Ahmed Vâlâ Nureddin (1901–1967) was a Turkish writer and journalist also known under his pen name Va-Nu.

Early life and education

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Vala Nureddin was born in Beirut, as a son to a Vali of Beirut, but his birth was registered in Constantinople as there the citizens wouldn't have to serve in the military.[1] Vala moved to Constantinople, where he attended the Galatasaray high school between 1911 and 1916.[1] He then settled to Vienna, Austria-Hungary where he enrolled in the Vienna School of Economics, focusing on financial studies.[1] By 1917, he was in Istanbul and employed at the Türkiye Millî Bankası [tr] and the Ministry of Finance. He was not satisfied with what he did and therefore began to write and publish poetry.[1] In 1921, Vâlâ and Nazim Hikmet, attempting to join the Kemalist forces in the Turkish War of Independence, went to Inebolu at the Black Sea.[2] But their communist views were not popular among the Kemalist forces, so they moved on to the Soviet Union.[2]

In the Soviet Union

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They initially travelled to Batumi, but by 1922, they were staying in the Oriental Hotel in Tiflis.[3] There they made contact with the Turkish linguist Ahmet Cevat Emre.[3] Later, both Nazim and Vala lived together with Emre in the Hôtel de France in Batumi at the Black Sea[3] where Emre offered them to write for the newspaper Yeni Dünya [tr].[3] As the political situation became dire due to the relations Nazim and Vala maintained with Pan-Turanists willing to create a Turkish state from Edirne to China, the social family decided to leave the Hotel and went to live in the house of Emres printer.[3] There the social family was joined by Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, who'd stay with the three others until the late 1920s.[3] Between 1922 and 1925, the four friends went to Moscow where Emre was offered a job as a Professor for Turkish language at the Oriental Institute of the University of Moscow, and the four kept having a common household in the Hotel Lux.[3] Vala enrolled in the Communist University of the Workers of the East, where he and Hikmet were introduced to Marxism-Leninism and additionally occupied lessons in French and Russian.[4] By the end of his studies he taught as well.[1] In 1923, he developed a health issue which caused him to be sent for some weeks to a sanatorium in Caucasus.[5]

Return to Turkey

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Having returned to Turkey in 1925, he began to write for a variety of newspapers mostly using his pen name Va Nu but at times also writing under a pseudonym.[1] During his journalistic career in Turkey he wrote for newspapers like Yeni Sabah, Cumhuriyet, Yeni Gün.[1] He was one of the contributors of Resimli Perşembe, a weekly literary magazine founded and edited by Sabiha and Zekeriya Sertel, between 1925 and 1929.[6] He wrote articles for the Akşam from 1927 until 1966 with an interval between 1933 and 1939.[1]

Personal life

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Nureddin was married twice. His first wife was Meziyet Çürüksulu, who he married in 1932, but became a widower as she died in 1939.[1] Then he married his second wife Müzehher, who was also a journalist.[1] As he lived in a social family together with Nureddin and Hikmet in Georgia, he would teach Turkish to Azerbaijani, Hikmet wrote articles and poems while Emre was in charge of cooking.[7]

Works

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He translated several works from Russian, English, or French to the Turkish language[1] and was the biographer of Nazim Hikmet.[8]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Vâlâ Nureddin Papers 1919–1996". International Institute of Social History.
  2. ^ a b Morrow, Lisa (21 September 2018). "Turkish Literature 101: Nazım Hikmet Ran". Yabangee. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Göksu, Saime; Timms, Edward (1999). Romantic Communist: The Life and Work of Nazım Hikmet. Hurst. pp. 35–40. ISBN 978-1-85065-371-4.
  4. ^ Göksu, Saime; Timms, Edward (1999), p.42
  5. ^ Göksu, Saime; Timms, Edward (1999), p.51
  6. ^ Ayşe Yılmaz (2021). "Bir Erken Dönem Sinema Süreli Yayınları Retrospektifi". Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi (in Turkish). 19 (37): 323.
  7. ^ Göksu, Saime; Timms, Edward (1999).
  8. ^ Blasing, Mutlu Konuk (2010). "Nazim Hikmet and Ezra Pound: "To Confess Wrong without Losing Rightness"". Journal of Modern Literature. 33 (2): 8. doi:10.2979/jml.2010.33.2.1. ISSN 0022-281X. JSTOR 10.2979/jml.2010.33.2.1. S2CID 162349806 – via JSTOR.