Through more than thirty years as a public prosecutor, Berin Taşan never put poetry aside. His full name was Nizamettin Berin Taşan, and he was born in Merzifon on 9 November 1928. His first poem appeared in Varlık when he was eighteen, and his last book was printed when he was past seventy. The author of several poems that Cemal Süreya counted among "the building blocks of our contemporary poetry", Taşan came from one of the old families of Merzifon: his father was Aziz Taşan, author of a history of Merzifon, and his distant ancestors included the Zeyniyye sheikh Abdürrahîm-i Rûmî and the poet Eyüb Sabrî, who died young. He died on 17 June 2018 and was buried in İzmir.

His Life

His mother was Lebibe Hanım and his father Aziz Taşan, a department head at the Ministry of the Interior and the author of a Merzifon Tarihi (History of Merzifon). He finished primary school in Merzifon and continued his secondary education in Niğde and Samsun; in 1947 he graduated from Samsun High School and entered the Faculty of Law at Ankara University. In 1948, while still a student, he met the journalist and writer Mehmed Kemal in Merzifon. Mehmed Kemal, who had been sent there in exile during his service as a reserve officer, recalled the meeting years later in Cumhuriyet: "Those were the years when we were mad about poetry; we hit it off at once." In the same article he writes that the town was in those years a place of exile, that Naci Sadullah and Nusret Baban had been there before him, and that what stayed in his memory were a fountain, a domed mosque, tall trees, the library of the People's House and the meatball shops.

He graduated from the faculty in 1951 and began his career as a prosecutor. Between 1953 and 1965 he served as public prosecutor in İzmir, Şiran and Karaburun; from 1965 to 1985 he was chief public prosecutor in Sinop, Karşıyaka and İzmir. The Sinop post meant being prosecutor in a town to which exiles were sent. Mehmed Kemal relates that Osman Deniz, who had risen in revolt together with Talat Aydemir, praised Taşan highly to him after his time in prison in Sinop; he also quotes Behçet Kemal as writing that in days when "many public prosecutors had become the partisan playthings" of politics, he had seen in Taşan one who deserved his official title. According to the poet and writer Okan Yüksel, Taşan, while prosecutor of the Sinop Prison, brought theatre to the prisoners and was among the first to introduce theatre into a prison. This interest left two works in print: Cezaevinden Sonra: 1250 Hükümlü Üzerinde Araştırma (After Prison: A Study of 1,250 Convicts), published in 1964, and the play İçerdeki Adam (The Man Inside), printed in 1971.

After retiring as a prosecutor in 1985 he practised as a lawyer in İzmir until 2000. The Writers' Association, the Writers' Union of Turkey and the Language Association counted him among their members. He was married with two children. He died on 17 June 2018 and was buried in İzmir. A street in Karşıyaka bears his name. According to Erkin Usman's column in Yeni Asır, the name was given in 1998, at the initiative of the then mayor A. Kemal Baysak, at a ceremony to the place where the courthouse in which the poet had served for many years stands; the name, in other words, was given while the poet was still alive.

It is his family more than his birthplace that ties Taşan to Merzifon. The Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature), drawing on Murat Yalçın's Tanzimat'tan Bugüne Edebiyatçılar Ansiklopedisi, names the Sufi poet of Merzifon Şeyh Abdürrahîm-i Rûmî as his ancestor sixteen generations back and the poet Eyüb Sabrî as his ancestor three generations back. The life dates given in the same entry need separate discussion, however: the span 1350-1458 given for Rûmî agrees with Hüsameddin on the year of death but is doubtful as to the year of birth, and Eyüb Sabrî's death is given in the entry as 1867, whereas the sources followed on his page give 1866. The dates are discussed in detail on the pages of these two poets.

Taşan showed his interest in the family sheikh in a book as well: the biography Merzifonlu Şeyh Abdürrahim Rûmî was printed by Hepileri Tipo Ofset in İzmir in 1975. The book could not be consulted when the Rûmî page on this site was prepared. The voice of his home did not fade from his poetry either. According to Mehmed Kemal, Ceyhun Atuf Kansu said that Taşan's poems made their voice heard from Şiran, from Merzifon and from Sinop Castle; in that sentence his postings and the town of his birth stand side by side.

His Poetry

Copyright note: Taşan died in 2018, and the copyright in his poems runs until the last day of 2088. Until then they get no separate pages here; this section holds only two short quotations.

His first poem, "Bizden Sonra" (After Us), was published in the review Varlık in 1946. On reading it, Nurullah Ataç wrote that the poet spoke "without setting up as a preacher, without raising his voice and falling into empty words", and added: "I do not know whether Berin Taşan is a man or a woman, but I would not be surprised if one day he gave us very fine poems." Being taken for a woman was not the only confusion over his name; Mehmed Kemal recalls that in those years people mixed him up with Suphi Taşhan. Later poems and articles of his were printed in publications such as Yeditepe, Dost, Ataç, İmece, Kaynak, Evrim, Soyut, Türk Dili, Kıyı, Yeni Ufuklar, Cumhuriyet and Vatan. Mehmed Kemal believed that many of his early poems had appeared in Kaynak, the review published by Avni Dökmeci.

