Poetry and Communism

Alain Badiou

translated by Bruno Bosteels, Lana Turner

[from the forthcoming book by Alain Badiou, The Age of the Poets and Other Writings on Twentieth-Century Poetry and Prose, edited and translated by Bruno Bosteels with an introduction by Emily Apter and Bruno Bosteels (London-New York: Verso, 2014).]

In the last century, some truly great poets, in almost all languages on earth, have been communists. In an explicit or formal way, for example, the following poets were committed to communism: in Turkey, Nâzim Hikmet; in Chile, Pablo Neruda; in Spain, Rafael Alberti; in Italy, Eduardo Sanguinetti; in Greece, Yannis Ritsos; in China, Ai Qing; in Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish; in Peru, César Vallejo; and in Germany, the shining example is above all Bertolt Brecht. But we could cite a very large number of other names in other languages, throughout the world.

A Sad State Of Freedom

Nazim Hikmet

You waste the attention of your eyes,

the glittering labour of your hands,

and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves

of which you'll taste not a morsel;

you are free to slave for others--

you are free to make the rich richer.

The moment you're born

they plant around you

mills that grind lies

lies to last you a lifetime.

You keep thinking in your great freedom

a finger on your temple

free to have a free conscience.

Letters from a Man in Solitary

Nazim Hikmet

I carved your name on my watchband

with my fingernail.

Where I am, you know,

I don't have a pearl-handled jackknife

(they won't give me anything sharp)

  or a plane tree with its head in the clouds.

Trees may grow in the yard,

but I'm not allowed

    to see the sky overhead.....