Cevdet and his sons
Cevdet and his sons (original title: Cevdet Bey ve Oğullari ) is the title of the first novel by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk from 1974 to 1978 and published in 1982
content
The work is divided into three parts, each separated by time leaps of 31 years: the first is set in 1905 and tells of one day in the life of the merchant Cevdet Işıkçı, the second focuses on the years 1936–1939 and deals with the reform ideas of the next Generation, the third part (1970) focuses on the grandchildren.
prehistory
Cevdets childhood is structured by the changing positions of his father, the civil servant Osman: he was born in Kula in 1868 and attended secondary school in Akhisar . When he was around eighteen, he and his family moved to Istanbul in order to provide better treatment for the mother who had tuberculosis. That is why the father has quit his job and opened a timber shop in the Haseki district. When he died a year and a half later, Cevdet had to run the business because his brother Nusret, who was two years older, was already studying at the military medical school.
At the age of 25 he added a hardware store to the trade that had moved to Aksaray, with which he moved to Sirkeci a year later. In that year his mother also dies. A year later, after living in Haseki in the neighborhood of relatives for ten years, Cevdet bought a house in Vefa, which was looked after by his housekeeper Zeliha. This distancing from the old family relationships associated with the move signals his ascension mentality.
At the turn of the century, business success began with the entry into the lamp business: through bribes, the protagonist was given the privilege of becoming the sole supplier to the city administration and the steamship company. At the time of the beginning of the novel, the businessman is 37 years old, has just got engaged, mediated by his client Nedim Paşa, to Nigân, 20 years younger, a daughter of Šükrü Paşa from the high class of civil servants, and is preparing the wedding and the purchase of a representative house in front. The name of his company Cevdet and Sons Import - Export - Hardware shows his future prospects, because both the sons and the export department are still in the planning stage. He sees the basis for founding a family in the connection between money and nobility.
After finishing medical school, his brother Nusret worked for two years in the hospital in Haydarpaşa as an assistant doctor, then in other clinics in Anatolia and Palestine . Approx. In 1894 he was transferred to Istanbul, married, but left his pregnant wife two years later, renounced his inheritance in the year his mother died and in 1894, after criticizing the political situation in Turkey, fled to Paris, where he joined the movement of the Young Turks come into contact. After four years he returned to Istanbul, got a divorce and went back to Paris . At the beginning of the main plot of the novel, Nusret , suffering from tuberculosis, lives with his girlfriend, an Armenian actress, Mademoiselle Mari Çuhaciyan, in a boarding house in Beyoğlu. His son Ziya lives with relatives in Haseki. Cevdet supports both financially.
First part
The plot of the first day takes place on one day: on Monday, July 14, 1905, the reader accompanies the protagonist on his way through Istanbul and experiences his business and private activities from his perspective. Memories of family history and reflections on the social situation are faded in. These aspects are also included in the discussions, e.g. B. with brother, friend and father-in-law themed.
Muslim and businessman
In a proper carriage rented for three months for the engagement and wedding, he first lets himself (Chapter 1 In the Morning) to his lamp shop in Sirkeci and discusses organizational matters with the accountant Sadık and the sellers. In the neighborhood of predominantly Jewish, Greek and Armenian traders at that time, Cevdet is an exception as a Turk, and he feels himself to be a critically observed outsider who is influenced by European economic thinking (Chapter 2, Muslim and Kaufmann).
On this day, the focus is on family matters:
The young Turk Nusret
Mari called him because his brother's health had deteriorated. Against Nusret's resistance, he called a doctor to treat his convulsive coughing fits (Chapter 4 The Pharmacy). The Young Turk (Chapter 3 The Young Turks) laments the structures of Turkish society. A supporter of the French Revolution , he is a critic of Ottoman traditions and absolutism, and takes pleasure in embarrassing and showing his disdain on his brother for his shyness and conformism. Nusret asks Cevdet to get his son Ziya to see him one last time. He picks up the nine-year-old nephew, whom he has put up with Zeynep, a relative, in Haseki (Chapter 5, The Old Quarter), by carriage and brings him to his father. In the evening, when he visits his brother again, Nusret, Ziya, which means light , asks him to take him into his house after his death. He wants him to be brought up not in religious tutelage, but according to Western ideas of freedom and reason (Chapter 10 The Desire of the Sick). His brother promises. In this context, Nusret talks about his ideas for a revolution and his disappointment with the lazy people (chap. 11 intelligent and stupid). He also despises Cevdet as an apolitical, soulless shopkeeper who marries an upper-class girl, but he also admires that he is one of the few Turkish merchants with rationally successful business operations based on the European model.
