SABA, Ziya Osman

Poet (b. March 1910, İstanbul - d. 29 January 1957). He attended primary and elementary school as a boarder at Galatasaray High School (1931). When he was working at the newspaper Cumhuriyet as a bookkeeper, he attended and graduated from İstanbul University, Faculty of Law (1936).

He worked as an officer at Emlak Bank and as the Head of the Proofreading Department of the publishing house of the Ministry of National Education (1945) He worked from home for the Varlık Publishing House due to his heart condition. He lived as a poor man all his life. The location of his grave is unknown.

His first poem, Sönen Gözler (Fading Eyes), was published in the review Servet-i Fünûn – Uyanış, in 1927 when he was seventeen. He was a most faithful man of literature to poetry and among the defenders of the movement “Yedi Meşale” (Seven Torches).

During the first years of the “Seven Torches” period, he wrote pessimistic and desperate poems.

Therefore, he frequently employed the words such as torment, grudge, gravedigger and bat. His marriage to his uncle's daughter, who was also a neuropath and the wounds from the early death of his mother, might have been the reasons of the pessimism in his poetry in this period. In the following period, he wrote more hopeful poems. He was as addicted to the art of poetry as a lover is.

He summarized his understanding of innovation in poetry as: “Innovation in every kind of art stems from the man’s need for novelty.

If this emergence comes naturally, the new thing of today is as beautiful as the new things of the past and it will still be beautiful when it gets old.

We, those who appreciate art, among all these beautiful things, can run from one of these to another when we are tired, and if our eyes are dazzled by the clarity of classicism, we can embark on the indefiniteness of symbolism.”

After the closure of the review Meşale, his poems and articles were published in the arts pages of the newspaper Milliyet, and in the reviews İçtihad, Ağaç, Yücel and in Varlık, from the first publication (15 July 1933). There are four basic themes in his poetry: death, love, love of nature and mankind.

He also handles the extensions of these themes, such as the love of life, the love of children, etc. The general style of his poetry is tranquil.

His friendship with Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı presented Turkish literature with Ziya’ya Mektuplar (Letters to Ziya). There have been several thesis presented related to him. Alkım Publications re-published all his works in 2003.

In his poems, which were generally written in syllabic meter and free verse at times “He handled the issues of childhood aspirations, fondness of memories, love of the home and family, shame and pity he felt for the poor, worshipping God, submissiveness to fate, contenting himself with small happiness, closeness to death and the desire for the life beyond.” (Behçet Necatigil).

WORKS:

POETRY:Sebil ve Güvercinler (Fountain and Pigeons, 1943), Geçen Zaman (Time Passing By, 1947), Nefes Almak (Breathing, 1957), Geçen Zaman - Nefes Almak (Time Passing By- Breathing, all poems of his three books, 1974).

SHORT STORY:Mesut İnsanlar Fotoğrafhanesi (House of Photographs of Happy People, 1952), Değişen İstanbul (Changing İstanbul, 1959).