SABAHATTİN EYÜBOĞLU

The intellectual perspective behind Eyüboğlu's ideas has a humanist, populist, left-wing
character. Ignoring rationalism and criticizing all kinds of self-interested, scholastic circles,
the thinker focused on Atatürk's populist and cultural-oriented aspects. Eyüboğlu, who felt the
necessity of free thought intensely in his works, introduced creative westernization against
imitative westernization.

Eyüboğlu’s translation of Hamlet in 1965 coincides with a period of significant cultural and
political change in Turkey. The 1960s was a period that witnessed a number of important
developments in Turkey, including democratization efforts, cultural mobility, and economic
growth.

However, it was also a period of political uncertainty, coups, and conflict. The May 27th coup
d'état, a military intervention in 1960, led to significant changes in the political arena in
Turkey. This coup led to the overthrow of the existing government, a new constitution, and
the beginning of a period of military tutelage. Eyüboğlu's translation might have been
influenced by the cultural and intellectual atmosphere of this period.

Even so, Eyüboğlu's translations and translation strategies were not always met with positive
criticism. The most notable example of this is Nüvit Özdoğru's harsh criticism of Eyüboğlu's
translations of Shakespeare in his article titled “Shakespeare’e Saygı” published in the journal
Oyun. This raises the question: according to the target culture, how and for whom does
Shakespeare truly write?

This question can be answered as follows: Shakespeare, as a member/partner/author of a

theater troupe that staged plays at the palace in the sixteenth century, which had received the
title of "The King's Men" and was therefore protected and patronized by the royal family,
wrote for the high society and in an elite language suitable for them. This is precisely why
Nüvit Özdoğru criticizes Eyüboğlu.

In his article with the same title in response to this criticism, Sabahattin Eyüboğlu defends his
translation by emphasizing his perception of Shakespeare beyond sentence/word choices.
According to Eyüboğlu, Nüvit Özdoğru's criticisms of the translation stem from his
perception of Shakespeare as a court poet, a member of the genteel circle. Özdoğru’s
Shakespeare, in a way, “kral ve kraliçelere toz kondurmaz, kralları her zaman kral gibi,
kraliçeleri her zaman kraliçe gibi konuşturur”.

Eyüboğlu's Shakespeare paints a completely different picture. According to Eyüboğlu,

Shakespeare was a folk poet who wrote not for the court but against it.
In his plays, he does not hesitate to use the language of the people in its crudest form from
time to time. Before the acceptance of humanist thought, Shakespeare was despised as “a
commoner artist so uncultured that he confused tragedy with comedy”. Instead of affirming
the court environment in his plays, Shakespeare chose to show the intrigues going on in the
palace, the degenerate faces of the nobles and the “inferiority” of the rank holders.

Therefore, in Eyüboğlu's Shakespeare, kings and queens can swear and speak in the language
of “commoners”. Moreover, Shakespeare did not hesitate to make what Nüvit Özdoğru calls
“cheap melodrama”; on the contrary, he managed to create a classic out of such a theater. Due
to all these differences in reception, Nüvit Özdoğru finds Sabahattin Eyüboğlu's text “wrong”
and “incomplete”, while Sabahattin Eyüboğlu accuses Nüvit Özdoğru of failing to place
Shakespeare in human history correctly.

Before moving on, it should be noted that Sabahattin Eyüboğlu translated Hamlet not from
English but from French, which served as an intermediate language. In the preface to his
translation of Hamlet, he says: “Benim İngilizcem kitaptan, kendi kendime öğrendiğim yarım
yamalak bir İngilizcedir. Onun için Fransızca, Türkçe bulabildiğim birçok çevirilere
başvurarak çalıştım [...] Şairleri kuşa çevirmek çeviriciliğin şanındandır. Ama kuşa
çevirdiğimiz şairler bizim taktığımız bücür kanatlarla da uçabiliyorlar ne hikmetse. Büyük
soluklarının rüzgârıyla belki. Her çeviren kendi dünyasına çekmiş Hamlet’i. Ama Hamlet de
buna en elverişli eserlerden biri doğrusu. Kişileri, sözleri, olayları ne kolay benimsenebiliyor,
kendi çevremizde gördüklerimize benzetilebiliyor. Hamlet hem ne kadar kendisi, hem ne
kadar her insan, hem ne kadar belli bir çağın, hem ne kadar bütün çağların adamı. Konuştuğu
dilin tadına hem yalnız İngilizcenin daniskasını bilen varabilir, hem de benim gibi az bilen. En
güzel masalları hem büyüklerin hem küçüklerin tattığı gibi.”