Conversation with friend Fuat about the meaning of life
For lunch (chap. 6 Lunch), Cevdet meets with his friend Fuat Güveniç at Club Serkldoryan. This is an opportunity for him to socialize with the Istanbul rich and privileged. Fuat comes from a Jewish merchant family who converted to Islam, he sympathizes with the Young Turks, pleads in front of the politically disinterested and little informed Cevdet for the restoration of the constitution, for more freedom, the end of absolutism and, if necessary, the overthrow of Sultan Abdülhamid II . the cautious friend on the other hand does not want to get involved as a merchant in the clashes. In this situation of change, Fuat advises him to wait with the connection to a family from the ruler's circle: “What does life mean anyway? See something, feel something ... Life is colorful! ”. His father-in-law was in financial difficulties, had to sell land, and benefited more from the marriage than Cevdet. He doesn't see it that way, he's not looking for a rich girl, but a well-bred girl from a respected family. He is satisfied with his life and tries to define "life means [] ... a happy existence!", Which he takes back, apparently because of the indefinability of the term "happiness". Because he “does not want to worry his head about life, but about [his] business”.
Audience with the father-in-law
Šükrü Paşa has ordered the son-in-law to come to Nişantaşı in his konak to chat with him and learn about his future plans (chap. 7 in the Paşa-Konak). He tells of his ministerial office, which he received with the support of Rüştü Paşa and which was withdrawn from him by the Grand Vizier because of a careless statement after Ali Suavi's attack on the Sultan's palace 27 years ago. Afterwards he was governor in Erzurum and Konya as well as envoy in Paris. He chats about his family, his son and the personal networks in politics. He suspects that his time is over, the young people are rebellious, he also sees the economic stagnation compared to the development in Europe.
The bridegroom has seen Nigân briefly twice so far. a. “At the puppet theater that calls itself engagement.” In comparison to her sisters, the nice Turkân and the entertaining Šükran, she is not exactly the prettiest, but well-bred, elegantly inconspicuous, not undemanding, but not by her father Greedy, intelligent, somewhat educated, not uninterested in the European way of life like Cevdet and reasonably characterized (Chapter 8 On Time, Family and Life). The merchant can watch his bride get into the carriage through the window. But when she and her sisters curtsied and kissed his hand in front of the friend of the Seyfi Paşa family, who was just coming to visit, he was alienated: “It shouldn't have been like that. There's something ugly about it. I'm better than them! ”He becomes thoughtful:“ What kind of being is that? He would spend his whole life with that thing in front [...]. ”He wants the Paşa daughter, but refuses the elitist ceremonies of these families. These feelings are reinforced during the following conversation with the guest, a former envoy in London: “Yes, I am better than them. I am more progressive, more decent! […] I have to get out of here immediately! ”He leaves without a Šükrü Paşa, as it would have been appropriate to kiss the hand.
New attitude towards life
During the following revisit of his future family home (chap. 9 A stone house in Nişantaşı) he put his plans back in order and he suspected that Nigân is the right woman for him and that he would love her, and he knows “that lively Thing that he saw earlier [], was brought up by his family - no matter how strange, old-fashioned and distant - to love their husband. "He ends this reflection with the statement:" I live! “He takes another look, led by the gardener and his son Aziz, at the house, which has already been partially vacated, and the well-tended garden with chestnuts and linden trees, which is blown by the light, cool evening breeze and which are offered for sale by his widow after the owner's death. He decides: "Here I will live!"
On the way back to Vefa (Chapter 12 Night and Life) he remembers "[l] smiling [...] all day long." In the old brotherly rivalry - "He dies and I live!" - he feels neither guilty nor guilty another satisfaction. “Be happy, laugh, eat, drink… From now on I will live like that too. But I mustn't neglect business. [...] Actually, I would need two lives, then I would spend one in the shop and one at home. […] Words, not as words… […] words fly, curtains fly. I live."
Second part
Cevdets family
The main plot of the second part takes place from February 1936 to December 1939. In the 31 years that have passed since the first part, as the faded-in memories of the protagonists show, Cevdet's ideas about life have come true: he who, after the introduction of the surname in 1934, Işıkçı (i.e. lighting technician ) is now the patriarch, whose children Osman (born 1906), Refik (born ~ 1910) and Ayşe (born 1920) traditionally kiss his hand (“I wanted to start a European family, and yet everything is become Turkish! ”) The merchant and his wife were only once, in the second year of their marriage, for a while in Europe, in Berlin. Her three-generation household is managed by Nigân, even after the death of her husband, with the help of the service staff, e. B. of the cook Nuri, organized according to their socialization: The sons working in the company and their wives Nermin and Perihan as well as Ömer and Nermin's children, eight-year-old Lâle and six-year-old Cemil, and the baby of 22-year-old Perihan, Melek, who was born in 1937 are integrated into the community system that is financed with successful businesses. The women go for a stroll through town (Chap. 8 The women in Beyoğlu), raise the children and meet friends in the garden. The extended family regularly spends the long summer holidays on the island of Heybeliada (Chapter 36 On to Heybeliada)
The up-and-coming company can be expanded with the money earned in the First World War through the sugar trade: Cevdet and his friend Fuat, who returned from Salonika after the regime change in 1908, open an import-export company. At the end of the second part, in December 1939, this cooperation was consolidated with the engagement of 19-year-old Ayşe to Fuat and Leyla's son Remzi (Chapter 61 Spectacle). The relationship established by the families through the two young people's prescribed vacation stay in the summer of 1938 at Aunt Taciser's in Switzerland (Chapter 32, Merchant Worries, Chapter) fits in well with the concept.
