Ottoman History Podcast - Translating the Ottoman Novel

Episode Date: August 23, 2016

with Melih Levihosted by Zoe Griffith Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | SoundCloud Emerging as a literary genre towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman novel has been overshadowed by the transformation of the Turkish language and alphabet after 1928. In this episode, we speak with Melih Levi about his recent English translation with Monica Ringer of one the first examples of the Ottoman novel, Ahmed Midhat Efendi's Felatun Bey and Rakım Efendi (Syracuse University Press, 2016). Far from a derivative imitation of European literary themes and forms, Ahmed Midhat's novel revolves both seriously and playfully around the concepts of ala franga and ala turca, cajoling and instructing its readers on how live as authentically "modern" Ottomans in a rapidly modernizing empire. Published in 1875, the novel opens windows onto the Ottoman family, slavery, masculinity, and social orders, as well as literal and psychological relations with Europe in nineteenth-century Istanbul.  « Click for More »

Hello and welcome to another episode of Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Zoe Griffith. Today we're very happy to welcome Melih Levy, the co-translator of the 19th century Ottoman novel entitled Fela Tunbe and Rokim Efendi. Melih recently received his BA in English Literature from Amherst College and is due to begin a PhD in Comparative Literature at Stanford. Melih, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for inviting me. So, Melih, you and your co-translator, Professor Monica Ringer,

have taken on the really remarkable task of translating one of the earliest examples of the Ottoman novel. The translation was recently published by Syracuse University Press. And the novel, as I mentioned, it's entitled Felatun Bey Rakim Efendi. And it was written in 1875 by the important Ottoman reformist and literary figure Ahmed Midhat Efendi. I thought we could start out by just situating the novel within the literary field. What would Ahmed Midhat Effendi have been reading? Who was he speaking to? What was going on in Ottoman literature around this time? This novel came out in the Tanzimat era, which is a time of reformation for the Ottoman Empire. And it's not only a time for reformation in the social or the cultural and political

And it's not only a time for reformation in the social or the cultural and political spectrum, but also in the literary scene, right? So the Turkish literati at the time are bringing lots of new forms from European literature into the Ottoman context. And they're experimenting with different poetic forms, different literary forms. And obviously the novel, as the epitome of the Western canon, makes its way into the Ottoman literature as well. And one of the first translations of European novels, French novels into the Turkish scene happens, I think, around 1862. And this is Feneron's Telemach.

And lots of other novels or plays from French have been translated at the time as well. And I think in 1870 or 1872, the first novel in Turkish appears. And Ahmet Mithat's Fena Tümbe and Rakım Efendi follows right after in 1875. And this is a very famous novel. It's been taught in Turkish high schools for many years. A lot of Turkish people will know it or have read it. And it's a novel that deals with some of the famous concepts

that the authors or translators at the time would worry about, about the changing social scene of the Ottoman Empire, about the scope of westernization that's happening. The two different character types that emerges, the Ataturk and the Adafranga character, namely Rakim Efendi and Ferhatun Bey, would be archetypal characters for the Ottoman novel at the time. As the Turkish society and as the Turkish intellectuals are grappling with these different forms of modernization that are happening in the empire

and the question of how much of the the traditions the islamic and the turkish ottoman traditions do we preserve how much of the west do we embrace and how much of the public and private life changes to resemble the kind of the western is a question that a lot of the intellectuals at the time are occupied with, right? So Amit Mithat also writes about this very question of, you know, how do we modernize? You know, what does it mean to westernize? What is the difference between adopting the western traditions and culture and adapting it, right, into the Ottoman context?

And, I mean, are there elements of the writing style, do you think, that either, I don't know, harken back to earlier elements from Ottoman literature, from an Ottoman tradition, or is this really something new, or both? Well, this is the interesting thing about the early novel in the Ottoman Empire, in that it's not necessarily as mature as you would see maybe say in Tom Pinar's time 30 or 40 years later it's still experimenting and it's still trying to to decide what parts of the Western novel it should bring it into the Turkish context so just as the characters themselves are grappling with this question of you know how much Western and how much Eastern do we or Ottoman

and Turkish how much of the West do we adopt? The same question appears in the literary form as well, right? So how much of the novel do we bring into the Turkish context and how do we merge it with the already existing literary traditions that we have in the Ottoman context? who's a scholar of Turkish literature writes about this in talking about Ahmet Mithat and sees symptoms of many different Turkish literary forms in these early novels all the way from Orta Oyna which is an Ottoman form of improvisation that would happen in the open markets Karagöz and Hacivat

