A woman's struggle for freedom

Celile is a one-woman play.

With her mesmerizing stage performance, Ayşegül Yalçıner makes us feel Celile Hikmet’s struggle with life to the marrow. A woman so strong, who sacrificed her entire life for the liberation of her emotional world, could only be represented by such a successful artist.

Celile, the mother of the great poet Nazım Hikmet. A woman who influenced those around her not only with her beauty but also with her intellectual side and artistic talent. She was born into a wealthy family, raised with care, and married into another wealthy family.

Celile had a quite magnificent life according to the conditions of her time. As the saying goes, she had everything she could ever want. A wealthy, powerful, and charismatic husband, three beautiful children, servants, governesses, a European lifestyle, and so on. What more could a person want, what more could a woman want? Celile was raised with great care. She received a good literary education, learned foreign languages, but most importantly, she received advanced artistic training.

One day, Celile Hikmet would become one of Turkey’s internationally recognized painters. But what was troubling Celile while she was surrounded by so much wealth and comfort? Why do you think she filled her entire life with sadness and tears?

Why sadness when there was the peace of a comfortable life? I cannot speak for you, but I believe that the main culprit behind all these experiences is art. At its core, art is rebellion. Art never tolerates the status quo. Art does not like comfort either. Art is a creative energy that comes from within a person in any situation and under any condition. Instead of enjoying the pleasures of life by taking advantage of the blessings of the world they live in, the artist produces art with the dream of reaching more humane worlds beyond the world they live in. Therefore, art is a tool for humans to fight for humanity, and the artist is the actor who uses this tool.

The artist’s personal expressions and cries are actually for all of humanity. It is precisely for this reason that Celile’s cries still break our hearts today, and tears wet our cheeks. One feels like getting angry at Yahya Kemal for leaving her love behind, but we return to the story of the woman who buried her love in her heart and continued her struggle for life, saying, "He was a great poet, he must have known something." Celile’s struggle is not just a simple wave of love; it is a struggle far beyond that. With the questioning and critical perspective that her artistic personality gave her, she questions life and humanity in all its aspects, and makes a choice with the belief that being human requires living differently.

To accept and continue, or to oppose and fight. At this point, Celile makes her choice in the direction of opposing and fighting. Even though the result was not what she expected or wanted, she never regrets the choice she made. When it comes to giving up and turning back, she chooses to continue the struggle and freedom. Celile’s struggle for freedom may seem meaningless to some. They might think, why would a person, especially a woman, embark on such a difficult adventure when she has such a comfortable and easy life? The same question could be asked for Nazım Hikmet. What happened that he embarked on such a difficult adventure and sacrificed his whole life despite all that wealth and comfort? And they are not the only ones; countless artists and thinkers throughout human history have sacrificed their lives for a more humane world. If that were not the case, we would not have reached the level we are at today as humanity. But it is not enough; we still have a long way to go.

We are in a world we call civilized, yet everywhere is covered in blood and fire. Brutal massacres continue. While a small minority at the source of the water dares to leave the rest of the world without water and bread, the masses accept this situation by calling it fate. However, every person born into life has the right to live humanely. Every person has the right to build a life in the way they want for themselves. No human being has to be trapped in someone else’s living space or live the life someone else wants. I referred to Celile Hikmet’s life story to emphasize this truth about humanity. I touched upon an artist’s struggle for freedom to draw attention to the role of art in the struggle for a humane life. A more humane world is possible not through war, but through art. The destruction of the masses through war does not heal the world. Perhaps some may profit from this in the short term.

Those who want to accumulate capital through the arms trade and those who play power games through mass destruction may find satisfaction in the short term, but the continuation of a life worthy of human beings is becoming increasingly impossible in a world polluted with blood. Instead of destroying the masses, why all this hatred, animosity, and massacre when we could educate them, nourish them with art, provide them with the means to live humanely, and live together like human beings? To listen to Celile’s cries, Nazım’s verses, and Socrates’ call from thousands of years ago, and to demand a more humane world. Why not?