Literary Market and Modern Authorship in the Late Ottoman Empire Zeynep Seviner a Dissertation
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Blue Dreams, Black Disillusions: Literary Market and Modern Authorship in the Late Ottoman Empire Zeynep Seviner A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2015 Reading Committee: Selim Sırrı Kuru, Chair Walter Andrews Reşat Kasaba Leroy Searle Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Near & Middle Eastern Studies ©Copyright 2015 Zeynep Seviner University of Washington Abstract Blue Dreams, Black Disillusions: Literary Market and Modern Authorship in the Late Ottoman Empire Zeynep Seviner Chair of the Supervisory Committee Selim S Kuru, Associate Professor Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization Why would a successful young novelist write the story of a failed poet told from the point of view of a sympathetic narrator, and why would this failed protagonist then become a role model for the next generation of litterateurs? Focusing on the last decades of the nineteenth century, this dissertation explores the ways in which a set of contextual factors, such as the proliferation of printing technologies, the rise in literacy, governmental efforts at standardizing education and the emergence of journalism as a professional field, impacted perceptions of authorship in the Ottoman imperial capital, thus changing the definitions of success and failure in the field of literature. Using one of the most controversial literary texts of the time, Halit Ziya’s Mai ve Siyah, the story of a “failed” poet, as a gateway to the emotional states of Servet-i Fünun writers, a leading - albeit small - group in the literary debates of the time, I argue that the effort at regulating the realms of education and publishing by the palace during the second half of the century had the unintended consequence of encouraging a more individual engagement with the written text, thus creating young litterateurs who yearned to align their artistic production with their own aesthetic inclinations and to express their existential dilemmas in the face of a changing world, not only through the texts they wrote but also through the outfits they sported and places they frequented. This went hand in hand with the new possibility, created by journalism as private enterprise, of making money outside the realm of the state or the protection of a powerful patron while producing literary texts, an unprecedented prospect for Ottoman litterateurs, one that also challenged the foundations of the ‘official slavery’ system where wealth and status were to be endowed solely by the sultan, and solely at his pleasure. This dissertation thus demonstrates the strong repercussions this period had for generations to come, setting new terms for literary production, publishing and journalism. i Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….Page ii Introduction……………………………………………………………………….Page 1 Chapter 1: The New Rules of Art: Hamidian Publishing Scene during the 1890s……………………………………Page 34 Chapter 2: Modest Means, Grand Ambitions: Individualization and its Discontents……………………………………………..Page 72 Chapter 3: Adorning Authorship: Clothing, Furniture, and the Commodification of Intellectual Lifestyle…………Page 111 Chapter 4: Performing Authorship: Urban Spaces of Meeting, Observation, and Display…………………………….Page 146 Conclusion: The Birth of the Modern Author in Turkey…………………………Page 187 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………Page 202 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have materialized without the academic, financial, emotional and otherwise support of many people. Selim Sırrı Kuru, my dissertation committee chair, beloved mentor, neighbor and friend, continued to provide his unwavering support and encouragement every step of the way since I first set foot in Seattle as a new Master’s student in 2006. Leroy Searle has been much more than a committee member with his genuine interest in Ottoman Empire and Turkey; I am very grateful for our long conversations on philosophy, world literature, the significance of humanities and the function of literature in society, which I always left energized and full of new ideas. Walter Andrews taught me all about how things looked like in Ottoman society and literature before the nineteenth century, and gave me invaluable insights for this project while tolerating my comments on how some kasides would make great animated movies. As the mastermind behind the University of Washington’s Turkish Circle, Reşat Kasaba provided one of the friendliest and most intellectually invigorating environments of my graduate career. I am grateful to all “circlers” for their engagement and feedback, but I would particularly like to thank Mehmet Kentel, Ayşe Toksöz, Özge Sade, Müge Salmaner, Joakim