Behçet Necatigil 
Author

Poemas

Original

Übersetzung

Behçet Necatigil 
Author

Foto © Necatigil Family
* 16.04.1916, Istanbul, Turquía
13.12.1979, Turquía

Behçet Necatigil, born on the 16th of April, 1916 in Istanbul, died on the  13th of December, 1979 in Istanbul.

In the year 1940, he graduated from the Turkish Language and Literature Department of the University of Istanbul.  Between the years 1940 and 1943 he worked as a teacher in Kars and Zonguldak. After completing the military service in 1945, he was appointed to the school he was graduated from, Istanbul Kabataş Highschool as a literature teacher. After working for 15 years in this school, he was appointed to the Istanbul Education Institute in 1960 and worked there as a literature teacher until his retirement in 1972.

 Foto © Necatigil Family
In 1949, he married a colleague, Ms. Huriye Necatigil (born in Korkut). They got two daughters: Selma (born in 1951) and Ayse (born in 1957).

To improve his German which he started learning in the secondary school, he got into the Istanbul University German Philology as a “guest student” during his studies and went to Germany for three months with scholarship given by a student exchange program in the summer of 1937. During the years of working as a literature teacher in Kabataş Highschool, he registered into the German Philology as a student but because of his hard work as a teacher, he had to quit the German Philology. In the summer of 1972 he was invited to Germany again by the DAAD organisation because of his contributions to the German literature in Turkey. He continued on translating from German and never lost his interest in the German literature and language his whole life.

Necatigil who is known mostly as a poet, is one of the important radio-drama playwrights in Turkey.

Some of his plays (“To  look at the stars”, “The Retired” etc.) has been translated into German and was broadcasted in german radio channels.

Furthermore, Necatigil is well known by his lexica works. “Edebiyatımızda İsimler Sözlüğü (Lexicon of the names in turkish literature) and Edebiyatımızda Eserler Sözlüğü (Lexicon of works in turkish literature)

Necatigil's first poem was published in the Varlık magazine during his education. (October 1935). In the “Lexicon of the names in Turkish Literature”, Necatigil describes himself as following:  “He spent his forty years in poetry trying to remind the situations which a middle-class man face from birth to death as an individual and also to deliver his real and imaginary lives in the context of house-family-environment triangle. Sometimes he was criticized because of his outline modernizations but still he was cited as a poet who has a consistent and private world by the critics.”

Necatigil was honoured by two Poetry Awards in Turkey (Yeditepe Poetry Award, 1957 and Turkish Language Association Poetry Award, 1964).

"Behçet Necatigil Poetry Award" created by his family after his death, is given since 1980.