which is like shadow plays so the dialogues that you would see in these novels the colloquial style the down-to-earth kind of tone i think are all inherited in a way from um the turkish literary forms or turkish theatrical forms um whereas the character development the plot development they're a little more more like imitations of western parodies or western novels so yeah um but you could see in novels like this that they don't have the depth more like imitations of Western parodies or Western novels. So, yeah. But you could see in novels like this that they don't have the depth of,

you know, the depth of, say, a 19th century French or English novel in terms of characterization and psychological portrayals of the characters. It's a little more simpler, and it's a little more didactic because it's the first time that the novel is going to be introduced to the Turkish public and so you know it's not as well formed or mature I would say. I mean who do you think or do we know who Ahmed Mithat was writing for at this time? So Ahmed Mithat himself talks about you know when they ask him you know which one of your novels would you consider to be literary he says none of them right you know because he considers

himself to be a teacher of of a teacher and an instructor right so you can see that he's also writing like a teacher almost you know um holding the reader's hand and putting words into their mouth making them ask the right questions in his own way. But I also have to differentiate Amit Mithat from other writers in the Tanzimat era, other writers like Naami Kemal or Reza Izadeh Mahmoud Ekrem, who come from a different kind of background. Amit Mithat comes from a more modest background, and I would say he's a little less interested in the literary aspect.

He's a little less interested. He's not much of a stylist as Naumik Kemal is or as Reza Izade Mahmoud Ekrem is. He's more of a didactic kind of writer. So the novel reads more like a syllabus or like a manual for readership at the time. When you look at Naum Kema's work or Recai Zadeh, Mahmut Ekrem, they're more interested in creating a rhetoric or creating different hybrid forms, poetic forms that would be able to accommodate some of the adaptations that they want to bring about of the, for instance, notions of nationalism.

So how do we think about a new form of Turkish nationalism they want to bring about of the, you know, for instance, of notions of nationalism, right? So how do we think about a new form of Turkish nationalism and find a new rhetoric for it in poetry? And so that requires kind of, you know, leveling with, you know, the already existing literary forms and literary traditions that you adopt from the French or the West. And also how do you kind of merge them with already existing Ottoman forms. Ahmed Mithat I think is less interested in that. He just dives right in and he's more interested in

fashioning a different voice rather than a style I think. You know kind of how do I relate to the readers and how do I kind of catch their attention and how do I make them ask the right questions

and be like Rakim Effendi the right questions and be like rakim effendi almost i want to be like rakim effendi so he's more interested in the the moralist aspect of things i think then then a style a stylist well and since you have presented us here with this question of to be like rakim effendi what does that mean so um as you know the novel is about these two characters right? The two protagonists Felatun Bey and Rakim Efendi for the listeners

of the podcast who might not know what the terms Ala Turkay and Ala Franga mean these terms are very popular at the time and they'll be very important

for the Turkish novel that you know and the development of the Turkish novel because these terms depict the two characters, the two archetypal characters that emerged in the Ottoman Empire at the time. I think saying it emerged at this time would be a little mistaken,

because the westernization and reform in the Ottoman Empire goes way back. But Avner Vyshnitser argues that what is different about this period and about the reform in this period is that people are more concerned with the scope of Westernization, the scope of modernization, than modernization and Westernization itself. So how much of the West do we bring into our culture? How much do we change and how much do we preserve? Those questions become very popular.

And the two archetypal characters, Ferdinand Tumbe is a La Franga character, kind of copies almost, emulates and imitates the French and the West. He tries to speak like them. He tries to dress like them. He moves to the Beyoğlu neighborhood because it's fashionable and that's where the western lifestyle exists and you know he dates

an actress an actress who ends up taking all of his money and you know all of these kind of the French actors whereas Rakim is the Alaturka character which doesn't mean he is rooted in the Turkish and traditional culture

but he is being in the turkish and traditional culture but he is he's being a little more um careful and um calculating when he when he adopts or adapts his his own culture into the you know into the western and french culture so you know he doesn't he's he's bringing in he's changing some parts of his um lifestyle right he's bringing in the french and western lifestyle a little more selectively, let's say. So he doesn't give up everything Turkish. He doesn't give up everything Ottoman. But he doesn't adopt everything as well, right?

