Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar; Introduction to "19th Century Turkish Literary History"
The outline of the introduction is
Introduction
Palace
Cikissizlik – language – poetic meter – genres
Mentality
Orneksizlik
Prose
Questions that are raised in class to think about:
Why does everybody write about Tanpinar but not about Koprulu?
Can Koprulu set a model for us in order to understand Tanpinar?
What is the biggest loophole in Tanpinar’s writing?
Introduction
At the beginning of his introduction, Tanpinar gives a sense of what he will be arguing for the rest of the article by introducing the concept of duality with its relation to language and literary history. Even though he does not argue about the literary history in empirical sense as Mehmed Fuad Koprulu does, it is evident that he had been influenced and trained by Koprulu’s ideas on issues regarding the old literature. Tanpinar wrote “19th Century Turkish Literary History” in 1949, long time after the arguments on the old literature and modern Turkish literature had settled down among the early intellectuals.
Summary
The article is built upon the ambiguities of palace life and its image that is reflected on the old literature. The concept of “resemblance” (Foucault: “Order of Things”), which Foucault underlines the importance of it as a source of knowledge in 16th century Western culture, is an applicable concept in order to understand the metaphor of palace in Ottoman knowledge of hierarchical order, which is reflected in the old literature. (p 27 top-down) Such absolute order is limited within the resemblance of things. Tanpinar sees such order is limited yet significant in its own production of the literature of its own time. Unlike Namik Kemal, Tanpinar recognizes the importance of images/metaphors in this old life and literature and how these images were meaningful yet limiting for the people within its own era. (cikissizlik)
Foucault claims that “sixteenth-century (West) condemned itself to never knowing anything but the same thing, and to knowing that thing only at the unattainable end of an endless journey." (p 36). It is possible to make the same claim with Tanpinar’s understanding of mentality of the old literature. The belatedness and the incompetence of knowledge beyond the resemblances and metaphors is the biggest lack, sign of immaturity in the old literature according to Tanpinar and he condemns it.
The rest of the paper deals with the Eastern and Western comparison, which I believe, is the weakest part of the article. Last but not least, Tanpinar goes back to his original lamentation, concern: why don’t we have prose writing?
Palace
Tanpinar appropriately determines the role of images and their relation to the palace and the figure of ruler both in Ottoman society and Western society during Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (p 23) However, what he cannot seem to fully grasp is the transformation in the Western knowledge from this world of resemblance into the world of epistemological knowledge in order to compare it with belatedness of such knowledge in the old society and literature. Before deepening the argument of Western and Eastern comparison, which I will argue later on, it is important to look at what kind of relationship Tanpinar finds between this figurative language in the old literature and the society of that time. “this big art tradition, even though how figuratively it was talked back then, would reflect the social system that it was born from and existed in”. (p 26) This sealed, limited world of metaphors, folded in itself as Foucault would suggest, lacks the understanding of “originality” and “creativity” as the “modern” person would perceive. Such unoriginality comes from various channels such as religion, barrowed languages like Persian and Arabic, the problems of Islamic civilization according to Tanpinar, yet such generalizations fall apart when he starts comparing with the Western society. If Tanpinar persisted on his arguments on the change and transformation within the old society, which he gives the hints of such arguments but does not carry them forward; his argument would be more convincing. Even though he acknowledges the fact that Ottoman poetry searched for a change since 15th century, yet he insists on his argument by saying that the people could not change and their universal view remained the same. (p 37).
Mentality
From this point on, Tanpinar’s comparison of Western and Eastern mentalities is based on the arguments of civilizations. The concept of “historicism” among other concepts Tanpinar argues how the Western civilization is developed and got rid of its “anachronistic” world-view. The biggest emphasis on this part is the role of mystic side of Islam (tasavvuf). First the sources of Western civilization is pointed out as ancient Greek and Latin languages and myths that feeds Classical Age is different from the Islamic civilization. Unfortunately, Tanpinar hastens in his judgements on such comparisons by iniquitously accusing the Islamic civilization being too “abstract” and “plain”. He returns back to his argument of the desire that the poets of 15th century to change the poetic system; yet cannot do it because of their mentality that is tied to Islam and the “Orient”. The feeling of “tragedy” lacks from the mentality of old literature because the society of this era lacks the training of “reality”. However, in his comparison Tanpinar makes the anachronistic mistake by comparing 15th century Ottoman Empire with 17th-18th century modernizing Western mentality. If Tanpinar did not neglect looking at the changes in “mesnevi”s during the end of 16th century and the beginning of 17th century, he would find more than a few exceptional poets that shows transformation within the old literature as well.
Orneksizlik
Tanpinar finds the lack of genres as the biggest loophole and shows that this lacks come from non-existence of models for emergence of prose in the old literature. He argues the lack of drama comes from the lack of the concept of “first sin” in Christianity that led to confession and self-reflection in Western literature. This self-reflection that turns into one’s self is different from the sufistic unity, which is obsessed with the unity of the God instead of the self. The tragedy on the other hand is more about the development of humanistic critique in Western thought, which did not exist in Islamic civilization according to Tanpinar. Eventually he gives examples from social development in Western societies such as the rise of bourgeoisie and the arguments of men’s space and women’s space gives legitimate reasoning in his argument in order to show how these civilizations took different routes in their development. Yet the lack of empirical support on this second part of his essay and some generalizations makes his arguments shaky.
Since there is no set of example for Ottoman poets in order to transform, Tanpinar assumes there was no change within the old literature whatsoever except couple of individual poets.
-Muge
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