Jeff Evans Writes about Can Yucel

POETIC LICENSE

Can Yüçel was a poet; a very good poet, but more than that, a controversial one. Among university graduates and the sophisticated stratas of Turkish society he was either revered as a humane genius, or else reviled as a red dedicated to the violent overthrow of the bourgeois state. The same went for his poems, they were either loved or despised.
Twenty years ago he bought a house in the oldest part of the village. He spent a good part of the year here, writing in the peace and serenity of the surrounding mountains. The locals, in general not highly educated or worldly, had never heard of him and, were it not for his unusual appearance, would have shown little interest in him. Physically he was the very personification of William Blake’s Methuselah, ageless with his long flowing tresses of white, matted hair and beard, the fierce eyes and hooked nose of a sea eagle. He was not a big man, but something in his reality made him appear so. The same went for his personality. As poets often are, he was a heavy drinker and smoker, in his cups given to long flights of words piling crescendo on climax and climax on crescendo. Most of his drinking he did at home, favouring the very cheapest of red wines named Evim that he bought by the case from a wholesaler. But in the evenings he liked to go out, passionately declaiming his views, political, social and artistic, adding to alcohol the analytical insights of a creative eye. Altogether he was very strong meat, too strong by far for many.
His wife, too, was larger than life. A big woman but not fat, monumental in the Henry Moore manner might better describe her, her large unmade up face topped by what looked like the wreckage of yesterday’s elaborate coiffure, always teetering on the edge of imminent collapse into a tangle of grey. Each of them dressed colourfully but without pretension, together making a conspicuous pair as they wandered about the village or drank wine in a café-bar.
One evening he was sitting drinking and carrying on in his own uninhibited way. It reached a point in his discourse when he was describing in phantasmagorial terms the beauties of last night’s full moon, likening it to a Dutch Gouda cheese rolling across the sky. A meagre-minded keeper of a small grocery store listened to him in stupefied amazement. The Yüçels rarely patronized his shop and then only to buy the occasional bottle of cheap wine, and – because of this - he soon could take no more. “Don’t be so daft, the moon ain’t made of nothing like cheese, we all knows that!” he protested in an obstinate voice full of pique.
The poet fixed his fierce features on the daring shopkeeper. “I beg your pardon, Sir,” his voice boomed out in mock politeness. “I did not quite hear what you said.”
“I said it taint.”
“What’s not taint?”
“The moon.”
“The moon’s taint what?”
“Made of cheese, Dutch or any other kind for that matter.”
“Oh, I see, and what then my good friend, may I ask is it made of?”
“Don’t know, but not cheese,” said the shopkeeper, already wishing that he had not become involved.
“No, my friend, probably not cheese. To be frank nor do I know what it’s made of, and I have absolutely no interest in accurately finding out. So I might as well say it’s made of cheese as anything else then, might I not?”
“But still taint true, even tho you says it,’ is it?”
“No, of course it’s not true, but only the very literal minded would misunderstand me. I, Sir, for better or for worse pursue my calling as a poet. And most of the world allows me a little poetic license. It is a tool of my trade.”
“What you mean?”
“It means that I am allowed a little exaggeration, hyperbole, to go over the top, say something is something when it’s not really true.”
“Well, grumbled the shopkeeper, standing to leave. “Still seems right odd to me!”

****
Three years ago Can’s body at last gave up its long struggle with his abuses. He died and so his tongue was stilled forever. Only then did the village finally appreciate the true stature of the man who had lived among them. From newspapers journalists flocked on Datça to attend the funeral, from literary faculties in the universities came professors and lecturers, from far and near the great and the good converged on Datça out of season and a great deal of welcome money was spent. Even the Government, despite his open communism for which he had once been jailed, sent the provincial governor to represent them; after all his father had been a close associate of Atatürk. For one day there was massive coverage of Datça on television and in the press. The Municipality, sensing a good thing, promptly changed the name of the local festival held every year in August. No longer did it celebrate almonds, but Can Yüçel instead.
During the first year of the renamed festival a hand written notice suddenly appeared in the window of the shop of the man who had tangled in life with the poet over moons made of cheese. As carefully as he could manage he had written:
“Can Yüçel bought his wine here from me.”
“Not true,” some people protested to which he replied. “Why not…it’s only this poetic license he was on about. If he could ‘ave some, why can’t I ‘ave a bit of it, too?”

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