Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 12:17 am
by Can Baysan
Konuyu uzatırdım, elbet söyleyecek sözümüüz var fakat iki cümleyle yetineceğim...
-Birincisi; Dink'in adliye kapısında linç edilmesi tezgahında ordu da pay sahibiydi iddiasına... Ordu hiçbir zaman kendi görev alanına yapılan müdahaleler dışında kişilerle uğraşmamıştır, yüzgöz olmamıştır.
-İkincisi; Şemdinli'deki savcı meselesi... Belli ki bunu yazan Sayın Burak Sağlam, sözkonusu savcının gerek ideolojik köken, gerek özel ilişkiler bakımından hangi çevrelerle münasebet içinde olduğunu o sıralar basından takip edememiş. O günün Kara Kuvvetleri Komutanı Sayın Büyükanıt'a kurulmak istenen alçak komplonun arkasında olanların ipliği pazara çıkmıştı gazetelerde; Savcı Sarıkaya olayını da bu bağlamda değerlendirmek lazımdır.
Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:45 am
by Mehmet Daskiran
Aslinda bu konuya daha fazla yazmak istemiyordum ama asagidaki youtube linkindeki videoyu izledikten sonra bazi konulardaki fikirlerim degisir gibi oldu. Izlemeyenler icin cevirmenin agzindan;
Translating the works of orhan pamuk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP3M864s ... ed&search=
Videonun sonunda kadinin soylediklerine dikkat edin, cevirileri yaparken orhan pamuga yaptigi ceviri konusunda fazla danisma geregi duymamis (rahatsiz etmek istememis). Orhan pamugun "Ingilizce" ikinci dili oldugundan buna gerek duymamis, o zaten begenmezse mudahale ederdi gibisinden, ceviriyi bitirdikten sonra ceviri uzerinde yaptiklari gorusmelerin de nasil gectigini az cok tahmin edebiliyorum orhan pamugun ingilizce seviyesini az cok bildigimizden. bence kadinin Turkce seviyesini bir arastirmak lazim aslinda.
Orhan Pamugun kitaplarindan birisine basladim ama dili hosuma gitmediginden devam etmedim. Kadinin videonun girisinde okudugu betimlemelere bakilirsa yanlis yapmisim, Ingilizce cevirisini bulup okumaliymisim ve Nobel'i de saniyorum ortadan ikiye bolup yarisini bu kadina vermeliler.
Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 1:22 pm
by Murat Biricik
The Globe and Mail den alıntı. Okumanızı hararetle tavsiye ederim.
Pamuk: prophet or poseur?
CLAIRE BERLINSKI
December 22, 2007
OTHER COLORS Essays and a Story By Orhan Pamuk Translated by Maureen Freely
The novels of Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's most celebrated and controversial man of letters, have been translated into some 20 languages. His novels Snow and My Name is Red are widely considered world-class achievements. The themes of Pamuk's oeuvre include the conflict between the East and the West, the tension between Islam and modernity, and the intense melancholia of his native Istanbul. Admirers find his style complex, multilayered and allegorical; detractors find him faddish and incomprehensible.
On Sept. 11, 2001, writers treating the themes of East contra West and Islam contra modernity hit the literary jackpot. Pamuk - Eastern enough to write novels about Ottoman calligraphers and Islamic radicals, Western enough to write them in a postmodern, magic-realist style - became the darling of the Western literary establishment, serially winning the most prestigious and lucrative literary awards in the Western world: the IMPAC Dublin Award, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Prix Médicis étranger, the Premio Grinzane Cavour.
Then, in 2005, Pamuk remarked to a Swiss weekly newsmagazine that "thirty thousand Kurds, and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody dares to talk about it." By "these lands" he meant Turkey. By "nobody," it is not quite clear what he meant; as far as I can tell - and I live in Turkey myself - nobody here will stop talking about it. But the sentiment in Turkey, generally speaking, is that the Armenians had it coming, and quite a few more Kurds want killing.
Pamuk seemed to be suggesting otherwise. The Turkish government brought criminal charges against him under the infamous Article 301, which forbids citizens from insulting Turkishness. Pamuk was in one stroke elevated from symbolist writer to symbol. The European Union's Enlargement Commissioner called Pamuk's case a "litmus test" of Turkey's commitment to European values; writers around the world rightly denounced the charges as an outrage against free expression. In the end, the case was dropped on a technicality.