His books came at long intervals: Ellerim Gözlerim Yüreğim (My Hands, My Eyes, My Heart; İzmir 1960), Yüzünün Bir Yanında (On One Side of Your Face; Ankara 1969), Önce (First; İstanbul 1986), which gathered all his poems, and Şahdamarından (From the Jugular Vein), a volume of selected poems. This last book carries the date 2000 in the body of the entry and 2001 in its list of works; Atila Er's article on the book appeared in 2005. In 2005 he published his memoirs under the title Bir Tanığım Kalsın (Let Me Leave a Witness). In an interview with Atila Er he says he wrote the book "not for the sake of fame, but to prove to those who come after me that they are not alone".

His critics meet at the same point: a language without ornament and an eye turned toward social reality. Refik Durbaş calls the poems of Önce "poems of a faith and of resistance". Mehmed Kemal notes that Taşan says everything in plain lines, does not resort to games or affectation, wrote what he lived and lived what he wrote; he shows how, from the short poems fashionable in his time, he turned with the years toward long epic poems, and how in long poems such as "Bir Motorlu Trenle Geçtim Üzerinden" (I Passed Over It on a Railcar) he brought together the villager, the sharecropper, the moneylender and the right to strike in the same lines. The entry likens his realistic stance toward nature and the people of the country to a photographer's sensibility. Şükran Kurdakul writes that from his first appearance he never lost the sincere tone created by his purified, clean language. Cemal Süreya's remark is more personal: "There is always a place inside me for Berin's poems. They are fresh as can be."

One of Taşan's best-known poems is "Aç Kapıyı Ben Geldim" (Open the Door, I Have Come), which Erkin Usman says has a place in the memory of poetry lovers all over Turkey. Usman quotes these lines from it:

Korka korka değil, usul usul değil
Elim yüreğimde çarpa çarpa geldim
Aç kapıyı bak ne diyeceğim

"Not fearfully, not softly, / I came with my hand on my pounding heart; / open the door, listen to what I will say." Timidity is refused twice in these lines, and the haste of the arrival is made one with the beating of the heart; the word itself is never spoken but left for the opening of the door. The other is a passage quoted by Mustafa Şerif Onaran in his review of Bir Tanığım Kalsın. Onaran gives these lines as an example of the poet's unease as he longs for a leader to guide society:

İçine kapanmış koca ülke
İnce bir yorgan altında tir tir titriyor
Lambası kısık
Kapısı aralık
Mustafa Kemal gelecek diye

"The great country, withdrawn into itself, / shivers under a thin quilt, / its lamp turned low, / its door ajar, / because Mustafa Kemal will come." Here too the door is left ajar, but this time the one waiting behind it is an entire country, fitted inside a house with a lamp turned low and a thin quilt. To read the poems themselves one has to go to his books.

Works

  • Poetry: Ellerim Gözlerim Yüreğim (İzmir: Ressam Vedat Matbaası, 1960), Yüzünün Bir Yanında (Ankara: Memleket, 1969), Önce (İstanbul: Kent, 1986), Şahdamarından (Ankara: Toplum, 2000 or 2001).
  • Research: Cezaevinden Sonra: 1250 Hükümlü Üzerinde Araştırma (İzmir 1964), Ağır Cezalı 200 Karar (Ankara 1966).
  • Drama: İçerdeki Adam (İstanbul 1971).
  • Biography: Merzifonlu Şeyh Abdürrahim Rûmî (İzmir 1975).
  • Memoirs: Bir Tanığım Kalsın (Ankara: Ümit, 2005).

Chronology

1928: Born in Merzifon on 9 November.

1946: His first poem, "Bizden Sonra", appears in the review Varlık.

1947: Graduates from Samsun High School and enters the Faculty of Law in Ankara.

1951: Graduates and begins his career as a prosecutor.

1960: Brings out his first book, Ellerim Gözlerim Yüreğim.

1965: Moves to posts as chief public prosecutor, serving in Sinop, Karşıyaka and İzmir.

1975: Merzifonlu Şeyh Abdürrahim Rûmî is printed.

1985: Retires as a prosecutor and begins practising as a lawyer.

1986: His collected poems are published as Önce.

1998: His name is given to the place where the courthouse stands in Karşıyaka.

2005: His memoirs, Bir Tanığım Kalsın, are published.

2018: Dies on 17 June and is buried in İzmir.

Bibliography

Books

  • İsa Koyuncu, "Berin Taşan", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 09.11.2019 (updated 29.10.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/berin-tasan
  • Erkin Usman, "Cezaevine tiyatroyu sokan şair ve savcı", Yeni Asır, 27 October 2010. https://www.yeniasir.com.tr/yazarlar/erkin_usman/2010/10/27/cezaevine_tiyatroyu_sokan_sair_ve_savci
  • Mehmed Kemal, "Şiirin İzinde Yaşamak", Cumhuriyet, 2 November 1987, p. 10 (as quoted by Koyuncu).
  • Murat Yalçın (ed.), "Taşan, Berin", Tanzimat'tan Bugüne Edebiyatçılar Ansiklopedisi, vol. 2, İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2010, pp. 997-998 (as quoted by Koyuncu).
  • Mustafa Şerif Onaran, "Sorumluluk Duyarak Geçmişe Bakmak", Cumhuriyet Kitap, no. 819, 27 October 2005, p. 20 (as quoted by Koyuncu).
  • Şükran Kurdakul, "Taşan, Berin", Şairler ve Yazarlar Sözlüğü, İstanbul: İnkılap Yayınları, 1999 (as quoted by Koyuncu).

Online sources