[Xmca-l] Best possible theoretical approach on learning from life experiences

[Ulvi İçil]

Dear all,

For a study on Turkish poet, also a painter and playwright, Nazim Hikmet,
whom learning seems to be heavily determined from life experiences at each
stage of his life,
I am looking for a best theoretical approach in general on learning from
life experiences, then more specifically for such great poets, painters and
play writers.
Just to give a closer idea, please look at the section below from his
novel, Life's good, brother.

I appreciate highly any idea, proposal on such a theoretical approach.

Thank you.

Ulvi

I sat down at the table in the Hôtel de France in Batum. A table with
carved legs—not just the legs but the whole gilded oval table was covered
with intricate carvings. Rococo . . . In the seaside house in Üsküdar, a
rococo
table sits in the guestroom. Ro-co-co . . . The journey I made from the
Black
Sea coast to Ankara, then from there to Bolu, the thirty-five-day,
thirty-fiveyear
journey on foot to the town where I taught school—in short, to make a
long story short, the encounter of a pasha’s descendant—more precisely, a
grandson—with Anatolia now rests on the rococo table in the Hôtel de
France in Batum, spread out over the table like a tattered, dirty,
blood-stained
block-print cloth. I look, and I want to cry. I look, and my blood rushes
to my
head in rage. I look, and I’m ashamed again. Of the house by the sea in
Üsküdar. Decide, son, I say to myself, decide. The decision was made: death
before turning back. Wait, don’t rush, son. Let’s put the questions on this
table, right next to Anatolia here. What can you sacrifice for this cause?
What
can you give? Everything. Everything I have. Your freedom? Yes! How
many years can you rot in prison for this cause? All my life, if necessary!
Yes, but you like women, fine dining, nice clothes. You can’t wait to
travel,
to see Europe, Asia, America, Africa. If you just leave Anatolia here on
this
rococo table in Batum and go from Tbilisi to Kars and back to Ankara from
there, in five or six years you’ll be a senator, a minister—women, wining
and
dining, art, the whole world. No! If necessary, I can spend my whole life in
prison. Okay, but what about getting hanged, killed, or drowned like Mustafa
Suphi and his friends if I become a Communist—didn’t you ask yourself these
questions in Batum? I did. I asked myself, Are you afraid of being
killed? I’m not afraid, I said. Just like that, without thinking? No. I
first knew
I was afraid, then I knew I wasn’t. Okay, are you ready to be disabled,
crippled, or made deaf for this cause? I asked. And TB, heart disease,
blindness? Blindness? Blindness . . . Wait a minute—I hadn’t thought about
going blind for this cause. I got up. I shut my eyes tight and walked around
the room. Feeling the furniture with my hands, I walked around the room in
the darkness of my closed eyes. Twice I stumbled, but I didn’t open my eyes.
Then I stopped at the table. I opened my eyes. Yes, I can accept blindness.
Maybe I was a bit childish, a little comical. But this is the truth. Not
books or
word-of-mouth propaganda or my social condition brought me where I am.
Anatolia brought me where I am. The Anatolia I had seen only on the
surface, from the outside. My heart brought me where I am. That’s how it is
.