Alişanzâde İsmail Hakkı Eldem was a critic, biographer and translator of the "intermediate generation" between the Tanzimat and Servet-i Fünûn. In his youth he was editor-in-chief of the journal Mekteb and published books counted among the first examples of translation criticism and of Western-style literary biography in Ottoman literature; after 1895 he devoted himself entirely to translation, and he was the first to bring Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal into Turkish, as Elem Çiçekleri. Although he was long described on this site as being "from Amasya", none of the sources consulted confirms this link: both his birthplace and his place of death are Istanbul. This page presents his works and treats the question of the Amasya link separately. His life is told in detail in Alişanzâde İsmail Hakkı Eldem: The Biographer Who Translated Baudelaire into Turkish.

Life

İsmail Hakkı was born in Istanbul in February 1871; his father was Câvid Bey, an assistant clerk in the Journal Office of the Imperial Arsenal (Tophâne-i Âmire), and his mother Fatma Hanım. He completed the Fevziye Rüşdiye school and the secondary and higher sections of the Mülkiye school (1889). On 25 July 1891 he entered the Consular Affairs Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and rose in the same department to the rank of director; in 1909 he became consul general in Marseilles, in 1918 in Munich, was dismissed in 1919 and retired at his own request in 1925. He was married to Azize Hanım, niece of the painter Osman Hamdi Bey; the architect Sedad Hakkı Eldem was his son. He died on 13 March 1944 and was buried in Zincirlikuyu Cemetery.

Works

İsmail Hakkı's writing career began while he was a student, with pieces published in the journal Nahl-i Emel in March 1886, and continued in Mekteb with poems, literary studies and translations. Among his contributions to that journal an unfinished novel titled Çiftlikte (On the Farm) and a long study of Ali Şîr Nevâî serialised over several issues stand out. From 1891 he published poetry, biography and criticism in book form; after 1895, until his death, he did nothing but translate. His original works and principal translations, as listed by M. Orhan Okay in his article in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, are as follows:

Müntehabât-ı Terâcim-i Meşâhir (1307/1889-1891)

Prepared together with İbrahim Fehîm, this book compares selected translations from French into Ottoman Turkish and from Ottoman Turkish into French with their originals and gives short assessments of the success of each. It opens with a preface by Kemalpaşazâde Said, a well-known translator and teacher of the day, who defines translation as the instrument of Ottoman progress. The translation scholar Cemal Demircioğlu regards the work as a translation anthology rather than a literary history; its placing side by side of different Turkish versions of the same French poem, for example Nigâr Hanım's translation of Musset's "Rappelle-toi" and Recâizâde Mahmud Ekrem's imitation of it, is a good example of the book's comparative approach.

On Dördüncü Asrın Türk Muharrirleri (1308-1311/1892-1895)

This is a series of four small booklets introducing the writers of the fourteenth century of the Hijra, that is, of the late nineteenth century. The booklets are devoted in turn to Ahmed Midhat Efendi, Recâizâde Mahmud Ekrem, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha and Şemseddin Sâmi; each runs to about eighty pages. The first opens with a study of the novel, the fourth with a study of drama. A photograph, a specimen of handwriting and the signature of each writer are also included. Okay notes that the books contain fairly objective assessments of the writers and their works; the Ahmed Midhat booklet is the text that shows most clearly İsmail Hakkı's romantic view of the novel as a genre that ought to serve a purpose.

Muasır Şairlerimiz (1311/1893-1894)

This book introduces four contemporary poets, Nâbizâde Nâzım, Ali Rûhî, Emin Hümâyî and Muallim Cûdî, with samples of their poetry and assessments. Short biographical notes are also given under the poets' photographs.

Osmanlı Meşâhîr-i Üdebâsı (1311/1895)

This is the first and only book of a series begun for deceased men of letters: a monograph on Muallim Nâci. In a letter to Rıza Tevfik, İsmail Hakkı says that he regarded his poetry as a youthful fancy and that the work he valued most was this monograph. His reading of Nâci as a pupil of the school of Bâkî has, according to Hakkı Tarık Us, kept its originality despite the years.

Sevdâ-yı Hazân yahud Teessür (1308/1891-1892)

This is the author's only book of poems. It consists of poems written in 1889-1890, some of them published earlier in Mekteb, a few of them translations, most of them emotional poems in the manner of Recâizâde Ekrem. One source gives the title of the book as Tahassür. After this book İsmail Hakkı gave up poetry entirely. The texts of the poems in the book could not be reached in the course of this study.

İki Hakikat (1311)

This is an adapted book consisting of two long stories. Okay lists it together with his translations; the sources consulted do not state from which authors or works the adaptation was made.