So he has a piano in his house. He decorates his house in a more kind of Western way. He allows Canan to take piano lessons. And he spends a lot of time in the western districts of you know the districts of istanbul that were more populated by um you know people from friends in england he teaches an english family he's most of his close friends are um from europe right um so he doesn't necessarily turn his back on europe, but he is very selective in how he chooses certain things from the West. But he still preserves some of his more traditional and Ottoman ways. So he's very modest.

He's not a spendthrift, which is not to say Europeans are spendthrifts, but that's the kind of common discourse at the time the social discourse at the time when it comes to depicting the west and the east some of the stereotypes attached to these different characters he reinterprets the notion of family and what it means to have a social standing

that you don't necessarily need to know people in the, you know, in the upper parts of the social ladder, that you can make your way up by being diligent and by, you know, by working. Rakim knows French. Rakim teaches French. He reads in French, but he also reads Ottoman poetry. He reads Hafiz. He teaches Hafiz. So he's embedded in the discourses of the East as well. So when the novel endorses Rakim as a character that one should look up to, I think that's what Ahmed Mithat is saying,

that you should be very careful in how you um how you copy almost i think in general the attempt of um tanzimat era modernizers uh to tiptoe between adopting modified elements from europe without without losing their own cultural integrity right so um to kind of explain new conceptions of freedom that you would see in the relationship between Rakim and Canaan and morality to their audience. These books were written to educate. evaluate right the different um traditions and um you know rules and notions one inherits and the different kind of traditions one can bring into his or her life right so how do we balance that how do we level that and um you know that's the you know fell out is a warning sign in that way right if you if you adopt too much of the Western culture

without really questioning what you're adopting and without thinking about the consequences, you might end up like a fellatun bey, right? You know, he's suggesting that. Whereas Rakim has money, he saves money, and he has a happy marriage, and he's well-respected in society because he sticks to some of his kind of modest

and traditional ways. And at the same time, though, it's not all of his behaviors are exactly what you would expect necessarily. Yeah, so this is also interesting because we can see that Ahmed Mithat is creating a character that's not solely rooted in the Islamic or the Ottoman,

kind of the traditional ottoman style so for instance uh rakim effendi drinks raka he has a mistress um i don't know he dances polka you know he's a very modern kind of individual um and when it comes to marriage he wants to make sure that both sides agree to it right and um when there's a potential buyer for janan he wants janan to decide what she wants to do and he's willing to give up all the money right he doesn't want to um he doesn't want to be um he he doesn't treat janan almost like a slave um that he wants their marriage to be uh compassionate and um and and it's a it's a thing that they both have to decide on so those those things are showing the

extent to which amit mithat effendi is um refashioning right his his understanding of what uh a modern individual at the time a a modern citizen should look like. And this is a, you know, at the time there is a social engineering project with the new constitution and the reformation. So these books, like manuals, are also trying to engineer certain types in society that, you know, that can kind of look at all of these different parts of the Eastern and Western traditions

and to decide which ones are worth keeping and which ones are worth changing and tilting and informing. I think the issue that you brought up a minute ago about notions of the family in that regard are extremely interesting because there are a significant number of women, female characters, and kind of an array of female characters

presented in the novel and you know we sort of have two archetypal male characters but a really diverse I think view of of femininity almost in this period so I wonder if we know much about where Ahmed Mithat was coming from in his attitude towards women and gender relations I don't know if we can kind of read into the women question as radically, right? In this work by Amit Mithat, there are other works where Amit Mithat explicitly talks about marriage and what marriage should look like,

what both parts should play in a marriage. But I think the most interesting thing in this book is when it comes to the relationship with John and Rakim. Because the other relationships, like the one between Ferdinand and Polini, is a kind of passing relationship, almost. They are together for a while, and Polini, we learn later on,

that she just wanted to take away all his money. And the relationship between Rakim and Josephine, the French piano tutor, is also a fling almost between the two. But the most striking relationship in the book is between Rakim and Canan. And Holly Schoesler, who wrote the introduction to the book talks about this in great detail when she says when Janan and Rakim do become

sexually involved, Amit Mithat has made it very clear that theirs is a real choice based on real affection. And other options having been considered and rejected. So the book makes it clear that the institution of marriage should be um should be a bilateral thing the interesting thing i think is is that it's not you know it's

not a it's it's in certain ways it's radical right so you know when it comes to the institution of marriage and the way um amit mithat represents it as something that is a bilateral bond between between the two persons. But there are also ways in which Amit Mithat sticks to a more traditionalist and more religious view of how the relationship between men and women should be like, right? So for instance, when Canan wants to take piano lessons, Rakim doesn't let her go out by herself, right? She should have some kind of supervision.