Parslow, Filiz Kahraman, Esra Bakkalbaşıoğlu, and Elizabeth Nolte, who also became study buddies, housemates and lifelong friends. A number of colleagues around the world have made the research and writing iii phases of this project more pleasurable, providing feedback and support of various kinds. I would like to acknowledge Fatih Altuğ, Burcu Karahan, Gönül Tekin, Maureen Jackson, Didem Havlioğlu, David Damrosch, Michael Beard, Erol Köroğlu, Avner Wishnitzer, İlker Hepkaner, Seçil Uluışık, Veysel Öztürk, Zeynep Tüfekçioğlu, Leigh Mercer, Charles LaPorte, Benjamin Schmidt, Beatrice Arduini, Kathy Woodward and Stefka Mihaylova here. In Seattle, I have had the great luck of being surrounded with friends who made it my American hometown. Among them are Harvey Sadis, Harriett Cody, Colleen McCormack, Aaron Haverfield, Sema Kentel, Onur Mete, Annie Fee, Jered Burton, Ricardo Hidalgo, and Anna Ruby Waxham-Blackwell. Many faculty and staff members rendered this oft challenging process smoother than it would otherwise have been: Jean Rogers, our Program Coordinator, Joel Migdal, Director of NMES, and Valerie Brunetto, the Graduate Program Advisor at the NELC Department are the first ones that come to mind. Various institutions provided funding and research facilities throughout my graduate career. I would like to acknowledge Department of Comparative Literature, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, the Suzzallo Graduate Library, the Middle East Center, and the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington, the Institute for World Literature and the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University, the Ottoman Turkish Studies Association of North America, Turkish Cultural Foundation, Harvard-Koç University Ottoman Summer School, and Turkish Fulbright Commission for their financial and logistical support. iv Finally, I would like to thank my family, especially my parents, Jale and Salih Seviner for always supporting me in my academic and personal endeavors, no matter how esoteric they may seem to many. I dedicate this dissertation to my grandmother, Kamuran Seviner who instilled and nurtured in me an unshakeable love for literature, and who, at 85 years old, made sure to send me weekly text messages across the ocean. v For my grandmother Kamuran Seviner Babaannelerin en tatlısına, sevgi ve minnetle... 1 Introduction In his memoirs entitled Kırk Yıl (Forty Years) where he narrates the first forty years of his life, the well-canonized novelist of the late-nineteenth century Ottoman Turkish literature, Halit Ziya (Uşaklıgil, 1866-1945) recalls an important realization he has had as a young man and an aspiring writer: “I understood, for the first time that these [writing] skills can be turned to money. Alas! I was not a dreamer but I had not yet experienced life either. Thus came to me the idea of starting a magazine in Izmir.”1 This early realization, which comes with a retrospective caution, was in and of itself telling of the transformations pertaining to what it means to produce literature in the Ottoman context, and of the shift from traditional patronage relations toward individual enterprise. Halit Ziya was, in fact, a member of the first generation of litterateurs who associated their professional identity exclusively with the private publishing world, unlike their immediate predecessors who came of age within the bureaucratic structure. He was twenty-four years younger than Namık Kemal, twenty-two years younger than Ahmet Midhat Efendi and nineteen years younger than Recaizade Ekrem. By the time he was born, the Ministry of Public Education and the first municipality in Istanbul (Altıncı Daire-i Belediye) had been functional for nine years, the first government-owned newspaper for thirty-five years, the first private newspaper owned by a foreign national for twenty-six years, and the first private newspaper owned by a Muslim Ottoman subject for six years. The first regulation of the publishing industry (Matbuat Nizamnamesi) was 1 Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, Kırk Yıl, (İstanbul: Özgür Yayınları, 2008), 205. (All translations from 2 thus issued two years before his birth, to be tightened further by the Grand Vizier of the time, Ali Paşa, three years later. When he was three years old, in 1869, The Regulation of Public Education (Maarif-i Umumiye Nizamnamesi) came into effect, seeking to centralize and standardize education across linguistic and religious borders; Taksim Bahçesi in Beyoğlu and Millet Bahçesi in Çamlıca were opened shortly after in 1869 and 1870 as the first public parks in the imperial capital; the first underground railway system (Metropolitan Railway of Constantinople) was constructed between Galata and Pera in 1875 when he was nine years old. The same year, Ahmet Midhat Efendi, the “writing machine”