These successes are also reflected in the property expansions: the neighboring garden is being bought. For Osman's marriage, the house on Nişantaşı Square was added. In the spring of 1936, the renovation of a summer house on Heybeliada was completed.
The family situation, which was quite tension-free up to the beginning of the second part (Chapter 2, the holiday meal) changed over the course of the 1930s. Cevdet is often tired, forgetful, goes to the office less and less and leaves the business to his sons. His nephew Ziya, whom he took in after his brother's death in 1905 and then sent to the army, reappears at the age of 42 as "The Ghost", reproaches his uncle for having sold sugar at exorbitant prices during the war and thus enriched himself. feels neglected and asks for money to start a new business as a businessman and to live with a new wife (Chapter 12, Uncle and Nephew). Osman inherits this conflict after the death of his father and does not respond to his cousin's ideas. When Refik happened to meet Ziya on the national holiday at the troop parade in the stadium during his stay in Ankara, he met a self-confident soldier with the rank of colonel who was convinced that there would be no reforms in Turkey without the army.
After Cevdet's death on May 19, 1937 (Chapter 17 Half a Century of Merchant Life, Chapter 18 The Funeral), Osman officially took over the management, which he de facto already held in the last phase of his father's life, and strengthened trade relations. The marriage with Nermin is only of a formal nature. He has a lover, Keriman, whom he visits twice a week in the apartment furnished for her, although he has promised his wife to end the affair (chapter 32, merchant worries). The emancipated Nermin takes revenge with a lover, and she doesn't mind that she is seen with him while strolling through the city of Perihan.
The dissatisfied sons
The second part focuses on the development stories of Refik and his friends Ömer and Muhittin Nişanci. The break with the adapted generation of fathers, represented by Cevdet's business acumen and his apolitical, family-oriented bourgeois life, becomes clear in their identity crises. As engineering students, you decided to make something special out of your life and not lead a normal family and social life. In the course of the plot they meet again and again (e.g. Chapter 4 Old Friends, Chapter 6 What should you do with your life? Chapter 16 Ambitious and engaged, Chapter 56 The interrogation, Chapter 57 The jellyfish), discuss the meaning of life, their personal goals as well as their realizations and take stock in mutual criticism.
Refik - The village reformer
Refik is the first to deviate from the revolutionary concept. He works for the Cevdets company, marries the doctor's daughter Perihan, lives with parents and siblings in the family house. Like his father, he seeks the little happiness of everyday life, but cannot always find it when he and Perihan tell each other their daily routines in the evening (chap. 9 A day comes to an end) as "good [], honest [] citizens".
Their daughter Melek (the i. Engel) was born on May 29, 1937 and Refik's personality crisis intensified in the following weeks (Chapter 19 The Heat and the Baby). Perihan notes that her husband is "off balance". He confesses to her that he feels lonely and superfluous, no longer wants to go to work and achieve “something else in life”. In the big house, he and his wife only have one room to themselves and the extended family lives so close together. He wants a retreat where he can read in peace.
The merchant's son now wants to realign his life. But he has no ambition and no idea where to break out. He reads Rousseau's Confessions and keeps a diary from September to February (Chapter 22 Diary I) and, after an interruption, in March and April 1938 (Chapter 29 Diary II) as a guide. After a cold in December, he stopped working in the office for a few weeks, but reads books on economics and philosophy at home, but that didn't change his state of mind.
So he travels in search of giving his life a meaning and dedicating it to a cause, to see Ömer in Kemah (Chapter 24 The Storm), where Ömer organizes the construction of a tunnel for a railway line. He wants to determine his own life in the future. Here he met the German engineer Von Rudolph, who criticized the social hierarchy in Turkey and encouraged Refik to hold on to the ideas of the European Enlightenment . Through these conversations and the experiences in the country, Refik finds a goal: He reads economics books , thinks about the Turkish economy, reforms and statism, and develops proposals to bring more progress to the villages.
