HALMAN, Talât Sait

Poet and writer (b. 7 July 1931, İstanbul). He attended Robert College (1951) and graduated from New York Columbia University, Political Science and Middle East Literature (1954). He served as a lecturer of Turkish language at the same university (1953-60). He worked as an announcer at the United Nations Radio and as the general director of a record company called "The Record Hunter". While he was working as an academician at Princeton University (New Jersey) in the United States, he was called back to Türkiye and served as the Minister of Culture in the government of Nihat Erim, which was established after the military coup on 12 March (17 July 1971).

He taught at Princeton University (New Jersey) from 1966 to 1971 and at New York University from 1967 to 1971. He was a professor at Princeton University (1972-80) and then served as the Ambassador of Cultural Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He worked as a guest professor between 1984 and 1986 at Pennsylvania University. From 1986 to 1997 he was professor and chairman of the Faculty of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at New York University. He served as a member of the executive board of UNESCO between 1991 and 1995. He founded the department of Turkish literature at Bilkent University in September 1998. He is still the head of this department and of the Centre for Turkish Literature and, since September 2005, serves as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters. He has been the chairman of the Turkish National Committee of UNICEF since October 2003. He is the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Turkish Literature.

His poems, translations, criticisms and articles on literature and politics have been published in Yenilik, Türk Dili, Yeditepe, Şiir Sanatı, Varlık, Milliyet Sanat and Kitap-lık and many other reviews and journals since 1955. He published hundreds of articles in the newspaper Milliyet in the columns titled "Doğrusu" (To Tell the Truth), "Can Kulağı" (Listening Carefully), "7 Gün 7 Yazar" (7 Days 7 Writers) and "Kültür" (Culture) between 1969-71 and 1982-2000. He wrote a column with the title "Doğrusu" (To Tell the Truth) in the newspaper Akşam between 1972 and 1975. Furthermore, he worked as a guest editor in the reviews Books Abroad, Contemporary Literature in Translation, Literature East & West, Pacific Quarterly Moana, Review of National Literatures, The Journal of Literary Translation, The Literary Review and The Poetry Society of American Bulletin and served as a member of the editorial board of the review World Literature Today. He organized activities to promote Turkish culture and literature in the United States during the decades he lived there.

So far, he has published 60 books, 2000 newspaper and review articles, almost 500 scholarly articles, encyclopedia articles and critical essays in English and Turkish. Among his major published works are an anthology of the poetry of ancient civilizations; translation of the complete sonnets of Shakespeare; poems of ancient Egypt, Middle East and the Eskimos; books of his selected works, translations of the works of Faulkner, Eugene O’Neill, Mark Twain, Wallace Stevens at all into Turkish; books on American poets and books on Mevlana and Yunus Emre. He also translated many books of poetry, drama, fiction, etc. into English. Some of his works were translated into French, German, Hindi, Persian, Urdu, Hebrew and Japanese.

He received the Eminent Services Award of the Turkish Academy of Sciences and of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was honored with the title of "Knight Grand Cross, G.B.E, the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire" by Queen Elizabeth. He also received the Thornton Wilder Literature Award, an Honorary Doctorate at Boğaziçi University, the UNESCO medal, Rockefeller Fellowship in the Humanities, Ankara Arts Association Award, the Avni Dilligil Award, Award of the Association of Turkish Folklore Research, the Award of "the Best Turkish Scholar in the United States" given by the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations.

WORKS:

POETRY: Can Kulağı (Listening Carefully, 1968), Bin Bir: Özdeyiş Şiirleri (One Thousand and One: Aphoristic poems, 1976), Canevi (The Heart, 1980), Tuyuğlar ve Başka Dörtlükler (Book of Quatrains, 1981), Uzak Ağıt (The Distant Requiem, 1991), Dört Gök-Dört Gönül (Four Skies and Four Hearts, 1994), İki'ler (The Two’s, 1997), Sessiz Soru (The Silent Question, 1998).

HUMOR: Şiirlerle Laz: Karadeniz Fıkraları (The Laz with Poems: Humorous Stories from the Black Sea, 1992), Hepimüz Lazük: Karadeniz Fıkraları (All of Us Are Laz: Humorous Stories from the Black Sea, 1996).

RESEARCH: William Faulkner (William Faulkner, 1963), Doğrusu (To Tell the Truth, 100 articles published in the newspaper Milliyet, 1999), 21. Yüzyılda Üniversite ve Kültür (University and Culture in the 21st Century 2002), A'dan Z'ye Yunus Emre (Yunus Emre from A to Z, 2003).
PLAY: Kahramanlar ve Soytarılar: Shakespeare’in Dünyası (Heroes and Clowns: The World of Shakespeare, 1991), “Türk” Shakespeare (“Turkish” Shakespeare, 2003).