üsküdar both recall. The author later gathered his poems in a collected volume, in 1962, in which this one takes its place in a section devoted to the city.
Who it is for
A short collection of poems in Turkish, dominated by its title poem; no French translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
The book that made its author known, and has since been referred to by the title of his most famous poem.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.