Sabancı Univer sity Academic Year Closing Lectur e Honour Speaker Script of Yaşar Kemal 30 J une 2006

Transcription

1 Sabancı Univer sity Academic Year Closing Lectur e Honour Speaker Script of Yaşar Kemal 30 J une 2006 Dear Friends, I ll begin my remarks with Thales, the philosopher from Milet. Thales was born in BC 624 and died in 548. You may think what is the relation now? I ve been living by a few statements of him for years. These statements were translated for me from Ancient Greek by Halikarnas Balıkçısı. Since then, I ve never given it up. Thales says: Those who created folksongs are stronger than those who made the laws. From now on, you ll have a new world and new efforts, and I wish you success and happiness. They sent you to school so that you would be successful. However, there s nobody who teaches the book of happiness. It s you who will learn that. Everybody has the power of happiness inside. The greatest supporter of a person is the joy of living. I can t tell you that you can do this, you can do that. Everybody is different. A person is born to the world alone and leaves the world alone. Nobody can teach the other the way to be happy. A person finds the way of happiness himself. Maybe a person comes across happiness at an unexpected time. I had a friend, his happiness was his plateau. The underside of the plane tree on his plateau. Also, the underside of the cedar tree on the plateau. Nobody can imagine how happy and joyful my friend was. The ones who came beside him and talked to him used to fill with joy. He also used to sing nice folksongs. Those who listened to his folksongs when they were ill used to get well. One day I went to his plateau and found him lying under the cedar. He became happy when he saw me. That day, we wandered into the cedar forest till evening. In the Taurus Mountains, there s a kind of mint which cannot be found elsewhere, and we picked up an armful of that mint. When we came to the tent, the first thing we did was to fill the pillowcases with the mint we had picked up. It s difficult for me to get to sleep, I can t sleep easily. That night, I fell asleep as soon as I put my head on the pillow. I hadn t slept like that up until then. When I got up the next morning, I told the members of the house about my sleep. They told me that everbody used to sleep there like me. I stayed there for a week and every day I slept like this. Then, I wasn t able to go to that plateau again. I hope that all of you will have a plateau to shelter because the world waiting for you is difficult. What is the most clear thing in the world waiting for you? What are the problems that your generation needs to overcome? Destitution, hunger, totally corrupted distribution of income in our world The dying of languages in the world, degeneration of cultures The most important of all, the extinction of mankind with the death of the nature, the nature s death Your support against these, that is: science and art. The scream of the world being exploited makes itself heard everywhere aroud the world. I generally give the example of snake s changing its skin. Because it s really difficult for a snake to change its 1

2 skin. Those who haven t seen it cannot imagine how difficult it is. I saw it a few times. It was really heart rending. In our time, the world is changing its skin from every aspect. Values are upside down. Many values which make man a real man are dying. And, no value is able to fill in the place of that value again. In a world like this, changing its skin, when a snake changes its skin, a new skin is formed readily. However, no value can fill in the place of the former one. How possible is it for a person not to feel this pain inside? Everybody is suffering because of dying of the values and this open sore is continuously bleeding. If the change in the world was a normal one, I mean, if a better value could take the place of the former one, it would be possible to talk about another culture. The problem is that the societies are being forced to accept an artificial culture, which is the consumption culture via advanced means of communication. This artificial consumption culture is untruthful, it s not a natural result in the development of humanity, it s a distortion, and it s an illness The system of the world today can destroy our world. Dying of the nature started to be neck and neck with the destruction caused by wars. Who kills nature? They put the blame on technology. Technology is in the hands of whom? In the hands of those who are exploiting the humanity As long as the destruction of nature and destruction caused by wars go on, we can say that the end of humanity, that the doomsday is approaching. Most of the people aren t aware that its own race will be destroyed with the death of nature. I hope that we will see our future in the shortest time possible and find the strength to do what is required in advance. If we fail to be aware immediately, if we go on indifferently like this, we ll arrive at the end quickly. Without any doubt, humanity is at a great stage. In this stage, we can t deny the rattling rate of technology. We can t deny didn t fit here[edit this for meaning], it s an admirable development is the right phrase. But, what have these taken from us, from our nature? There isn t a brave man in our time who can make a list of these. Technology is in the hands of a minority who distorted our world for its own interests. When it passes into the hands of those who take care of values of humaneness, it will be the technology again which will save our world. There cannot be big gaps between the developments in science and art. Every new formation may be the last ring of the former chain. For instance, today we understand mythology better than the nineteenth century. When a novelist, a poet, an artist wishes to reach the reality of man, he or she cannot easily ignore the myths, dreams in our lives. Today everybody knows that dreams, myths play an important role in a person s life. That the classics, which we regard as great and immortal, are still alive today, is also rather interesting Because people of each era add a life and vital strength from their own to the classics. They enhance great classics with their own era and integrate with them by making contributions to them as if they were their contemporaries. We as individuls, as a society, recreate classics in every era. When we read the Iliad today, if we are able to get pleasure out of it as if it were written today, though many words 2

