PAINTINGS, PORTRAITS, etc.    Selfportraits    Nâzım As Painter    Piraye's Portraits    Prison Friends    His Other Paintings    Drawings    Nâzım Reading

		PİRAYE'S PORTRAITS
		6 October 1945 Clouds pass,heavy with news. The letter that didn't crumples in my hand. My heart is at the tip of my eyelashes,                             blessing the earth that disappears into the distance. I want to call out : " P i r a y e ,                                                  P i r a y e !.."                                                tr. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk
	I believe that Nâzım could reflect the inner world of Piraye very successfully in his portraits of her. He knew that himself. Under a portrait he painted in Çankırı Prison in 1940 and sent to my grandmother he had written: " Mother,only you and I can see her like this,and only when she gets angry at you or me she gets that lovely. " And under another portrait: " The stone you throw doesn't reach the bird you aim. " He was trying to paint Piraye in a certain mood and feeling. Those who know my mother would say: " Well caught! "
	How lovely it is to remember you : in the midst of the news of death and victory, in prison and over forty years of age... How lovely it is to remember you : your hand forgeotten on a blue cloth and in your hair the grave softness of my beloved Istanbul earth... It is like a second human in me                                             the hapiness of loving you... The smell of geranium leaf on the fingertips, a sunny ease and the call of flesh :                              parted by quite red lines                                                                   a warm                                                                        deep darkness... How lovely it is to remember you : to write about you, to lie back in prison and think of you : that day, that place, the words you said,                                              not the words themselves                                                        but the way you said them... How lovely it is to remember you. I should carve something for you out of wood:                                                                          a drawer                                                                                   a ring, an I should weave three meters of fine silk. And jumping right up                              from my place grabbing the iron bars at my window, to the milk - white blueness of freedom                        I should shout out the poems I wrote for you. How lovely it is to remember you : in the midst of the news of death and victory, in prison and over forty years of age...                                                                                   tr. by Fuat Engin
	23 September 1945 What is she doing now,                       right now, this instant? Is she in the house or outside? Is she working,lying down,or standing up? Maybe she's just raised her arm, - hey,            how this suddenly bares her thick white wrist!..- What is she doing now,                       right now, this instant? Maybe she's petting                                a kitten on her lap. Or maybe she is walking, about to take a step, - those beloved feet that take her straight to me                                                             on my dark days!..- And what's she thinking about -                                                          me? Or - oh,I don't know -                                  why the beans refuse to cook? Or else            why most people are this unhappy? What is she doing now,                       right now, this instant?                             tr. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk
	5 November 1945 Forget the flowering almonds. They aren't worth it: in this business             what cannot come back should not be remembered. Dry you hair in the sun:             let the wet,heavy reds                         glow with the languor of ripe fruit... My love, my love, the season                  fall..                   tr. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk
	My wife, It's the twelfth year of yearning             the twelfth year. The heart is full to the brim. You I say I remember Istanbul             Istanbul I say I remember you. You are as beautiful as my city             my city is grieving as you. That's all my wife. Don't answer if you don't want to.                                     Your husband
	PAINTING FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY      Thanks to the influence of his maternal uncle Ali Fuat Cebesoy, Nâzım sporadically became the recipient of privilege in the Bursa Prison.      A doctor's report would for example be drafted to the effect that he needed to visit the baths for his rheumatism, and he would be permitted to go to a spa-hotel daily, accompanied by a gendarme officer.      In fact, this served him as opportunity to meet with Piraye. He would go to the hotel in Çekirge, where she was staying and spend a few hours with her.      If they chanched upon a street photographer, they would have their picture taken in the gardens of the hotel, against a background of the panorama of the Bursa plain and Nilüfer.      If I'm not mistaken, this photograph too, was taken - albeit against the sky - in the garden of a hotel, by a street photographer. Because the faulty lighting has stamped out his face, Nâzım eventually took the detail of Piraye's head alone, and had it enlarged.
	There are photographs of the couple, taken similarly from a lowered angle. Nâzım apparently liked this angle, as well as the play of light and shadow on the faces. He made an oil painting measuring 31x44 cm. using shades of red alone, based on this photograph of Piraye.