When we glimpse back on living, will we see a lifespan or a lifecycle? Nazim Hikmet’s renowned poem, originally titled Yaşamaya Dair, was a poem penned down aptly over the course of the fundamental stages of his life: uprising, incarceration, exile.
It is a poem divided in three parts written and completed over several decades. Part one was written in Nazim’s young adulthood when he roused his people and the world to unite in brotherhood. Part two was written when he was imprisoned for his heterodoxy. The poem was completed with the final part when Nazim forsook his native land and lived in exile until his death.
What weighs heavier than death – the shadow that mysteriously sways our being and coexistence. What could possibly weigh heavier? – Living.
There are those that will see the existential promise of death as a contagion, a blueprint for despair. Make no mistake, this way of seeing does not refer to states of weakness and depression. It is in the fissures and cracks of our widespread cult of happiness where we see the underbelly of despair. We mention here the tendency to hand over living to the refuge of anesthesia – the withdrawal from pain into the fantasy of life’s rind. But, the cult of happiness collapses in the face of life.
There are those that can only see the existential promise of death as the scaffold for the unwavering will towards life – the imprisoned outlaw with no hope for escape, the old man who tends an olive grove, the squirrel’s simple everyday struggle to endure, the Earth itself. Living is both durational and cyclical, limited and unlimited, necessitating struggle and accord. One cannot always dictate the ebbs and flows of the relative world, but when one is galvanized into living, the limited and the unlimited, the relative and the absolute, become inseparable. One may say “I lived”.
Original instrumental piece written by Omar
1st and 2nd Oud - Omar
Gadulka and Bendir - Kate
Poetry reading - Monti
lyrics
Here is the adapted and abridged version of the translated poem by Nazim Hikmet as spoken in the recording by Monti Karus:
Living is no laughing matter
You must live with great seriousness
Like a squirrel for example
Without looking for something beyond or above
Living must be your whole occupation
You must take living so seriously
That even at 70, you'll plant olive trees
And not for your children
But because although you fear death, you don't believe in it
Because living weighs heavier
Let's say we are in prison for 50 years
And we have 18 years to go before the iron doors will open
We'll still live with the outside
With its people and animals, its struggle and its wind
However and wherever we are
We must live as if we will never die
The earth will grow cold
A star among stars and one of the smallest
A guilded mote on blue velvet
This, our great earth
It too will grow cold one day
Not like a block of ice, or a grey cloud
but like an empty walnut it will roll along in pitch black space
You must grieve for this moment now
You must feel this sorrow now
For the world must be loved this much
If you are truly going to say,
I lived.
credits
from Bus 21,
track released December 21, 2018
Recorded in Alshar Studio by the passionate Evitsa in Skopje, Macedonia
Kelebek Evrimi is a progressive ethno-western folk fusion with members hailing from Istanbul, Bulgaria and Perth Western Australia. It is an experimental traditional music project bringing the beauty of the east to the shores of the west.
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