ORHAN PAMUK’S NOVELS AND THEIR “AFTERLIFE” IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN TRANSLATIONS BY SEVINC TURKKAN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Wail S. Hassan, Chair Professor Marilyn Booth, University of Edinburgh Professor Mahir Saul Assistant Professor Yasemin Yildiz Abstract In this dissertation, I focus on the Turkish Nobel Prize laureate Orhan Pamuk’s novels and on their English and German translations by Güneli Gün, Maureen Freely, and Ingrid Iren. I argue that literary translation is a creative act, the study and critique of which needs to be anchored within a specific historical, geographical, and temporal horizon. I studied the reception of Pamuk’s novels in translation and discovered that book reviewers write about translations as if they were transparent copies of the original works. Literary translation in a largely monolingual public sphere is thus overlooked. I provide a theoretical model for the study and critique of translations as autonomous texts beyond the evaluative notion of “fidelity” to originals. I devise a theoretical framework based on my close textual analyses of the translations. I situate translations within their respective context, read them in relation to particular historical circumstances that gave rise to them, and in relation to secondary material written by translators, ranging from creative writing, other translations, prefaces, introductions, afterwords, glossaries, and interviews. This approach elucidates each translator’s project, position, and intention. The introduction provides literature review and lays out the theoretical framework. Chapter 1 consists of two parts. In part 1, I examine the reception of Orhan Pamuk in Turkey and abroad as revealed in reviews, articles, interviews, and book length manuscripts. In part 2, I read Pamuk’s Kara Kitap (The Black Book), paying close attention to particular images, intertextual and metatextual aspects, and shifts in narrative voice. I choose elements of the novel that are self-referential and language-, context-, and culture-specific. Translation of these elements reveals the translators’ literary and stylistic idiosyncrasies and how each translator recontextualized the text in unique ways. In chapter 2, I focus on the translator Güneli Gün and ii identify her unique style as a writer. I argue that Gün’s primary purpose as a translator was to bridge Turkish and American literatures and cultures and to introduce Pamuk to the Anglo- American readership in the era before he reached international fame. In chapter 3, I focus on Maureen Freely, who is widely known as Pamuk’s definitive English translator since the Nobel Prize. I analyze her translations, novels, and journalistic writings in order to determine her idiosyncratic style and position as the author of the new translation. I argue that Freely translated the novel in ways that bolster Pamuk’s later image as “the writer of the city of Istanbul.” In chapter 4, I focus on Ingrid Iren, Pamuk’s German translator and read her translation, Das schwarze Buch, in relation to the long history and legacy of translation into German, a context completely different from the previous ones. I argue that Iren performed a significant bridging role between the two languages and cultures through her active recreation of the Turkish narrative into German. The German text is heavily shaped by the translator. In the conclusion, I point to possible avenues for further research. This study fills in an important gap in the scholarship on Orhan Pamuk by illuminating the role of his translators in the formation of his image as a world author. iii Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: Orhan Pamuk’s Kara Kitap (1990)…………………………………………………..33 Chapter 2: Güneli Gün’s The Black Book (1994)………………………………………………..82 Chapter 3: Maureen Freely’s The Black Book (2006)………………………………………….148 Chapter 4: Ingrid Iren’s Das schwarze Buch (1995)……...........................................................230 Conclusion………………...………………………………………………………..…………..296 Works Cited…………….…………………………………………………………..…………..299 iv Introduction [A] translation comes later than the original, and since the important works of world literature never find their chosen translator at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life.1 —Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator” In “The Task of the Translator,” Walter Benjamin’s introduction to his German translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Tableux Parisiens (1923), translation stands as a metaphor for the afterlife of works of world literature. By its nature, a translation is a belated work. It comes after the original. It is impossible to give a simultaneous birth to an original and its translation. The secondary nature of the translated text has marked our understanding of translation negatively and has been the central problem of translation theory since its inception. Philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Paul de Man initiated a radical rethinking of binaries such as “original” and “translation” by questioning the concepts of originality and authorship. In their writings, translation is an “afterlife” (Überleben), it is the “growth of the original,”2 and it is what canonizes3 a work of literature. That is, translation is not an option; it is necessary for the original. The original calls for and desires its translation. In turn, translation revitalizes canons of world literature. The quote from Benjamin above makes us rethink the status of the translated text in relation to the original as well as the status of the translator in relation to the author and canons 1 “Ist doch die Übersetzung später als das Original, und bezeichnet sie doch bei den bedeutenden Werken, die da ihre erwählten Übersetzer niemals im Zeitalter ihrer Entstehung finden, das Stadium ihres Fortlebens” (Illuminationen: Ausgewälte Schriften 1961: 58). The quotation is from Harry Zohn’s translation of Benjamin’s essay in Venuti 2004, 76. Zohn’s translation is not without problems. He published the first English translation of Benjamin’s essay “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers” in 1968. Because of copyright restrictions, it is considered the definitive version for English-language readers. For a detailed commentary on Zohn’s translation see de Man (1985). Alternative is Steven Rendall’s translation: “Nonetheless the translation is later than the original, and in the case of the most significant works, which never find their chosen translators in the era in which they are produced, indicates that they have reached the stage of their continuing life [Fortleben] ("The Translator’s Task, Walter Benjamin [Translation]: 153). 2 Derrida, “Des tours de Babel,” pp. 188. 3 De Man, “Conclusions” 1983: pp. 82. 1 of world literature, where more often than not the translator goes unnoticed. Translators are almost never seen as the authors of their translations. Rather, they are seen as rewriters of one text in another language who follow closely the semantic and syntactical aspects of the first text and avoid any textual signs that would mark their work as a translated text. Copyright laws alienate translators from their own work and prevent them from exclusively owing it4. Publishers and copy editors reinforce fluent and transparent language in translations, the kind of language that would maintain the illusion that readers read the original work in their own language. This is a familiar and often-times overgeneralized picture of the dominant Anglo-American translational scene. It needs to be qualified with detailed case studies especially today when dominant binaries such as author and translator, original and copy, minor and major, center and periphery more than ever shape and control our understanding of distant peoples and their cultures. It is the aim of this dissertation to shed light on these binaries in relation to specific translation case studies. Definition(s): I use the word “translation” in its traditional sense as defined by Oxford English Dictionary as “the action or process of turning from one language into another; also, the product of this; a version in a different language.”5 As any dictionary entry, this one is also insufficient and abstract. It needs to be qualified in relation to a specific case and situation. Based on the case study that I present in the next chapters, I take “translation” to be a complex activity that involves more than just the transfer of one unified meaning of a first text. Signification in one linguistic system never parallels signification in another. Literary texts by their encoded nature 4 In Chapter 3 of The Scandals of Translation (1998), Lawrence Venuti discusses extensively the dire economic and cultural ramifications of ambiguous copyrights from the standpoint of translators and translations. 5 Second edition, 1989; online version June 2011. <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/204844>; accessed 28 June 2011. 2 already provide multiple layers of meaning and referentiality. Translation involves a human agent, the translator, who translates under various constraints, and whose interpretation of the first text enables it to continue life in another language and context, where the translated text becomes the basis of new interpretations. In this dissertation, I look at the concept of translation from the translators’