Lütfi Can

Ü S T E L

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet!

Everything about publishing for me started with a translation job. A publisher whom I met through a bookstore owner friend of my “dear aunt”, who is a sophisticated and intellectual lady, asked me to translate a sports book for him. I owe my publishing adventure to my aunt, in a sense…

The book to be translated was the biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The book rather included his thoughts about sports. That summer, while I was translating the book that summer at my mechanical typewriter “beet engine”, I had the idea that a better one could be written in terms of technical content information. After a while, the doors of writing a sports book opened for me. The book was already in my mind, and so many notes I had previously written on the subject were ready. It was not difficult to compile them and make them ready for publication in a short time. My book “MUSCLE AND STRENGTH” (Adale ve Kuvvet) was born.

On the other hand, I was also interested in political science and I was interested in the story and ideas of Karl Marx. In fact, my interest and admiration were for the way Marx was mentioned in political discussions as a philosopher, rather than his ideas. When it comes to Marx, the discussion is over… His name was almost like a joker in intellectual discussions… Then, I should write a book on political science. For example, its name could be JUSTICE and STRENGTH. This thirty-year-old dream more or less seems the have realized first with “nanny” and later with TESTAMENT. I can assure you that some issues regarding certain technical ideas were haunting me in my dreams.

Years ago, when I was sitting in a cafe by the sea on a beautiful spring day, I heard a ringing of a cell phone, which suddenly took me on a mental journey for a few seconds. The question “What if something happens and we cannot use these phones and if general communication is cut off all of a sudden?” appeared in my mind, and then the whole scenario came to life in my eyes, just like I was watching a movie. Right after that, I started writing the book. What had to be done then was a “line filler”, which is literature. So was born my book named ORBIT. Maybe the thing called INSPIRATION was something like this… It would come in a moment and gift a “candy apple” to anyone who is in search of truth.

The process developed similarly for my other books… Years before the COVID-19 disease, which emerged one and a half years ago, I wrote that “various diseases unknown yet” would emerge. This subject was scrutinized especially in my books named FLOOD, which was published 15 years ago, and GOVERNOR, which I wrote long before the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was a few years before today. I was sitting in a cafeteria again with a good friend of mine and we were having a coffee-cigarette conversation. At a sincere moment in the conversation, I asked him, "Did you ever think that I would be involved in this book business?" A mischievous smile appeared on his face and he answered my question very politely by raising his eyebrows upwards... When I was in school, I hated books and of course literature. Or let me put it this way. I thought I hated it. The rote memorization and oppressive style of the education system had driven me away from books. Would you believe it, I could never get more than five out of 10 marks in any composition class at school, whether in Turkish or in a foreign language...

Arnold Schwarzenegger’in BİR VÜCUTÇUNUN EĞİTİMİ adlı kitabını tercümeye oturmadan önce de mesela “de/da” gibi Türkçe lisanındaki bazı teknik uygulamaların nasıl kullanıldığını, ayrı yazılıp yazılmadığını vs. tam bilmiyordum. İnsan ancak samimi bir sevgi ve ilgi duyarsa öğrenebiliyor. Bu sevgi, zamanla, “olabileceğine İnanmasını” da sağlıyor. Sonra da sıra “yapabileceğini önce kendine ispatlamaya” geliyor… Eğitim sisteminin işte o sevgiyi oluşturacak nitelikte olması lazım, küçücük çocukları kitaplardan soğutacak şekilde değil… Bunun için de eğitimin despot bir üslupla baskı oluşturarak değil; periler gibi sevgi üreterek, muazzam derecede güler yüzle yapılması gerekiyor…

“Sabır acıdır. Ama meyvesi tatlıdır!” derler. Meğerse hakikaten böyleymiş. Sabırla koruk helva olabiliyormuş yani… Bu WEB sitesine sizler isterseniz “özgeçmiş” yahut CV de diyebilirsiniz. Ve gece geç saatlerde yahut sabahın erken saatlerinde hani karga kahvaltısını yapmadan diye tabir ederler ya, o misal, çalışırken, yazılarımı kaleme alırken, sabır kavramına ilişkin geçmiş olduğum yolda, ilham perisi ile olan arkadaşlığımı düşünüyorum da… Sessiz, sakin, dingin, bazen anaforlu, fırtınalı ancak daima izole ve YALNIZ bir arkadaşlık bu… Herkese benzerini denemeyi tavsiye edebileceğim şehvet dolu bir arkadaşlık…

Now that I am retired, I continue my friendship with my muse with an ever-increasing lust, a lust that is extremely obscene and as intimate as it is obscene... It does not leave me alone, it constantly provokes me, but what can I do! I am under tremendous harassment and provocation. "A loneliness that was so bitter in my youth, I now sip with great pleasure," Albert Einstein said.

Now I understand it better and I want to ask. Is there such a thing as true loneliness? It turned out that it does not exist! However, if any, patience can also turn into a sweet fruit. Even a candy apple that the beautiful muse hands out, sometimes timidly, sometimes in a way that is impossible to refuse…

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