After Ömer has completed the tunnel, Refik drives to Ankara with him (Chapter 40 Ankara) and, with the help of his father-in-law, MP Muhtar, seeks contacts in order to present his project. These efforts, however, are disappointing for the reformer:
- Refik suggests to the Minister of Agriculture, a confidante of Prime Minister Celâl Bayar, that his theses be published and discussed. The minister supports the publication of his book, but is cautious about his ideas, because President Ataturk is ill and we are waiting for developments, his death could be the end of the reform movement.
- With Muhtar he discusses the chances of reforms (Chapter 43 The State). In his opinion, it is not possible without government coercion, since the village population is stuck with the old structures and disinterested in changes. Refik, on the other hand, doesn't want forced progress. He hopes for the power of enlightening the people by controlling the influence of religion on political decisions. The people should be educated to choose sensible people who should be educated and interested in the development of the whole country.
- Refik is also disappointed by the visit to the writer Süleyman Ayçelik (Chap. 45 The Reform Writer). He rejects his project because it is contrary to his own ideas. He does not want to support the farmers with the scarce state funds, but rather to build a state industry through the proceeds of agriculture. He urges Refik to let go of his unrealistic ideas and offers him a job on the Ministry of Commerce's industrial development committee. But he refuses, because he wants the best for the country, not for the state, while Ayçelik sees a strong state as the prerequisite for all reforms. In this discussion, too, as Von Rudoph prophesied, Refik becomes aware of his being a stranger, and the feeling of isolation is intensified by the lack of public interest in his book.
Disillusioned, Refik returns to his family in Istanbul (chapter 52 Still searching). In conversation with his wife, he promises to steer her life and work in order now. To escape the tightness of family ties and to have more time together, they rent an apartment of their own in Cihangir from October and take on for Perihan again important social life. But this is only a temporary solution (Chapter 60, Diary III). A short stay at Ömer's estate makes Refik clear the different needs of the spouses again: Perihan does not feel comfortable in the silence of nature and is happy to be back in Istanbul soon. Refik, on the other hand, feels that traditional social ceremonies are no longer up to date, B. the circumcision festival of his nephew Cemil (chap. 55 The circumcision) in July 1939 in the holiday home on Heybeliada. He leads a kind of double life: during the day he works in the shop, in the evening he looks after the pregnant Perihan and his daughter, at the weekend he searches for the meaning of life in books such as Hyperion by Hölderlin . Refik is looking for a new destination. He no longer wants to go into the company, but rather found a publishing house to publish good European books (like Robinson Crusoe ). At the engagement party, his sister and friends notice his sadness and Sait Nedim advises him to compromise, otherwise he would be unhappy (chap. 62 All is well).
In the third part you learn from his son Ahmet that he is not following this advice. He leaves the company and publishes high quality educational literature, but goes bankrupt due to low demand. After separating from Perihan, he lives in his elderly mother's apartment and reads books.
Ömer - The Conqueror
Like Refik, Ömer cannot make permanent compromises. After graduating from Istanbul, he studied engineering in England for four years. At the beginning of the second part, he returns to Uncle Cüneyt and Aunt Macide in Karaköy (Chapter 1 A Young Conqueror in Istanbul). He compares himself with the traveling family of the businessman Sait and formulates his program for himself: “I'll do it differently! I have to get beyond it all! Further than that! First of all, I have to shake everything, chop it up short and sweet! ”He is ambitious,“ wants to conquer everything that comes up, all of life! ”[...] beautiful women, money, fame. Sait's wife Atiye calls him the modern Rastignac, after the hero in Balzac's novel Father Goriot .
Ömer wants to use his knowledge as an engineer to develop Turkey by rail and to participate financially in the construction of the tunnel between Kemah and Erzincan . To do this, he needs money for the pre-financing and therefore has to sell real estate and negotiate about it with his aunt Cemile. In her apartment in Ayazpaşa (chap. 5 Another home) he met her widowed brother Muhtar Laçin, a member of parliament from Manisa, and his daughter, the literature student Nazlı, with whom he spoke about the barriers to women's emancipation and their view, "[M] an [could] break this limit", he likes. In one of the letters he writes to her from Eastern Turkey (Chapter 7 Before the Departure), he makes her a marriage proposal (Chapter 10 A Letter from the East), to which she agrees after a brief inventory, as her modern parents are against arranged marriages and therefore she has to decide on her own: “I want to have bright, happy people around me! And he's one of those. That's why I believe that he can offer me the life I want. ”Despite her consent, Ömer's uncle Cüneyt officially asked Muhtar in his apartment in the Ankara district of Yenişehir for Nazlıs hand (Chapter 13, asking for the hand ). During this ceremony, the groom becomes aware of his social future and feels uncomfortable in the situation. Nazlı does not escape this mood and she is increasingly concerned about his dissatisfaction with bourgeois life and his indecision to marry (chap. 41 A Daughter of the Republic). After completing his project, she asked him several times during his stay in Ankara, but he tried to put her correct perceptions into perspective and protested that he loved her (Chapter 42 In the House of the Member of Parliament, Chapter 47 Weariness, Chapter 49 Family, Morals etc. .).