Facing death threats at home, Pamuk sensibly decamped for New York. But his prosecution, combined with his status as ambassador at large for the westernized Islamic world, functioned like camembert in a mousetrap to the Nobel committee, which in 2006 awarded him the Nobel Prize for literature. Pamuk is a talented writer, but no one in his right mind believes this was an award based on literary merit.
Pamuk has for the past three decades been filling his notebooks with sketches, half-finished short stories, thoughts about literature and reflections on the travails of life as a writer and a Turk. He has compiled them, loosely edited, into Other Colors, "a book made of ideas, images and fragments of life that have still not found the way into one of my novels." Although it contains previously published works, such as his Nobel acceptance speech and the transcripts of various interviews he has granted over the years, it is mostly comprised of non-fiction essays written some years ago but only now seeing the light of day: literary criticism, reminiscences of his boyhood and particularly of his father, reflections on the challenges of quitting smoking, a discussion of his wristwatches, two short meditations on seagulls and their sad fates, ruminations on the pathos of being a Turk and the Turk's endless, resentful fascination with Europe. There are more descriptions of Istanbul in the melancholy vein of his previous memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City.
But this book is about Pamuk himself, particularly the challenges of being a great writer and a severe depressive. The collection has been received with rapture by many critics, who celebrate this offering as a unique window into Pamuk's interior life. Indeed, it is precisely that. Unfortunately, it seems that Pamuk's interior life is largely that of a lugubrious poseur.
"In order to be happy I must have my daily dose of literature," Pamuk gravely introduces himself. "In this way I am no different from the patient who must take a spoon of medicine each day." If you didn't quite get the point, he repeats it again two sentences later: "For me, literature is medicine. Like the medicine that others take by spoon or injection, my daily dose of literature - my daily fix, if you will - must meet certain standards." If he is forced "to go a long stretch without his paper-and-ink cure," he feels "misery setting inside me like cement. My body has difficulty moving, my joints get stiff, my head turns to stone, my perspiration even seems to smell differently."
Is he serious? Yes, he is. For page upon page, Pamuk stresses in these self-enamoured tones that he is a man who really likes to read books. Good ones, too, by famous writers like Dostoyevsky and Borges - not, you know, easy ones. He's different from other Turks, you see. But he's not like the Europeans, either. He's an outsider, eternally apart, rejected by all, accepted by no one (the Nobel committee aside). Life hurts. A seagull croaks.
There is a fleeting moment of insight when he later remarks that he wants "to say a few things about my library, but I don't wish to praise it in the manner of one who proclaims his love of books only to let you know how exceptional he is, and how much more cultured and refined than you." He negates this half-hearted essay at modesty in the very next sentence: "Still, I live in a country that views the non-reader as the norm and the reader as somehow defective, so I cannot but respect the affectations, obsessions and pretensions of the tiny handful who read and build libraries amid the general tedium and boorishness."
Sentiments such as these may make the reader suspect that Pamuk was prosecuted in Turkey not because he spoke the truth about Armenia and the Kurds but because he is a patronizing pest. But let's not quibble: Pamuk needs to read or he will die. That, surely, is the mark of a particularly excellent reader. And he is, moreover, caught between East and West, which makes his affliction all the more acute.
Pamuk lived and wrote in Cihangir, a lovely neighbourhood on the European side of Istanbul. This happens to be where I now live and write. From Cihangir, if your window faces the Bosphorus, on a clear day you can see Asia. So I'm caught between East and West myself, not to mention caught between north and south, and caught, at least twice a day, between daytime and nighttime. (By the way, you would not know it from reading Pamuk, but it is usually a clear day here. Istanbul is a bright, vibrant, cheerful city.) It is physically impossible not to be caught between East and West, actually. We all are. So may I take this opportunity to beg Pamuk, everyone who writes about Pamuk, and indeed, everyone who writes about Istanbul, to retire forever the phrase "caught between East and West"?
Yes, Istanbul is located geographically between Asia and Europe. Yes, Turks tend to be rather aware of this. Turkey, as Pamuk observes - and if you think about it for even a second, it should not come as a surprise - exhibits both Oriental and Occidental qualities. But this "caught between East and West" business - how much more literary mileage does he plan to get out of it? First time: a fair observation. Thousandth time: 999 times too many. (Next up: New York is a melting pot; Paris is the City of Lights; there's nothing in Texas but steers and queers.)
Even the hamburgers of his youth were, for Pamuk, "like so much else in Istanbul, a synthesis of East and West." So were the frankfurters, in fact. And like everything in Istanbul, they made him feel gloomy. "I would look at myself standing there, eating my hamburger and drinking my ayran, and see that I was not handsome, and I would feel alone and guilty and lost in the city's great crowds."