The nanny should be with her. And Rakim makes it sound like he's not worried about Canan, but worried about other people. But when you think about it, it's not a very radical reading of the women question at the time. But if you look at the way in which Rakim educates Canan and kind of makes the relationship more

liberal let's say is not very different from his relationship with the British family at the time so the British girls themselves are receiving a very similar education and at times we're made to believe that Canan's education is far

better than than those of the british girls um but certainly there's a difference in in this kind of the lifestyle right because the british girls can go to salons and they can dress up they can you know mix in with other people whereas janan is i think a little more um kind of she's not as she cannot be as outgoing as as as british girls are I think one thing that readers will also really appreciate about the story, readers especially who have spent time in Istanbul and are familiar with the city, I mean, the sense of place when you're reading is very present, and the names of the streets, the names of the neighborhoods will be so familiar to

readers who have spent time in Istanbul and I think that I don't know as a native of 21st century Istanbul, are there things about the novel that kind of surprise you or is it really a familiar setting as well? It's very interesting

to read this novel and be in istanbul because most of the streets have the same names today and um if you're in the taksim and beyoğlu area you can easily kind of trace um the different walks rakim takes to go up to beyoğlu to teach english girls and to go back home um and to me this is very interesting because i'm very much interested in the concept of walking in in 19th century and 20th century literature. And I always think about Rakim Efendi as like a modern flaneur almost, a modern stroller of the streets. And he takes many different routes to go up to Beyoğlu, to go down to Salıpazarı and to Topane. And it's interesting that we get all of the details. There's very specific details about the streets.

He walks on the different routes he takes. And these are usually associated with his psychological state at the time. If he feels like he wants to take a little more walk, if he's confused, he might walk longer and he might wander into different streets. If he wants to go back home directly, he can use a shortcut. We get all of these details, and it's also interesting to think about the division of space at the time,

because Beyoğlu, Taksim, those areas would be where people from Europe would be living. You know, theaters owned by Armenians, presses, you know, different restaurants. So this part would be more Western, more Adafranca in that way, whereas where Rakim Efendi is living is more Adaturka. The other character, Ferhatun Bey, makes a move to Beyoğlu because he wants to be in the more Adafranca district.

So he sells his house and he builds a new european style house in this area um so that you know um he can be here in in the center of in the heart of um in the heart of bay although and so to me it's interesting to compare rakim efendi or you know other characters in these kinds of works like bihruz bay um or Bey, who are similar characters. These characters are more similar to Ferhatun Bey, but they all navigate Istanbul in different ways. And their experience of the city differs, right? So in this novel, for instance, in Ferhatun Bey and Rakim Efendi, we can talk about the different outings that these characters take.

Rakim Efendi goes to Kağıthane with his nanny and janan and josephine right um and they don't want other people to be there when they take the outing it's a very modest one they make a little picnic and they you know they play a little and then they sleep a little and then they drink some milk on the way and then they go back whereas the outing fedatun bey has with Polini is very different, right? They have these couches, and everybody's watching them. It's a big show, right? So, you know, you can see that the cityscape is very important in the novel, and where they spend time, who they interact with,

all these things are very important. And I think it's interesting to compare this to how Istanbul, or the kind of idle stroller in Istanbul, becomes a figure in modernist literature, right? So when you look at, for instance, Yusuf Atılgan, his Aylak Adam, which translates roughly as the vagabond, or even in Orhan Pamuk's novels today, right? In Yeni Hayat, for instance, The New Life,

these characters strolling the streets of Istanbul, walking around, and the different parts of the city speak to different psychological undercurrents. And for Rakim, I think this is very important, that he spends time in these different districts, interacting with different people,

because Rakhim Effendi himself comes from very modest means. So he spends time in the bazaar, whereas Fethullah wouldn't even consider going to those areas. So, I think it's also important

to make a distinction between the way this question of East and West and how it plays out when we talk about geography, right? Comes into play when we look at the Turkish literary tradition. Because we said that

in Ahmet Mithat's novel, the problem is not so much about adoption, but it's about the scope of it, right? How much do we adopt from the West? But when we look at modernist Turkish literature, we don't necessarily get a fully drawn character. Like in Yusuf Atalgan's work, you wouldn't get a character like Rakim Efendi, whose ways and being is clearly described and it's presented to the reader in a very kind of digestible way um in in yusuf atalgan's works um we see a character that needs to be pieced together by the by the readers themselves right that um it's not as didactic and it's not

