Autobiographical Themes in Turkish Literature: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul ISTANBULER TEXTE UND STUDIEN HERAUSGEGEBEN VOM ORIENT-INSTITUT ISTANBUL BAND 6 © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul Autobiographical Themes in Turkish Literature: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives edited by Olcay Akyıldız Halim Kara Börte Sagaster WÜRZBURG 2016 ERGON VERLAG WÜRZBURG IN KOMMISSION © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul Umschlaggestaltung: Taline Yozgatian Umschlagbild: 'Fetus 5' von Seçkin Tercan Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-95650-180-7 ISSN 1863-9461 © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul (Max Weber Stiftung) Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung des Werkes außerhalb des Urheberrechtsgesetzes bedarf der Zustimmung des Orient-Instituts Istanbul. Dies gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen jeder Art, Übersetzungen, Mikro- verfilmung sowie für die Einspeicherung in elektronische Systeme. Gedruckt mit Unter- stützung des Orient-Instituts Istanbul, gegründet von der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, aus Mitteln des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung. Ergon-Verlag GmbH Keesburgstr. 11, D-97074 Würzburg © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul Contents Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................7 Olcay Akyıldız, Halim Kara, Börte Sagaster Introduction .............................................................................................................9 Olcay Akyıldız What happens when fact and fiction overlap? Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Das Leben ist eine Karawanserai.......................................17 Theoretical Dimensions Susanne Enderwitz Autobiography and “Islam” ...................................................................................35 Özkan Ezli Lejeune and Foucault or: A name with no identity..............................................43 Herrad Heselhaus Sentenced to life: Autobiography and aging.........................................................51 Gabriele Jancke Autobiography as social practice in early modern German-speaking areas .........65 Past and Present of Autobiographical Writing in Turkey Derin Terzioğlu Autobiography in fragments: Reading Ottoman personal miscellanies in the early modern era........................83 Nüket Esen Menfa: Self-reflection in Ahmet Midhat’s memoirs after exile...........................101 Halim Kara Relational self-narratives: Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’s autobiographical writings ..................................107 Hülya Adak Who is afraid of Dr. Rıza Nur’s autobiography? ................................................125 Erika Glassen The sociable Self: the search for identity by conversation (sohbet). The Turkish literary community and the problem of autobiographical writing ......................................................................................143 © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul 6 CONTENTS Sibel Irzık Narratives of collectivity and autobiography in Latife Tekin’s works................157 Börte Sagaster “Me, who got into the text, me, who became the text”: Encounter of fact and fiction in contemporary Turkish autobiographical writing ......................................................................................165 Turkish Literature in Comparative Perspective Catharina Dufft The “autobiographical space” in Orhan Pamuk’s works.....................................173 Stephan Guth Writing the self, choosing a language: Non-Arabic autobiographies by Arabs, non-Turkish by Turks ..........................185 Angelika Neuwirth Imagining autobiography: Mahmud Darwish, his poetic persona, and his audience...................................203 Farzaneh Milani “Yeki bud, yeki nabud…”........................................................................................219 Contributors.........................................................................................................227 Index .....................................................................................................................231 © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul Acknowledgements We owe many institutions and individuals a debt of gratitude for their support in helping us to organize the symposium and bring this book to fruition. We would like to thank DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), Orient-Institut Istanbul, and Boğaziçi University for their financial or institutional support, and the peo- ple with whom we held reading sessions—Fatih Altuğ, Arzu Atik, Catharina Dufft, Nüket Esen, Özkan Ezli, Ayten Sönmez, Derin Terzioğlu, and Zehra Toska—for their invaluable contributions to this endeavor. We are grateful to Arzu Atik and Ayten Sönmez for their help with organizing the symposium, and to Louis Fishmann and Amy Spangler for their editorial assistance. Finally, we would like to express our sincerest thanks to our keynote speaker, Orhan Pamuk. © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul Introduction I am angry with those who write their memoirs. I say of course nothing against those who have been part of important events either as actors or simply as witnesses. How- ever, though they be referred to as ‘memoirs,’ even the texts written by such people should be considered the same as history books, and read as such. What anger me are the ones who seek to occupy us by telling us all about only what happened to them- selves. And no, I have not forgotten about the great autobiographers like Saint Augustine, Rousseau, and Gide; but they gave us their literary works first, and told us their life stories only later. Furthermore, every principle has its exceptions, so we can say that each of their works is such an exception…1 These words that the Turkish literary critic Nurullah Ataç wrote in an article on “memory books” (hatırat kitapları) for the popular magazine Ye d i g ü n in 1934 demonstrate a resentment towards autobiographical texts, a type of text which has in recent years become more widespread in Turkey. The fear that an auto- biographer might not “tell the truth,” as Ataç complains in this essay, had for a long time led to a general mistrust towards autobiographical writings on the part of Turkish historians, while scholars of Turkish literature meanwhile have ignored the genre as a generic hybrid of history book and novel. However, recent devel- opments in literary and critical studies, such as post-structuralism and postmod- ernism, feminism and post-colonialism, have profoundly influenced Turkish so- ciety and culture. It is a world of “Inter”s, “Post”s, and “Trans”es that we are liv- ing in, and in this context the autobiography—or, more generally, autobiographi- cal writing—is a genre that is especially suitable as an object of scholarly interest. Inspired by this tremendous potential for further scholarly discussion, the Ori- ent-Institut Istanbul and the Department of Turkish Language and Literature at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, decided in 2002 to hold a symposium on autobio- graphical writing in Turkey. The initial starting point was to focus fundamentally on whether there were any differences between autobiographical texts in the Middle East and Turkey versus Europe/the “West,” as has been argued by scholars such as Franz Rosenthal, Gustav von Grunebaum, Marvin Zonis, Georges Gus- dorf, and Philippe Lejeune. Other questions to be tackled included: Does Middle Eastern/Turkish literature really lack introspection? To what degree is the issue of introspection really so central for autobiographical texts in the West? If there are so few texts that fit the classical definitions of “autobiography” even in the West, 1 Hatıralarını yazanlara kızarım. Bittabi büyük hadiselere, gerek bir iş görerek, gerek sadece şahit sıfatı ile karışmış olanlara bir diyeceğim yok; fakat onlarınkileri—isimleri istediği kadar “hatırat” olsun—gene bir tarih kitabı sayıp öyle okuyabiliriz. Benim kızdığım sırf kendi baş- larından geçenleri anlatarak bizi alâkadar etmek isteyenlerdir. Saint Augustin, Rousseau, Gide gibi büyük hatıratçıları unutmuyorum; fakat onlar bizi evvelâ eserleri ile celbetmiş sonra hayatlarını anlatmışlardır. Hem her kaidenin istisnaları vardır; diyelim ki onların ese- ri de birer istisnadır. Nurullah Ataç: “Hatırat Kitapları,” Ye d i g ü n No. 58, 18 April 1934. 5-6. © 2016 Orient-Institut Istanbul 10 INTRODUCTION shouldn’t we revise these definitions? The aim of our prospective symposium was to contribute to the discussion of such questions, which began to be posed in the 1990s with regard to autobiographical writings in both Western and non-Western cultures and literatures. We decided to take up “autobiographical writing” rather than “autobiography” because the former enables us to use a larger framework. We avoid the term “autobiography” because of its exclusive and reductionist implica- tions and undertones, preferring instead the term “autobiographical writing,” which is inclusive of all self-narratives and presentations, such as memoirs, confes- sions, diaries and personal notes, and autobiographical