3 and expressions have lost their meaning and changed, it means we recreate them in our own personalities. Both as a reader and an artist Art can be called real art when it opposes the consumption greed, this inhumane behaviour of our time. We know that this opposition isn t easy. Oppositions related to art can only be sound and effective when they unite with political oppositions. It sticks in my throat to say the rest is empty words, a contribution to the consumer s greediness. Because whatever may happen [check meaning], the first task of every kind of art is rebellion. Art, having rebellion in its origin, will become everlasting when it rebels with progressionist people of our time. Art will surely fight against the illness of consuming from which human race is suffering, the nuisance that is eroding and trying to destroy all values in our time. Since the world was created, there have been a lot of people from Jesus to Che Guevara. This is the starting point of İnce Memeds. This world stands on the back of rebellion. Humanity is losing many of its values. Apparently, it will go on losing. If it loses the value of rebellion, if it forgets its characteristic of individual and social rebellion, then it can t stand up and it will be destroyed. As I regard every person as creative, I believe that everybody has the rebellion worm inside. That rebellion is obliged to create the human. Therefore, there will be İnce Memeds in every era. We shouldn t forget that life style based on consumption that is eroding all values will hit art first. Art is the health of humanity, a symbol of its taking care of the values of humanity. As long as this symbol is able to preserve its core elements, it will be a kind of defender of the other values. The consumptionists who are aware of this will take art as one of their main targets. If we get to explain what a consumption society is, we can make more sound comments on our world. A consumption society is a society of the greedy. Every day, every moment new greeds are created and people are led to be gluttonous monsters. As long as art harmonizes with this greed, gluttony, defect, it will be a puny image and then be lost. In our time, there s a culture which consumptionists are trying to get society to accept. This is an artificial culture. Since consumerism is an artificial event in our lives, its culture must be as artificial as that, mustn t it? Can this artificiality take the place of the real culture? Will humanity easily give up its values that it has developed, created, preserved through thousands of years? Will human beings who reproduce and create themselves not need to summon its great ability and fight for it? I believe that this humanity which has come today after many great adventures will take its life in its hands to preserve its values. The accumulation of the experience of men can overcome all the negativities of today. Today, people have more time to be interested in art or to read books. Free time of people is so much more than before Let s compare a bit the housewives of the past and the present. Today they have washing machines, dishwashers, fridges A lot of facilities like these If people cannot find time for art, it s because of other reasons, not due to lack of time. The problem is not about time, the problem is that the real culture and values of humanity are wounded. 3

4 We must come face to face with an interesting question: is art, culture today a commodity? What s the function of culture in a person s life today? What is necessary in order that people love the world by understanding it? Why do people not give importance to culture, works of art as much as before anymore? Who is the one that has caused this? I think it s the consumptionists who have brought this about. The cultures of the land we are living on are cultures that have helped the world culture, and have been resources. We, including our generation, have learned this from the scientists of the west. Today this land is covered with cocklebur, but all of Anatolia isn t. How many of you know what a cocklebur is? It s a sticky plant which has no functions and which grows in the crops. In Anatolia, people who are useless are called cockleburs. We are so lucky that not all of our land is covered with cockleburs. We haven t reached the end yet. Mistakes can lead us to the end of the road, to the beginning of the cliff. But we shouldn t forget this. This country raised a rebellious reformist, someone who was able to put things in practice, that is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Despite counter reformists of this country, despite their ruling the country as they wish, they still haven t been able to dismantle his reforms. There s still a flicker of hope, though little. Nazım Hikmet, Hakkı Tonguç, Pertev Naili Boratav passed through this country as did many others This consumption society culture I don t know if we can call it a culture which has taken control of all the countries can wear down the main culture but it can t corrode it. Especially when we have the great culture of Anatolia. Today s Turkish novel, poetry, art have reached a level now which is clear in the world and makes us proud. If Turkey s artists take their wind, the world will meet magnificent artists. When the pressures are taken away from the artists coming from the culture of this land, we may make contributions again to the culture of humanity as we did before. We should never leave this out of account. Anatolia has been a resource for world culture thanks to its geography and being multicultural. Against all odds, we will join the European Union and will make contributions to the world culture again when we get strength from our own cultural heritage. I say this against all odds again and again. Every public in Anatolia will use its own language. It will be educated, write books, make films in its own language. We will be aware of the fact that we live on a multicultural land. We will realize that we have interests in freedom, not in prohibitions. We will have to realize it. If we don t hurry, we may even be exposed to nuisance of being divided. However, Anatolia, rich with its multicultural nature, is not a land suitable for division. This era is not an era of divisions but an era of living together. We have no way out other than preserving our multicultural structure. Turkey cannot remain like this. Those who say it will, will be disappointed like İttihat and Terakki (Union and Progress Party). I m the folksinger of happiness. I sing it continuosly. Despite being sorrowful, in all the epic poems, nearly in the adventure of humanity, in the music, the folksong of the people there is : At last we turned up!. It s like the adventure I wrote at the end of Ortadirek, we got off, we turned up at last!.thank God we arrived in the world. 4

5 We ve come to the vital point of the speech. The world is a garden of cultures which consists of thousands of flowers. Cultures have always fed one another. Each culture is a richness for humanity. Civilizations have also fed each other. And Anatolia s geography has kept this richness alive like a feast. Feeding of cultures and civilizations one another lasted until imperialism. The concepts of primitive people and superior people stuck out in the period of renaissance. And, imperialists tried to impose their own cultures on those they called primitive. In this way, as they destroyed many cultures, they weren t aware that they were degenerating their own cultures. The conflicts between primitive people and superior people have done a great harm to humanity. After this, the nation state has arisen. This situation put forward a single type of culture, a single type of person, a single type of language. The world has slowly understood that being a single type isn t enough to reach the real democracy and started to attach great importance to dying languages and cultures. If a flower leaves the world, it means a colour, a smell has been lost. The world is a garden of cultures made up of thousands of flowers. This is the richness of humanity. Countries like us are gardens of cultures with hundreds of flowers. I wish you happiness once again. Yaşar Kemal 30 June 2006 Sabancı University 5