However, he sees the frightening consequences of the irrepressible ambition at a festival for the building contractors and engineers who have become rich in railway construction (Chapter 34, The Banquet). He feels out of place in the circle of the successful with their master and slave mentality. To be recognized in this society, he would have to carry out new projects to get even richer. And his brooding would be an obstacle: “Think! Moral! What is that good for? ”The argument with the drunk young engineers Salih and Enver, whom he participated and who accuse him of having exploited them (Chapter 38, The Last Evening), illuminates this conflict between profit and morality.
The indecision in the continuation of his career plan continues after the conclusion of his project in Ankara (Chapter 47 Weariness). He lives in a hotel and thinks about how to spend his day. His visits to Nazlı and her father, who is dissatisfied with him, are burdened by frequent quarrels about the wedding preparations. She notices that their relationship is becoming more and more of a problem for him, asks what should become of them, because she feels that he despises her because she wants to lead a bourgeois life and not an experience of conquest, and she criticizes his selfishness (chap. 49 family, morals etc.). He postpones the wedding date in April when he returns to Kemah (Chapter 51 The Journey) until next autumn, allegedly because there are difficulties in selling the construction vehicles and machines.
He lives in the old manor house with Hacı's family in Alp (Chapter 54 Time and Real People). He likes the country life, he buys the property and is therefore a large landowner. Here he hopes to forget the creeping and hypocrisy of the townspeople and to find himself. He separates from Nazlı. In the third part, which takes place in 1970, Refik's son tells that Ömer lives in Kemah and is married.
Muhittin - the poet
In his negative assessment of family and social constraints, Muhittin, like Ömer, wants to stand out from other people and demonstrate his intelligence. He feels called to demonstrate this in the field of poetry. His volume of poetry »Timeless. Regen «has not yet reviewed any magazine, and if he has not become a good poet in the three years up to the age of 30, he will think of killing himself. He presented his ideas at the beginning of 1937 in a coffee house on the landing stage of Beşiktaş Refik and Perihan (Chapter 11 A Sunday in Beşiktaş). They chat, u. a. about Ömer's marriage, and he sees poetry as incompatible with family. Accordingly, Muhittin thinks when Muhtar (chap. 15 The poet engineer at the engagement) puts the rings on the fiancé: "No, I cannot be like her!"
He prefers to be one of the outsiders who have a hatred in them. He lives with his mother in Beşiktaş, has only regular female relations with prostitutes, worked as an engineer, writes Sunday his poems and often meets with two literature interested cadets from the military school in Yıldız to them, for example, about the poet Tevfik Fikret and Yahya Kemal to speak (chap. 21 A pub in Beşiktaş).
At the end of May 1938 the disappointed poet's life took a turn (chapter 31, An Awakening). In a pub in Beyoğlu he meets an acquaintance of his father's, the literature teacher Mahir Atayli. The latter tells him that he has read his talented, unhappy poems based on European models such as Baudelaire , that he lacks an ideal, his awareness as a Turk. Muhittin distances itself from the first pan-Turkism , but Atayli want to convert him to a Turkish national consciousness: The voice of the heart and emotion is more important than the mind. He invites him to work on the Ötüken magazine. Three days later, the poet discussed the dispute with France over Hatay with the editorial team . He recognizes that new enemy images are being presented to him: French, Jews and Freemasons , Albanians , Circassians , Kurds , and communists appear to Altaylı as dangerous people who are infiltrating the state. To Muhittin this seems too simplified, but he wants to get out of the previous circles of reflection on his role as a poet of pessimism and also out of lonely, arrogant thinking. He hopes to end his dissatisfaction with a new goal and to lead a fulfilled life by following not European rationales but the voice of the heart and becoming a nationalist (chap. 33 The Voice of the Heart). Although he is not yet convinced of the movement, he would like to believe in it and agrees to write an article about Professor Gıyasettin Kağan's racist idea that the skull shape reveals Turkishism (Chapter 46 On Nationalists). He also writes political didactic poems for the magazine Ötüken.
He plans to found a new Pan-Turkish newspaper called Altınışık, Golden Light, which will make him independent from Mahir Altaylı (chap. 53 Together with the young people) and gets caught between the fronts of the various groups when he tries to Gıyasettin Kağan to work on a visit to his house in Üskpdar (Chapter 59 Collapse?). The conversation is unfavorable and he is adopted. He discovers that he is being instrumentalized by Mahir and that he has come to an understanding with the professor despite their argument about the theory of descent , and suspects an intrigue. In a suicide note to Refik, he writes that he wants to kill himself. In the third part you learn that Muhittin has become a Conservative MP.
third part
The grandchildren
The third part takes place on a day in December 1970. It is told from the perspective of Cevdet's grandson, the almost 30-year-old Ahmet, who lives in the attic of the apartment house that has replaced Cevdet's family residence (Chapter 2 The Apartment House in Nişantaşi).
