Talât Sait Halman facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Talât Sait Halman
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| Minister of Culture of Turkey | |
| In office 13 July 1971 – 13 December 1971 |
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| Succeeded by | Nermin Çiftçi |
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| Born | 7 July 1931 Istanbul, Turkey |
| Died | 5 December 2014 (aged 83) Ankara, Turkey |
Talât Sait Halman (born July 7, 1931 – died December 5, 2014) was a famous Turkish poet, translator, and cultural historian. He was a very important person in Turkish culture. He even became the first ever Minister of Culture of Turkey.
From 1998 until his death, he worked at Bilkent University in Turkey. There, he was the dean (a top leader) of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters. He helped create new ways to study Turkish languages and literature.
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Life and Education
Talât Halman started his education at Robert College in Istanbul. After that, in the mid-1950s, he went to Columbia University in the United States. He earned a master's degree there. He studied political science, international relations, and international law.
Teaching Career
Halman had a long and successful career teaching at many universities. He taught at Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University. At New York University, he was even the head of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures.
Later, he returned to Turkey and taught at Bilkent University in Ankara. He became the dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters there. He worked to introduce new and exciting ways to study Turkish language and literature.
Awards and Honors
Talât Halman received many special awards for his work. Columbia University gave him the Thornton Wilder Prize for his amazing work as a translator. He also received an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University.
He was given a Rockefeller Fellowship in the Humanities and the UNESCO Medal. One of his highest honors was being made a "Knight Grand Cross, the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire" by Queen Elizabeth II in 1971. This is a very special award from the United Kingdom.
Cultural Contributions
In 1971, Talât Halman became Turkey's first Minister of Culture. During his time in this role, he helped share Turkish culture with the world.
Promoting Turkish Culture Abroad
He helped the whirling dervishes, a famous Turkish group, go on their first tour of the United States in 1971. He also organized the first American museum tour of historical items from the Ottoman Sultans' Topkapı Palace in 1976.
From 1980 to 1982, he was Turkey's first ambassador for cultural affairs. He was based in New York and started many programs to share Turkish culture. He also served on the Executive Board of UNESCO from 1991 to 1995.
He was a member of the PEN American Center, which supports writers, and worked with their Translation Committee. He was also a long-time member of the Poetry Society of America.
Works as a Translator and Writer
Talât Halman was an amazing translator. He translated many works from Turkish into English, and from English into Turkish.
Books in English
His books in English include two collections of his own poems. He also translated many works by famous Turkish writers and poets. These include books about the 13th-century mystic poet Yunus Emre and the great poet Rumi. His book about Rumi, published in 1984, helped make Rumi very popular in the United States in the 1990s.
He also translated stories of Nasreddin Hodja, a funny folk character, and poems by Suleiman the Magnificent.
Books in Turkish
In Turkish, he published nine collections of his own poems. He also translated many famous works from other languages. He translated poems from Ancient Egypt and works by American poets like Wallace Stevens and Langston Hughes.
He translated all of Shakespeare's Complete Sonnets into Turkish. He also translated plays by famous writers like Eugene O'Neill and William Faulkner. For some of his play translations, he won Turkey's top awards.
Halman believed that poetry gave him "freedom of intellectual and emotional exploration." This means he could explore ideas and feelings deeply through his writing.
A Thousand Paths for the Intellect
Talât Halman was a person with many different talents. He had a special saying that guided his life. There is a common Turkish proverb that says, "There is but one path for the mind." But Halman changed it to say, "There are a thousand paths for the intellect."
This idea shows his belief in tolerance and open-mindedness, much like the famous poet Jelaluddin Rumi. He believed there are many ways to think and understand the world. He often shared this idea in his talks, especially when discussing the poet Yunus Emre.
One of Yunus Emre's poems that Halman often highlighted says: We regard no one's religion as contrary to ours True love is born when all faiths are united as a whole.
Family Life
Talât Halman came from an important family. His father, Admiral Sait Halman, was a brave soldier. He served in the Turkish War of Independence and World War II. Admiral Sait Halman also wrote many books about naval history. He even wrote about the Piri Reis map, a very old map that shows parts of the New World.
His mother, Iclal, came from the well-known Nemlizade family. Both of his parents' families were from the Trabzon area near the Black Sea. The family name "Halman" comes from an old Greek name for a village called "Holamana."
In 1960, Talât Halman married Seniha Taskiranel. They had two children. His daughter, Defne Halman, born in 1972, is a well-known actress and artist in Turkey today. His son, Sait Salim Halman, who passed away young, was very good at math and science.
A co-director of Indiana University's Turkish studies program, Henry Glasse, once said that Talât Halman was a "heroic model of the intellectual." He said that Halman shared his knowledge with the world and helped people in the United States and Turkey understand each other better through his work.
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Talât Sait Halman