Translations and Elem Çiçekleri

Okay's article lists, among İsmail Hakkı's many translated books, novels and poetry by Lamartine, Baudelaire, Maurois, Bourget, Shakespeare, Flaubert and Tolstoy. Those named in the sources include Lamartine's Rafael and Graziella, Maurois's Aile Çemberi (The Family Circle, 1934) and Disraeli'nin Hayatı (The Life of Disraeli, 1935), Tolstoy's Samimi Saadet (Family Happiness, 1934) and Flaubert's Salambo (1935). In the introduction to Rafael he apologises to the reader, saying that the translation was made word for word, "exactly and literally", so that some phrases might seem confused; this principle explains the heavy, faithful language seen in all his translations.

His most cited translation is that of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal under the title Elem Çiçekleri. The book was printed in Istanbul in 1926 or 1927; the sources differ on the year. The Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature records him as the first to translate this book into Turkish. The language of the translation, a heavy Ottoman Turkish even in the early years of the Republic, is shown by the last stanza of "L'Albatros":

Şair, fırtına ile uğraşan, yay ile eğlenen,
Tahkirler arasında toprağa matrûd,
Ve muazzam kanatları yürümesine mani
Bulutlar hükümdarına benzer.

In English: "The poet resembles the prince of the clouds, who wrestles with the storm and laughs at the archer; exiled to the ground amid jeers, his giant wings prevent him from walking." This heavy language made the work increasingly hard for new generations to read. The translation was later transcribed into the Latin alphabet by the poet Hilmi Yavuz, who compared it with the French original, and republished with an extensive glossary.

In the works of İsmail Hakkı consulted, and in the studies of these works, no piece devoted to Amasya, no passage about Amasya and no assessment of a writer from Amasya could be found. The sources on his life likewise record no tie of birth, office or family with the city. His article in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam presents him as born in Istanbul, the son of a clerk working at the Arsenal; his posts were in Istanbul, Marseilles and Munich, and his grave is in Istanbul. The description "from Amasya" formerly used on this site has therefore been treated as an unsupported attribution and dropped from the biography. Even so, because he had been included among the Historical Figures, his works are recorded here with a clear statement that the Amasya link could not be verified. The existence of such a link could only be established by a new document, for example a record of the family's origins.

Influence and Assessment in the Sources

According to Okay, İsmail Hakkı addressed certain questions of literature with real competence in his Mekteb articles and his first biographical works, and took important steps for his time in the assessment of poetry; but his abandoning such publications at a very young age to turn entirely to translation caused his name to be forgotten in literary circles. Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil stresses in Kırk Yıl that İsmail Hakkı's personality played an important part in Mekteb becoming a literary hearth where the intermediate generation and the Servet-i Fünûn writers gathered. Hakkı Tarık Us names him as the man who began biography in Turkish literature on the Western method and gave criticism a direction beyond the notion that it consisted merely of finding fault.

In recent years his writings have become readable again. Kendi Kalemiyle Âlişanzâde İsmail Hakkı, compiled by Abdullah Uçman, was published in 2017; a master's thesis by Cennet Esen examined his writings on art and literature; and in 2019 Bedri Aydoğan transcribed and assessed the Ahmed Midhat booklet. The studies of Cemal Demircioğlu, meanwhile, have placed Müntehabât-ı Terâcim-i Meşâhir among the basic texts of Ottoman translation history.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • M. Orhan Okay, "Eldem, İsmail Hakkı", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 11, İstanbul 1995, pp. 21-22. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/eldem-ismail-hakki
  • Bedri Aydoğan, "Alişanzade İsmail Hakkı'nın 14. Asır Türk Muharrirleri'nin Birinci Defteri - Ahmed Midhat Efendi", Çukurova Üniversitesi Türkoloji Araştırmaları Dergisi, 4(2), 2019, pp. 247-256.
  • Cemal Demircioğlu, "Müntehabat-ı Teracim-i Meşahir: An Exploration of Its Paratext from the Perspective of Cultural Memory", İÜ Çeviribilim Dergisi, 6, 2012, pp. 15-43.
  • Cennet Esen, Alişanzade İsmail Hakkı'nın Sanat ve Edebiyat Yazıları, Master's thesis, Aksaray University, 2017.

Books

  • Nurtaç Ergün Atbaşı, "İsmail Hakkı (Alişanzade)", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü.
  • Abdullah Uçman (ed.), Kendi Kalemiyle Âlişanzâde İsmail Hakkı, İstanbul: Dergâh Yayınları, 2017.
  • Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, Kırk Yıl, İstanbul 1936, IV, pp. 11-14, 48-56.
  • Charles Baudelaire, Elem Çiçekleri, trans. Alişanzâde İsmail Hakkı, transcribed into the Latin alphabet by Hilmi Yavuz, İstanbul: Everest Yayınları.

Online sources