Cevdet and Nigân's family has grown over the past 31 years. With the exception of Ahmet, all of them live in civil affluence. Osman's son Cemil lives on the first floor of the new house with his wife Mine and their children Cevdet and Kaya. After Refik's payment, he runs the business together with his father and takes on more and more of his duties. His sister Lâle and her husband Necdet come to visit in Chapter 6 (Chapter 6 The Food). Her son Tamer has just finished military service and her daughter Füsun is studying philology in France. The sad occasion for the family reunion and dinner at Cemil is to say goodbye to Nigân, who dies in the evening. She has been suffering from arteriosclerosis for some time , often no longer recognizes the people around her and is cared for by a nurse.
Refik and Perihan's family
Ahmet is the child Perihan is pregnant with at the end of the second part. His parents split up after Refik sold his company shares and ran a publishing house without success. When he comes home drunk again after the financial ruin and calls out to his wife in dissatisfaction that something must be done, Perihan leaves him. Refik lived in a room on his mother's floor for ten years until his death and reads books. While Ahmet sympathizes with his maladjusted and unhappy father and, like him, criticizes the petty-bourgeois milieu, his sister Melek, who is three years older and married to the lawyer Ferit, has contact with his mother, who married the lawyer Cenap Sorar after the divorce. In contrast to father and son, both are apolitical and are more interested in social conversations such as going to the movies and restaurants as well as conversing with friends (Chapter 3, The Sister).
Ahmet - the painter
This information is built into the narration of the daily routine of the painter Ahmet. Since he returned from his painting studies in Paris four years ago, he has lived in the two-room attic apartment (Chapter 1 A day begins) that he inherited with his sister and is looked after in his grandmother's household. Since board and lodging are secured in this way, he can finance his modest needs by occasionally selling one of his realistic-style pictures, as well as French and drawing lessons , based on Goya's example. On this day he checks several times after his sick grandmother, meets Ömer's family there, who invite him to dinner at Cemil's, and receives a visit from his friend Hasan (Chap. 4 A Friend) and his girlfriend İlknur, a doctoral student in art history.
Hasan is a member of the Labor Party , while Ahmet describes himself as an independent socialist. They discuss revolution and art, and Hasan criticizes that one cannot make a revolution with Ahmet's pictures. He tries to get him to work on the design of their political magazine and Ahmet agrees. This conversation unsettles the painter. He wonders whether his works are just replicas of European art or say something new.
Ahmet continues these reflections with İlknur in his apartment (Chapter 7 Together). She lives in Teşvikiye with her parents, who refuse her daughter's relationship with the artist, which is why Ahmet always picks her up in front of the house or brings her back there (Chapter 5, The Telephone). İlknur is also still in the orientation phase and is dissatisfied with her working conditions at the university: She has still not got an assistant position and is thinking of writing a dissertation in Austria.
With the help of writings found in Refik's room, his diary and the published village project, as well as Muhittin's collection of poems, the two try to get an idea of the people and their ideas about life (Chapter 8, The Old Diary). For them these are testimonies to an ancient time: utopias . Ahmet hopes to receive suggestions for his grandfather portrait, but now sees that he has to proceed differently than Refik: his way of grasping life is that of the artist who creatively processes the outside world in his room. These ideas are too self-centered for his girlfriend, and Ahmet is also not sure about the significance of his pictures for other people. İlknur confirms his doubts that pictures can fulfill the function mentioned by Hasan (Chapter 9 Life - Art). But it defends art as a medium of its own. “The openly expressed knowledge is different from what is communicated through art.” Art does not have to be everything for him and he shouldn't think too much of himself and constantly doubt his convictions. But he sees himself as wavering: in the center and without roots (chap. 10 praise for the flow of time).
analysis
The family history in a historical context
The novel is framed by two politically troubled times (see History of the Republic of Turkey ): the reform movement of the Young Turks in the final phase of the Ottoman Empire on the one hand (first part) and the unstable democracy of the 60s and 70s under the influence of the military with the changing majorities on the other hand.
The political background of the beginning of the novel is the development of the country between oriental tradition and European-oriented progress. B. Cevdets brother Nusret and his friend Fuat about the need for reform triggered by the assassination attempt on the absolutist ruling sultan Abdülhamid in 1905. Fuat, who sympathized with the Young Turks, did not return to Istanbul from Saloniki until 1908, when the rebellion of the Young Turks forced the ruler to withdraw the dissolution of parliament .