as moralizing but um the city itself becomes a part of the puzzle, almost, right? That the reader has to kind of identify or investigate different experiences that these characters will have in different parts of the city and to decide which parts of the character's psyche that they bring out or that they kind of suppress. Whereas when you look at maybe modern Turkish literature, more postmodernist takes on Istanbul and geography, kind of they suppress um whereas when you look at maybe modern Turkish literature you know more post-modernist takes on Istanbul and geography um you know Hanpamuks works for instance it's not so

much about piecing together anymore but it's about um what is at stake when we piece together those different um parts of Istanbul when we piece together those different districts in Istanbul and the way the characters relate to them so So what does it mean to locate a question like the East and West in a literary work? What are we doing as readers? If we are noticing some things like that in a work, what are we kind of suggesting about the work itself? So it's not so much about how the work itself presents us presents itself to us as a puzzle but it's about how um as readers we

um we engage with those different hints right what do we perceive as eastern what do we perceive as western and if we are indeed um locating some dichotomies like that are we maybe fetishizing um this very question of east and west right this very question of East and West, right? This very question of the juxtaposition or the distinction between the two. Or are we creating that question ourselves, right? What is our role as readers in relating to different parts of Istanbul? So it's not as systematically divided as that you would you know as you would see in in tanzimat novels in in modern turkish fiction but you know it's a little more um i think obscure

when it comes to the distribution of space in the novel i mean i think this is a good time to to talk about the process of the translation how How did it come about that this seems like the opportune time to translate this novel? And what were the particular challenges, I guess, of translating a sort of early work of Ottoman novel writing? When I started at Amherst College, Monica and I were doing some readings. My freshman year we were doing some readings around Turkish freshman year we were doing some readings around Turkish literature, early Turkish novels

plays because she was going to teach a course on Turkey in the next year and we were reading some books from Reza Aizadeh Mahmut Ekrem from Ahmed Mithat and we realized when we were reading and reading into these works

that none of them had been translated into English. There is only a play by Shinnasi, The Marriage of the Poet, that's available in English translation, but none of the early Turkish novels have been translated. And so we thought that this is a very seminal work when it comes to thinking about the Turkish society at the time, the Ottoman society, Ottoman sociology and Ottoman reform.

It's a really interesting window into the societal structure during the Tanzimat era and so we thought that it would fit really nicely into the course. So we did a very preliminary translation of the novel for the course itself and we found that the reaction from the students was very

exciting because they thought that the novel itself and its rhetorical devices, the way it kind of reinterprets the novel for the Turkish-Ottoman context, these were all ways of understanding

the questions that were being asked during the reform, the Ottoman reform. So not only, the story itself is on the more basic side, but it presents some really grappling questions and concepts about modernization, westernization, and the scope of modernization. So all of those were playing out very nicely, so we would kind of turn it into a larger project.

And it took us four years almost to go through the whole thing and to make sure that we get the tone right and as you know the novel is written in Arabic script so we worked

with different editions of the novel we had the original Ottoman publication of it and we also consulted some transliterations

because there are a number of mistakes that Ahmed Mithat makes when he's writing, some strange grammatical structures because he was writing very fast. And so one of the questions was, how do you translate certain grammatical mistakes or certain problems with sentence structure?

Because the sentences are also very long in the original. We tried to stick to the original kind of style as much as we could, but also at some points we had to shorten some sentences to make them more digestible to a modern reader. We tried to use Victorian kind of vocabulary

as much as possible, and to me one of the most interesting parts of translating the novel was looking at some of its contemporaries in the British and French context at the time. And this colloquial, authorial kind of style of speaking to the readers, right? Asking them questions.

You know, the novel itself opens up with a question. Do you remember Ferdinand Tunbey, right? You should be remembering him so you know the author is constantly talking with you and engaging with you and that's not you know something new in in the novel right so if you look at um 19th century english novels um novels by daniel defoe fielding walter scott um they always engage with their readers and talk with them and engage with them so how did they do it? What was the language like?

