Ahmed Hamdi Tanpinar - Tanpinars Five Cities

TANPINARS
FIVE CITIES

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Translated from the Turkish by Ruth Christie

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2018

by ANTHEM PRESS

7576 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK

or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK

and

244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

Original title: Be ehir

Copyright Ahmet Hamdi Tanpnar 2018

Originally published by Dergah Publications

English translation copyright Ruth Christie 2018

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,

no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),

without the prior written permission of both the copyright

owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tanpnar, Ahmet Hamdi, author.

Title: Tanpnars Five cities = Be ehir (Five cities) / Ahmet Hamdi Tanpnar.

Other titles: Be ehir. English | Five cities | Be ehir Description: London; New York, NY: Anthem Press, 2018. | Translation of: Be ehir. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018039948| ISBN 9781783088485 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 1783088486 (paperback : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: TurkeyDescription and travel.

Classification: LCC DR428.T313 2018 | DDC 956.1/025dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018039948

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-848-5 (Pbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78308-848-6 (Pbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

The real subject of Be ehir (Five Cities) is the craving we foster for the new, and our nostalgic regret for what is lost, in our lives. At first sight, the two emotions might seem to be at odds with one another but can be reconciled in one word: love. The cities chosen by love as its framework have all arrived in my own life by chance. In consequence, it is by following their history that we may reach a more authentic understanding of our own people, our own lives and the culture which is the spiritual faade of our country.

Like previous generations, during the long and arduous journey on which all our hopes are pinned, our generation has looked back from the difficult curves of the road at this valuable legacy which we now define as changes in civilization. For 150 years, we have come down precipices, looking back at the way we left behind and ahead to the promising prospect in the distance that makes light of our problems.

The real drama of the Turkish community will continue for even longer, an experience of living through a climate of criticism, a mass of denials and agreements, hopes and dreams, with occasional periods of realistic assessment, until our lives are revitalized by work which is, in every sense, truly creative.

We all know the road we must follow. But the longer the road, the busier we are made by this everyday world we are leaving. Now we become aware of a gradually increasing void in our identity which, a little later, becomes a heavy burden that we are more than ready to discard. Even when our willpower is at its strongest, there is all the same a painful ache within us which sometimes speaks to us like a pang of conscience.

Such an inner turmoil is not at all strange if you consider that the process known as the work of history sows the seed and creates the real meaning and identity not only of states and communities but also of personalities. The past is always present. To live the authentic life, we must take that into account and come to terms with every moment.

So, Five Cities is a discussion born of the need for understanding. Perhaps it might have been clearer, more useful even, to bring this complex conversation down to fundamental matters in short, to introduce and answer questions like What were we? and What are we and where are we going? But during my life, I came upon these issues only by chance. They appeared while I was roaming among the Seluk remains that fill Anatolia, or while I was feeling humbled and small under the dome of Sleymaniye, or consoling my loneliness in Bursas landscape, or listening to the music of Dede Efendi and tri filling our rooms, nostalgic water music mingled with nomad voices.

Ill never forget how one morning on Uluda, a veil fell from my eyes the very moment I was listening to a shepherds pipe and watching his flock of sheep and lambs surround his music as they summoned each other to his call. I knew that Turkish poetry and music was a story of exile, but I had never realized how closely linked they were to this aspect of our lives. It was a truly touching and beautiful scene, and, for a few minutes, I contemplated it as a work of art. If one day the emotional history of an Anatolian is written and our lives are closely examined from that angle, we will see that much we now think of as fashionable has come from the original fabric of life itself.

In a word, similar events and their influence on my spiritual being have been important to me. Essentially, this book has evolved from random fragments of experience. In its second edition, even with all the changes and additions I thought necessary, I have tried to retain the traces of those first chance events.

Readers who compare the two editions will undoubtedly notice that among the additions is further material on the Seluk era. Our historians seem to maintain that the difference between Seluk and Ottoman lies in a change of dynasty. But we believe there was a greater difference extending from social relations to include lifestyles, manners, people and entertainments: two separate worlds, the Seluk and the Ottoman, a continuum more or less, one from the other, but, in a larger sense, two separate philosophies of life. We think of our Renaissance as a synthesis of the Mediterranean culture and the wider European geography absorbed by the Ottomans. Today, we have discovered the Seluks just as Europe rediscovered the Gothic and Roman arts at the beginning of last century. To see them clearly, we had to emerge from the Ottoman Empire. A split in the Ottoman psyche, very serious differences in taste, and economic problems have resulted inevitably in the present neglected condition of Seluk monuments.

The reader will find several similar daring suggestions in Five Cities.

Like all thoughtful people, I, too, am dissatisfied with our changing lives.

I am an old Westerner, as a foreign novelist Ive always admired said in nearly the same circumstances. But I wanted to approach real life as a man with a heart, a live, feeling person, not like an engineer dealing with lifeless material. I cant do it otherwise. Only the things we love change along with us, and because they change, they always live with us as a richness in our lives.

Ankara, 25 September 1960

I

I have always imagined Ankara as a legendary warrior, perhaps from memories of the years of the National Struggle for Independence, or perhaps from the strong impression made by the citadel rising erect like an old-time chevalier clad in steel armour. Its site may have something to do with it. What strikes us already from a distance is the natural fortification overlooking a pass between two flat hills. The perception hardly changes if you look from the surrounding heights that dominate the city. In short, from wherever you choose to look, whether from the slopes of ankaya, the iftlik route, the roads to the Reservoir, from Etlik or the vineyards of Keiren, you will always see the fort dominating the horizon with the same calm repose under a light incisive as glass, and gathering all the land forms about it. Sometimes it rises like a warship baring its great bosom to the wind, or sometimes it sails fast and powerful in the sea of time and events; sometimes the inner fortress becomes the ultimate refuge of all hopes, or, like an eagles nest, it reaches impossible heights.