In the third part, as the retired 75-year-old Colonel Ziya prophesies, the end of Prime Minister Demirel's government is heralded by pressure from the military. Hasan's political activities and Muhittin's activities as a Conservative MP point to this time of lack of political stability and the actions of left and right-wing extremist groups. Ahmet's interest in the revolutionaries and reformers in his family (Nusret, Refik) and his willingness to work on his friend's magazine also reflect the atmosphere of political engagement among the students.
The main part includes the 10th anniversary of the proclamation of the republic on October 29, 1923 by Ataturk and the death of the president on November 10, 1938 in the Muhtar-Nazlı-Ömer-Refik action in Ankara. The conflict with France over Hatay in 1936 is discussed in connection with Muhittin's connection to the movement of Turkish nationalism.
Literary classification and narrative form
Cevdet and his sons is, similar to Pamuk's second work Das Stille Haus , a three-generation social novel based on the example of Thomas Manns Buddenbrooks mentioned by the author in the afterword, with an emphasis on the family's bourgeois home. He has expanded this concept to include the urban-rural contrast from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina : St. Petersburg, Moscow, scenes from the village become a model for Istanbul, Ankara, Kemah.
In contrast to the later works, the history of the 20th Jhs. narrated chronologically, alternately from the perspectives of the protagonists Cevdet, Nigân, Osman, Refik, Perihan, Ömer, Nazlı, Muhtar, Muhittin and Ayşe, while in the novels Das Stille Haus und Schnee , for example, the past is limited to a geographical location in retrospectives modern action is inserted.
In the debut, the author designed central themes that were taken up in different ways in later works:
Two lives
The search for the meaning of life, the central theme of the novel The New Life , is given as a guideline in Pamuk's debut: Business success through social adaptation or singular appearance are the poles of many discussions. Representative of the first view is Cevdet and, in variation, his son Osman. The question of what life is, in the opinion of the businessman, is only posed by “bookworms and lost people”, while he “just lives”. These words could be understood as a prophecy for the identity crises of his son Refik and his friends. As he listens to their conversation, he advises them: “[A] good job and a good wife. [...] that's what matters in life. "
On the other hand, the three friends already set out their goals as students: ambition, wealth, fame as a poet. You don't want to be like the others. For example, Ömer (Chapter 16 Ambitious and Engaged) is afraid of losing his ambition to become a family man and to be content with the daily monotony. Like his two friends, he suffers from the monotony of the processes, the family and social conversations and festive rituals and wishes to get away from the "whole home and hearth and holiday atmosphere". This bond also becomes clear to him during his visit to his future father-in-law: Although everyone emphasizes the progressive era and he has already reached an agreement with Nazlı, the negotiating role of the parents is formally adhered to, as is the case with arranged marriages: His uncle Cüneyt addresses the issue of marriage, emphasizes the choice of modern young people and asks Muhtar for his consent. At the engagement party at the beginning of spring in Istanbul, Ömer is afraid of "losing his ambition to become a family man and to be content with the daily monotony."
On the other hand, he does not feel comfortable in the company of the successful even at a dinner to which the MP and landowner Kerim Naci has invited building contractors and engineers who have become rich in railway construction (Chapter 34, The Banquet), because he is different “from them . I will never become like them either! ”[…]“ Masters and slaves ”. To be recognized, he would have to make more money. And to do this he would have to leave the brooding: “Think! Moral! What's that good for? ”For a long time he is not at peace with himself and doesn't know whether to start new projects in order to earn even more money. Eventually he breaks out of these constraints and lives in seclusion as a large landowner in the country.
Refik only becomes aware of his fundamental problem in his new role as a father: He doesn't know “what [he] should do with a life”: “I have to give my life a meaning! [...] It just can't go on like this. ”He“ would like to read and think intensively ”, but his extended family and his job prevent him from doing so. He tells his friend Muhittin (Chap. 21 A pub in Beşiktaş) about his dissatisfaction with bourgeois life: “My life has derailed for me.” For the poet, compared to his own problems, these are worries about prosperity: “He wants an intense one Live life without paying the price! ”Refik finally fails both as a village reformer and as a people's educator through enlightening literature and withdraws into his private library.
Muhittin strongly criticizes the double life of Refik and Ömer, but he too has to earn his living by working as an engineer. He tries to realize himself first as a poet, then as a nationalist writer. The reason for his change is the desire to get out of his lonely ruminations about his elitist position as a poet. He would like to replace his pessimistic assessment of his own people, which results from permanent comparison with European progress, with a positive image. He describes this awareness of the roots and the value of traditions as the voice of the heart, which he contrasts with the idea of reason. Muhittin goes this way and becomes a Conservative MP.
The friends are increasingly developing in different directions. Their last encounter is marked by mutual reproaches and settlements (Chapter 57 The Jellyfish) and Muhittin never wants to meet with them again. Ömer criticizes his pan-Turkish poems, while the nationalist mocks the former conqueror who has withdrawn to the country and is afraid of getting married because he can no longer despise families. Above all, it separates the different assessments of Turkey, its traditions and cultural independence and thus the role of the European Enlightenment.