How did they refer to their readers? I think that was a great example to look at while translating the novel into English and to think about what the language would have been like if the novel was written in an English-speaking environment. So that was another fun aspect of kind of comparing and contrasting the authorial voice in these different contexts were there specific concepts or terms or constructions or something that

you were stuck on for a long time so terms especially related to morality and independence were very difficult to translate because there are so many different words available in English for those such as for instance when

Ahmet Mita talks about Canan and talks about her independence you know some of the words in Turkish could have been translated in different ways so questions related to morality and independence were I think difficult to translate

also the novel has a very colloquial style right so um lots of idioms from turkish um you know lots of colloquial phrases those are difficult to render into the english as well and um we had to make a lot of decisions about some of the historical you know some of the historical information in the book so we didn't use any footnotes. I don't like using a lot of footnotes myself unless it's a very academic translation

because I think it interrupts the experience. So we tried to kind of feed a lot of the information, historical information that the readers would need to know to make sense of things into the novel, right? So for instance, in the novel, in most of the novels written at the time um they use the alatuka time right so um this you know when they say four o'clock or five o'clock it's not the same in the western time frame because um it's pegged on the position of the sun

right so it's it depends on the the time of the call to prayer and and so um we had to kind of adjust those into the you know sometimes we came up with times that made sense or sometimes you would say later in the afternoon early in the morning um you know if they were going out for an outing we would say early in the morning they woke up and and they prepared their bags and stuff so um that was the the time the you know the timing the vocabulary about time was a problem. One of the interesting questions when you're translating a book from the Tanzimat era is how to render the different phrases in French. Because although the texts are in original Ottoman script,

we often encounter French phrases, right? When Felaatun speaks in French, when Rakim speaks in French with Josephine, we see that, you know, the Latin script appears in the text. So how do we, you know, render that into the English version? We decided to italicize them to kind of, to show that there's a different thing going on in the text. And, you know, sometimes in the original, ahmed mitat will give us in parentheses a translation if it's a long sentence in french but often um he'll just leave it in french so if it's madame or uh bonjour you know things like that you know common phrases

in french i think ahmed mitat assumes that readers will be familiar with them anyway um but this would have been an ottoman script that he writing? Sometimes an Ottoman script, if it's transliterated into the Ottoman. For instance, when Amit Mithat, you know, when a character is speaking and using a French phrase within a Turkish sentence, right, so when the character says, for instance, oh, look at all

of these ceremonies and fashions, right, so those ceremonies and fashions, those words are kind of rendered into colloquial Ottomanashions, right? So those ceremonies and fashions, those words are kind of rendered into colloquial Ottoman almost, right? But mostly when they're speaking French, the text will be in Latin script. And the readers of the book can see it.

In the book, we have some samples, sample pages from the original Ottoman, and they can see how the Latin phrases, how the French phrases appeared in the Arabic script. So another challenge while translating was the Persian poetry, because we kind of consulted some of Hafiz's English collections to see if we can find some faithful translations that we could use for the book. But most of the poems were not available in any Hafez collection.

And so we consulted with Franklin Lewis from Chicago, who was generous enough to accept to do the translations. And he found out that most of the, or at least some of the gazelles that are attributed to Hafiz were wrongly attributed to him. And they most probably appeared in popular editions of Hafiz

in the Ottoman Empire. Poems that look like Hafiz poems probably were wrongly attributed to Hafiz. So that was another challenge. And having talked about the hafiz poems i think this is an interesting plot in the interesting storyline in the novel where drachm keeps teaching the girls these these sufi poems right written by hafiz and um a lot of the critics look at this novel as um a one-way kind of one-way perspective into the Ottoman context at the time, right? So how do we take

from the West or how do we preserve the traditional ways? I don't think it's only that. And I think this is a moment in which we can see Rakim as a character with some flaws, right? Unlike a lot of critics who think of Rakim as a flawless,ized character i think ahmed mitad you know presents some flaws on on behalf of rakam sometimes in a very playful way right for instance when rakam is on the rakam is with the british girls and they're rowing um rakam is kind of leaning against the british girls and he gets some kind of satisfaction from doing that. And the author, Ahmed Mithat, excuses him for it. He says, well, nobody said that Rakim was an ideal character.

So he defends his characterization of Rakim, but that's a very playful kind of criticism of Rakim almost. It's not necessarily criticism either. But here, I think, in his relationship with the British girls, Margaret and John, there is something interesting. And I think it's a commentary on how the Ottomans should be or could be presenting their culture to the West. So Rackham keeps teaching the British girls

