The Structure of Horizon in the Poems of Nazim Hikmet: Obsession with Location

Nazim Hikmet (1901-1963), Turkish poet and a true believer of Marxism, spent 12 years of his life in prison and nearly 20 years in exile, an experience that profoundly changed his perception of space and influenced the horizon structure of his literary work. As Michel Collot explains, horizon structure considers the phenomenological idea of “existence-in the world” and seeks the life character or subject matter in the literary work; the character as an existent which is always placed (positioned) in a certain location, from where it evokes the world. This method assumes that each statement is built from three components: World, Language and Me. With regards to Nazim Hikmet and his horizon structure, we will see how the break in the perception of the prisoner from space is visible in his poetry. This study will examine the traces of this rupture in the structure of the poetry of Hikmet. How does its spatial descriptions differ from others in the literature in which his poems are rooted? And how does he reconcile this terminology of space with Marxist tendencies as a universal human being? These are the questions we will try to answer. Next we will try to draw the structure of horizon in the poetry of this poet.