Tradition and progress
A theme of many Pamuk novels (e.g. Snow , The Silent House , The New Life , The Museum of Remembrance ) is developed in Cevdet and his sons using the example of a family against the historical background of the development of Turkey in the 20th century: The tension between tradition and European influences is reflected in many conversations. When Osman and Refik and their wives visit Sait Nedim, the Paşa's son and merchant, he talks about his annual trips to Europe and the question of why the Turks are so different from the Europeans (Chapter 20 Why are we like that?).
In Kemah, the German engineer Von Rudolph compares his situation with the Ömers and Refiks and tells them about his many years of experience (chapter 28 on pastimes). He himself no longer wants to return to the Germany ruled by Hitler , but after ten years of engineering work in Turkey he cannot imagine settling down because his soul has not got used to the country, and so he emigrates to America. He quotes Holderlin: "Like a splendid despot, the oriental part of the sky with its power and its brilliance throws its inhabitants to the ground, and before man has learned to walk he has to kneel, before he has learned to speak he has to pray!" and explains “Once the devil has got into you and lit the little light of your understanding, then you can do what you want, you are and remain a stranger here. [...] The soul lives in constant conflict with the world around it. Either you change the world then, or you remain an outsider in it! ”Basically, this intermediate position also applies to friends who are dissatisfied with themselves and with society.
Above all, Refik deals again and again with the aspect of his country's readiness for reform and the necessary prerequisites. In Ankara, he discussed the reform movement and the sloppiness with Muhtar (Chapter 43, The State). In Muhtar's opinion, things cannot be done without coercion and state orders. Refik doesn't want progress with the whip, nothing good will come of it. But he too doubts the voluntary nature and believes that nothing will change without pressure. But he pleads for the Enlightenment: “How can one bring the light of reason by beating the people? If we want reason to shine as bright as day in this country, then we want it for the people, don't we? ”On the other hand, he fears that people will not choose the sensible people who will be of use to them, but those who will help them flatter and make promises. To prevent this, rules would have to be drawn up: Religion must not be misused for political purposes. The MPs should have studied. The people must be educated to choose sensible people. For Muhtar, on the other hand, only economic progress is important, not intellectual progress, which in his opinion is rejected by the people.
In the third part, when Ahmet and his girlfriend leaf through his father's writings, he discovers that the diaries are written in Arabic script from right to left, but start on the left in the European manner. This symbolizes Refik's position.
Life - art.
Another focus (as in Schnee , Das Stille Haus , Das neue Leben ) is the question of how reality is depicted in art and its effect on the audience.
In the third part, the socialist Hasan discusses revolution and art with the painter Ahmet and complains that his pictures have no political message and do not call for action. This judgment of the friend unsettles the painter. He reflects on the reception of his pictures, on which he paints people from different strata of his present in the manner of Goya, and reflects on whether his works are only replicas of European art or something new.
When Ahmet tries to use Refik's writings, his diary and the published village project as well as Muhittin's book of poems to get an idea of the people and their ideas about life (Chapter 8, The Old Diary), he is disappointed with the content. He hoped to receive suggestions and now sees that he has to go a different path than his father, “in order to grasp life. And indeed [he] has to fantasize and freak out and create [his] art through work and work again ”. To grasp "the deepest truth", he doesn't even have to leave his room. "And everything that is out there, the whole confused flowing life, history, the whole world, everything is only there for [his] pictures". His girlfriend comments that this is "a very self-centered theory". But Ahmet is also not sure whether his pictures are necessary. Correspondingly, they characterize the problems of Refik and his friends, which seem alien to them, but also their own with quotes from Russian literature that are sometimes ironically and sometimes seriously presented in dialogue: “What should one do with one's life […] What is the meaning of life? […] Today people do not ask about the meaning of life, but about the salvation of the fatherland. ”To İlknur he explains his doubts about the possibilities of art and his dissatisfaction with the pictures by offering Hasan his help for political actions because he thinks that his pictures cannot fulfill this function (Chapter 9 Life - Art). Because, according to his theory, the images convey knowledge, but he doesn't know whether it is the right thing at a time when people are being killed everywhere. She defends art and advises him against his self-doubts and over-reflections. “The openly expressed knowledge is different from what is communicated through art.” Art does not have to be everything for him and replace political activity. However, he sees himself as wavering: in the center and without roots (chap. 10 A praise for the flow of time).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Orhan Pamuk: Cevdet and his sons . Translation into German by Gerhard Meier. Hanser, Munich 2011, p. 48. ISBN 978-3-446-23639-4 . This edition is quoted.
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- ↑ Pamuk, p. 648.