Hafiz poetry, Sufi poetry, and Amit Mithat makes it clear that they don't explicitly like some of the verses, right? And they want to skip them. They don't want to write them. They want to memorize them. They want to get the ugly stuff, right? The dirty stuff. So they want to get the amorous stuff

with, you know, amorous metaphors about fire and lips and wine. And they memorize them. And Rakim sees that they're getting affected by it. They're reading them and memorizing them all the time. They're talking about love all the time. And that's a warning signal for Rakim. But he doesn't necessarily dwell on it. And he keeps teaching them. He keeps serving them the poetry the way they want to learn it, without necessarily laying down the groundwork for how to interpret Sufi poetry, right? How to look at some of the common symbols or common images that we encounter in Sufi poetry,

that, you know, the images of love or metaphors about love that are presented in this poetry are not necessarily about physical intimacy, but also about a divine kind of love. And Rakim doesn't necessarily think about that. And at the end, John ends up on the sickbed, and she's about to die because she's in love with Rakim. And I think Amit Mithat makes us feel that Rakim was wrong here, that he didn't put the distance between himself and the girls as much as he needed to,

and he kind of fed them with, I don't want to say wrong information, but he offered the information in an incomplete manner to these students. And he regrets it afterwards. He almost gets sick himself thinking about what he did to the British girls. But that's another part of the story, I think, that lets us look at this question of inheritance from an alternate point of view. How do we present our culture to the other?

of inheritance from an alternate point of view right how do we present our culture to the other and uh what happens if we present it and if you let it be fetishized or if you let it be consumed in certain ways that that fit the other person's needs and not necessarily teach them the the kind of the appropriate the the teach them the you know in a more critical and comprehensive manner. So there is a selective manner in which Rakim chooses to teach poetry, the Hafiz poetry to the English girls, just like Felhatun selectively chooses some parts of the French culture without necessarily cultivating himself and without necessarily approaching it from a critical standpoint. And do you think, though, that there's any...

There's not a strong vein of critique of the West. I mean, the Western characters are quite sympathetic, I would say. I mean, nuanced and sort of multi-dimensional characters, and there's no sort of demonization of the English family or Josephine or even though they have this lifestyle that is quite separate from Ruckam's lifestyle. But I mean, the example of when the English family, they come over for a dinner at Ruckam's house

is a kind of similar, I mean, it's a bit cherry picking of what they want. Exactly. It's interesting because on some levels i think ahmet mitat is being very careful about how he depicts the western characters in the novel european characters um so for instance when josephine visits rakim and drinks raku with him he sorry she um praises the turkish culture raku and the way you know um turkish people live they wake up early in the morning and they can go on an outing and enjoy the sun whereas she says

europeans don't do that i mean um at those moments rakim would usually interfere and say well you're ignoring some of the stuff that are good about the west as well so you know there is that control mechanism in the novel that he doesn't want to go too far with the critic of the west um but at the same time when we look at the depiction of polini as this french art actress who is um inevitably represented as a prostitute um that's also a little bit that could be problematic as well to think about how you know the the french actress you know image at the time was kind of directly correlated with that kind of someone. That Ferdinand Thunberg obviously ended up with the French actress and he obviously lost all of his money.

And obviously the French actress was going to do that. So that kind of assumption, I think, lies behind that depiction, which is, I think, the other side of the coin, right? That's the part where maybe Ahmed Mital is getting a little critical of the West. But I think, as you say, it's a little leveled and balanced

when it looks at the Western characters and the European characters in the novel. so we talked a bit about kind of Ahmed Milhat in his day and what he might have been responding to and who he might have been speaking to um so take us then to what happened after I mean is this a foundation for a clear strain of authors who came after and how does it sort of fit within Turkish literary tradition um this is Ahmed Mithat is an interesting figure when we think about the Turkish um literary context because he's not he's not necessarily considered to be the father of the turkish novel although

he was i would say the most prolific early turkish novelist um i think a lot of people would consider maybe tanpınar as the father of the turkish novel and tampanar didn't necessarily like amit mitad's writing all that much because much because he was a moralizing and kind of a little simplistic kind of writer. But at the same time, I think the kinds of themes that we encounter in early Turkish novels, the divide between the East and the West, this question of Ataturk and Ataturk, I think is a line of inquiry that a lot of authors will pick up in the future. And even when we look at the modern Turkish novel,

it's not explicitly there. It's not as apparent, but I think it's still there in terms of how the authors relate to their readers and how the way they try to fashion a certain readership in the modern context, I think, has some hints of that divide as well. Let me take a little more in detail about this. When we look at Ahmet Mithat's novel,

we see that there is a public and a private sphere, and they have very different treatments in the novel. So in the public sphere, I think Ahmet Mithat Efendi is very much for a more westernized attitude right so um you know in terms of his relationships his friends rakim um he plays the piano he goes to salons and he goes on outings um so he's not averse to a more western kind of but when it comes to the private sphere, I think we see a little more of the traditional and Ottoman lifestyle. I think that divide slowly disappears as we move into modern Turkish literature where the public and the private are seen as directly related to each other,

