The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts RAMPANT MODERNISM AND ITS CITYSCAPES: ALFRED DÖBLIN’S BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, ROBERT MUSIL’S DER MANN OHNE EIGENSCHAFTEN, AHMET HAMDİ TANPINAR’S SAATLERİ AYARLAMA ENSTİTÜSÜ A Dissertation in Comparative Literature by İpek Kısmet Bell © 2011 İpek Kısmet Bell Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2011 ii The dissertation of İpek Kısmet Bell was reviewed and approved* by the following: Djelal Kadir Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Comparative Literature Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Nergis Ertürk Lennon Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Martina Kolb Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature Daniel Purdy Associate Professor of German Alan Sica Professor of Sociology Caroline D. Eckhardt Professor of Comparative Literature and English Head of the Department of Comparative Literature Director of the School of Languages and Literatures *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii Abstract This study investigates the nature of literary Modernism and social modernity through three modernist novels that represent analogous historical ruptures and conditions in early twentieth-century Vienna, Berlin, and Istanbul. Focusing on Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930, 1932, 1943) by Robert Musil, Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) by Alfred Döblin, and Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (1954, 1961) by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, I engage in a comparative study of socio-historical and cultural symptoms, manifestations, and consequences of Austrian, German, and Turkish modernisms as dramatized in these novels. As a whole, this project seeks to contribute to the critical study of Modernism and modernity in general, and to the study of alternative Modernisms and modernities in particular. The city is often a stage for modernization as manifested in literary Modernism. Each of these novels dramatizes modern(izing) life in the authors’ respective cities. Each chapter of this study explores one of various specificities of modernity in each city (Vienna, Berlin, Istanbul)—and, metonymically, each culture—as they are translated into/by the narrative of these modernist authors. I read the modern city in terms of its inherent contradictions and as analogous to Modernism, with its concomitant paradoxes and ironies, where I define irony in its modernist iterations as a simultaneously anarchic, subversive, and constructive mode of philosophico-critical self-reflection. Musil, Döblin, and Tanpınar create out of this trinity—the city, modernity, irony—these novels as allegories of Modernism and as sites of ironic self-reflection. Furthermore, the problematic relationship between modernity and religion as it plays out in the urban iv settings of these novels portrays religion as yet another dysfunctional institution of modernity. This comparative study brings together three authors and three novels which have not been read side by side before, and thereby contributes to the growing recognition of multiple modernities. v Table of Contents Abstract...............................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgments..............................................................................................................vi Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 I. The Temporal City: Time as Experience and Experienced Time……………………..12 II. The Ironic City: Modernity and Its Ironies…………………………………………...63 III. The City of God: A Modernist Contretemps……………………………………….118 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...180 Bibliography...………………………………………………………………………….184 vi Acknowledgments I am grateful beyond words for the selfless support, guidance, and dedication of my dissertation advisor, Professor Djelal Kadir. Having worked under his tutelage will forever be one of the most valuable privileges of my life. I would like to thank my committee members, Professors Nergis Ertürk Lennon, Martina Kolb, Daniel Purdy, and Alan Sica, for their insightful comments and suggestions. My appreciation goes to Professor Caroline Eckhardt, head of the Department of Comparative Literature, and Professor Richard Page, head of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, for the wonderful teaching opportunities they provided. I would also like to give special thanks to Professor Thomas Beebee for his genuine care and for his willingness to help me professionally. The office staff in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures have gone above and beyond in helping me whenever I needed assistance. I am indebted to them for making my life as a graduate student much easier. I will always remember them for their generosity and helpfulness, and for the wonderful people that they are. My thanks go to Irene Grassi, Lynn Setzler, Bonnie Rossman, Jamie Frazell, Mona Muzzio, Sharon Laskowsky, and JoElle DeVinney. I have been blessed with the friendship, love and support of a group of very special people who have provided me with much needed personal and academic guidance during my years as a graduate student. My undying gratitude goes to Selin Akpınar, Yuka Amano, Narjis Benjelloun, Ziad Bentahar, Riadh Bounatirou, Professor Juana Celia Djelal, Jessica Humeniuk, Mariano Humeniuk, Alida Kamer, Ayşe Kaya, Aslı vii Leblebicioğlu, Rhett McNeil, Yasemin Mohammad, Kim Nguyen, Luz Kirschner, Nicole Sparling, María Luján Tubio, and Wilbur Wadlington. I am immeasurably grateful to my parents, Nilgün and Mehmet Kısmet, and my brother, Eren Kısmet, for the unwavering support and endless love they have given me. Sizi çok seviyorum! Most significantly, I would like to thank my beloved husband Jameson Kısmet Bell for his kind patience and undying support, and for motivating me and inspiring me when I needed it most. Seni seviyorum canım! Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to my grandparents, Süheylâ and Nihat Karaveli, and Güzin and Fethi Kısmet. The love and prayers they sent me from thousands of miles away gave me the strength to finish this project. I love them deeply. 1 Introduction Modernity as a discourse “interrogates the present” (Gaonkar 14) and travels through geographies, taking with it social practices, cultural forms, and institutions. This movement is referred to as modernization. As such, there might be as many modernities as there are epochs and geographies in human history. In order to exist throughout human history, modernity has identified itself with change and progress. While the societal/industrial aspect of this perpetual change is identified as modernization, its aesthetic manifestation is identified as Modernism. At the site where modernity and modernization converge, Modernism emerges as a new consciousness that reflects, often in a paradoxical manner, the phenomena that result from this convergence. Modernism is a state of consciousness able to see all around it, into the past, the present, and the future, all the while focusing on itself. It is a constant “just now” and a critical construct whose shape and color are never in clear focus precisely because it consists of myriad contesting practices, styles, and theories. The modern tradition, then, is one of fragmentation and rupture caused by the flux of change, progress, and Modernism’s identifying desideratum—the new. It is a tradition that perpetuates itself by constantly negating and reasserting itself, hence Peter Bürger’s observation throughout The Decline of Modernism that modernity is defined by contradictions. The contradictions of modernity are inevitably felt in the day-to-day experiences of individuals, especially, and almost exclusively, in those of the fin de siècle urbanite. As Lewis Mumford writes, “[t]he cities of the nineteenth century embodied with utmost fidelity all the confusions and contradictions of the period of transition” (144). He adds that “[t]hose centers in which the new energies and the new discipline of society were 2 most completely focused showed the greatest departures from the best norms: between 1820 and 1900 the chaos of the great cities is like that of a battlefield, proportionate to the very extent of their equipment and the strength of the forces employed” (144). The early- twentieth-century modern city, then, becomes not only the locus of modernity, but also the setting for the dramatization of modernity and its inherent paradoxes in modernist novels. The present study explores different manifestations of modernity in three imperial cities, Vienna, Berlin, and Istanbul, as they are narrated in the novels of three modernist authors whose different cultural and social backgrounds have converged at crucial historical junctures. I read Austrian writer Robert Musil’s (1880-1942) Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930, 1932, 1943) [The Man Without Qualities (1953, 1955, 1960)], German writer Alfred Döblin’s (1878-1957) Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) [Berlin Alexanderplatz (1931)] and Turkish author Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s (1901-1962) Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (1954, 1961) [The Time Regulation Institute (2001)] as narrative instantiations—in the stylistic and contextual specificities of their respective authors—of modernity’s inalienable ruptures, crises, and contradictions which are most poignantly experienced in the modern city. Within a broader framework, this study traces modernity’s—and