Abstract
*Landscapes of Translation* begins with a simple question: Who were the English and French translators of Turkey’s “world poet” Nâzım Hikmet? I construct a translation history for Nâzım by humanizing the lives of his translators, starting with his earliest mediators, like Nermin Menemencioğlu and Fikret Adil, through his Cold War champions like Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, Nilüfer Mizanoğlu Reddy, and Rosette Coryell. I then turn to those who brought his epic-novel-in-verse, *Memeleketimden İnsan Manzaraları* (Human Landscapes from My Country) to the world: Münevver Andaç, Taner Baybars, Mutlu Konuk, and Randy Blasing. By historicizing their motivations, ambitions, and networks, I demonstrate how his translators were the chief architects of his international stature, centering them in the formation of world literature to model a biographical approach for the global circulation of poetry. I then consider Nâzım’s translators in the broader context of Turkish poetry circulation by reconstructing the history of the first anthology of modern Turkish poetry in English, Derek Patmore’s *The Star and the Crescent*, describing its implicit sponsorship by the British Council and its legacy of defining Turkish poetry in translation through representative anthologies that often excluded Nâzım. I argue that this marks an historical pivot in translatorial strategy between those promoting a national poetics and those championing a world poet. As an alternative, I offer a speculative history for how Turkish poetry could have developed in translation if it had adopted the strategies of Nâzım’s translators’ instead of the anthological model. Since this dissertation constitutes part of a creative-critical project, I also enact the single-book model by translating Yücel Kayıran’s *Efsus’a Yolculuk* (Passage to Efsus). To represent this translation in my dissertation, I include my translation of his “Kâbe’ye Yolculuk,” the predecessor of his book-length poem.
Committee Chair
Ignacio Infante
Committee Members
Matthias Göritz; Aylin Bademsoy; Kurt Beals; Lynne Tatlock
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Author's Department
Comparative Literature
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
5-6-2025
Language
English (en)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/0vp3-ws73
Author's ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3045-7458
Recommended Citation
Mattern, Derick, "Landscapes of Translation: Centering Nâzım Hikmet’s Translators in World Literature" (2025). Arts & Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 3522.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/0vp3-ws73