that they can't really be separated from each other as Ahmet Mithat separates them. And, you know, it becomes a little more complicated in Turkish modernism and Turkish postmodernism. However, it's also important to kind of understand how this line of juxtaposition, right, how this juxtaposition between the East and the West, the kind of narrator that Ahmed mitat efendi you know coins in his work uh might reappear in in the later works of of turkish literature so when we look at modernist turkish literature so say in yusuf atalgan um in his novel the vagabond i in ozatai um it's not so much anymore about um how it's not so much anymore about how,

it's not so much about the scope of modernization, it's not so much about the question of do we become westernized or how much of the West do we adopt, but it becomes more of a question of how do we piece together different parts of a character's psyche so that they represent different understandings of these questions,

they represent different responses to of these questions they represent different responses to these questions right so um when we look at you know yusuf atilgan's work the question isn't answered per se you know the author isn't holding our hands anymore and um you know conversing with us but rather than rather instead of doing that the author is um giving us a puzzle almost right there you know of the character and the way in which the character relates to different environments relates to different um geographical spaces um different scenarios and we as readers are now supposed to piece them together um to think about you know um how this question of east and west

might you know might be located in different parts of the novel. It's not an undercurrent anymore in the novel. It can be an image or a motif. And in Orhan Pamuk, the question of the East and the West is still very much alive. I think he considers himself to be a part of that tradition as well. And I think his take on this question is a little more on the postmodern side, where he questions the role of the reader in all of this, right?

So if we are the ones piecing these different narratives together, these different parts of the puzzle, what is at stake in performing that kind of action as readers? And what kind of reader is being fashioned? And what are we assuming about our role in reading? That becomes, I think, more important than, let's say, the story itself. Often in Orhan Pamuk's works, we will encounter a character who is uncomfortable with his writing in the new life, right?

The act of writing itself is a problem, right? And so what does it mean to read? What does it mean to think about or locate these different concepts, right? That juxtaposition. If you're seeing a certain dichotomy between the East and the West when we're reading Orhan Pamuk, even in his latest novel, where we can see the two conflicting narratives, the Oedipus, the Oedipal narrative, and a narrative from Shehnameh,

that we might easily associate with the East and the West because of their origins. But then again, the fact that we're doing that, the fact that we're assuming certain things about how, you know, the writer might be, you know, kind of, might be manipulating us to see certain narratives as belonging to certain traditions,

we end up finding it necessary to question our own role as readers of these novels, right? So, you know, what does it mean if we are seeing a distinction between the East and the West, or if we are able to locate certain things or associate certain things with the East and the West, what does it mean that as readers we do that, right?

I mean, are we fetishizing certain things or are we idealizing certain things about this plot, right? So I don't think the modern turkish novelists are necessarily um covering this question they're not necessarily answering it um as you know are we eastern or western although it's certainly a political question that's very much alive in turkey today i think in a social way in a literary manner the authors are more interested in what it means to be on the receiving end of these questions what it means what does it mean that we are still asking these questions

and if we are what kinds of readers are we you know so i think that's that's the more contemporary take on that question and how it might have come into play in in the contemporary turkish literary scene uh i mean. You mentioned that this has been a staple on Turkish high school syllabi for a long time. I think with the translation that you and Professor Ringer have done, I think

it'll be a very valuable resource for at least college level teaching about the Ottoman Empire, teaching about the Tanzimat. It's a wonderful resource the book is very funny it's a really it's an engaging read that also

touches on all these kinds of historical identity issues that we've been discussing so I want to thank you and your co-translator thank you very much for being here thank you for having me here I think it's a very important work for a variety of different, you know, a variety of disciplines, right?

So for Middle Eastern studies, Ottoman studies, Turkish studies, and not only for its time, right? Also, you know, I think the question is that these authors grapple with it during the Tanzanian era, extend way into the future, where, you know, when we talk about the 1920s, the foundation of the Turkish, you know, modern Turkish Republic, these questions are very much alive, right? So, or even today. So for anyone interested in contemporary Turkey,

you know, gender studies, Middle Eastern studies, I think this is a really interesting work. And thank you all for joining us. If you want to find out more, we have more materials available on the website at ottomanhistorypodcast.com Thanks for joining us. जाई नेफराण। जाई नेफराण चीज़ी जमालेशा। © BF-WATCH TV 2021