For this is his ultimate subject: his very sad mood. Forget for a moment the literary accolades and imagine what it would be like to go on a date with this melancholy egomaniac. He shows up at the café wearing a black turtleneck, brandishing his annotated copy of Notes from Underground, making sure the title faces out. Within minutes he tells you that, unlike everyone else in Turkey, he reads. "Books are what keep me going," he says.
"Really? I like books too," you say politely.
"Let me explain what I feel on a day when I've not written well, am unable to lose myself in a book," he adds gravely. "First, the world changes before my eyes; it becomes unbearable, abominable."
"Oh," you say. "That sounds very painful."
"I feel as if there is no line between life and death," he continues. "It's worse than depression. I want to disappear. I don't care if I live or die. Or if the world comes to an end, even. In fact, if it ended right this minute, so much the better."
It is a bright spring day in Istanbul. He tells you that he hates the springtime.
Pamuk is a creature of Istanbul's haute bourgeoisie, a class of Turks much given to examining their own misery and alienation and finding them intensely significant, much in the way the 19th-century romantics admired their own tuberculosis. The Turkish elite is, as Pamuk is painfully aware, a parvenu class.
What seems to escape him is that in stressing how much he reads and the quality of his taste, he does not display his distance from the social cohort from which he emerged. Rather, he marks himself as its caricature. Young women from this social class dye their hair purple and weep a lot. The older women complain of migraines. The young men are sent by their parents to psychiatrists who trained in the United States; they wear black trench coats, rarely shave and tell everyone who will listen that no one in Turkey understands them.
"Time passes," Pamuk scribbles in his notebook. "There's nothing. It's already nighttime. Doom and defeat. ... I am hopelessly miserable. ... I could find nothing in these books that remotely resembled my mounting misery." I suppose sentiments like these are not uniquely Turkish; teenagers around the world fill their diaries with this kind of drivel. But usually they read those diaries when they grow up, cringe, then throw them out along with their old Morrissey albums.
Mind you, Pamuk is not all gloom; he is immensely cheered by the thought of his own moral gravity: "A novelist might spend the whole day playing, but at the same time he carries the deepest conviction of being more serious than others." He brightens up when he considers his own accomplishments, too: "Having published seven novels, I can safely say that, even if it takes some effort, I am reliably able to become the author who can write the books of my dreams." Sometimes he works, he tells us, "with the incandescence of a mystic trying to leave his body."
And did he mention that he really, really likes books? - although I do have to wonder, occasionally, just how carefully he is reading them; in his discussion of Nabokov, for example, he describes Humbert Humbert as a man who "searches for timeless beauty with all the innocence of a small child." Beg pardon? Humbert searches for timeless beauty by molesting an innocent small child. There is quite a difference.
There are, here and there, flashes of the gloomy talent for which he is rightly admired. Reading the vignette A Seagull Lies Dying on the Shore, I felt quite bad for the seagull (although I am pleased to report that those same seagulls, which I see from my window, look perfectly healthy).
And there is one excellent section, quite chilling for those of us who live here, about the great earthquake of 1999. Pamuk recalls wondering whether, come the next big quake, the minarets of the Cihangir mosque would fall on his roof. I live next door to that very mosque. I had not thought of that. His comment prompted me to step outside and contemplate those minarets with a certain unease. Discussing the aftermath of the earthquake, Pamuk for a brief moment removes his gaze from the mirror and observes his surroundings with interest and even a hint of irony: "One rumour had it that the earthquake was the work of Kurdish separatist guerrillas, another that it was caused by Americans who were now coming to our aid with a huge military hospital ship. ('How do you suppose they made it here so fast?' the conspiracy theory went.)" Yes, there at last is an honest line; it will certainly sound familiar to anyone living in Turkey these days.
But the rest of the book is the kind of thing you can only publish if you have won a Nobel Prize and feel entirely confident that no matter what you say, everyone will buy it and the critics will be too afraid to point out the obvious: Sometimes it is best to keep your interior life to yourself.
Claire Berlinski is a writer living in Istanbul. She is the author of Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's, Too, and Lion Eyes, a novel set in Paris and Istanbul.
Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 7:46 pm
by Ali Gursel
Murat Biricik wrote:The Globe and Mail den alıntı. Okumanızı hararetle tavsiye ederim.
Claire Berlinski is a writer living in Istanbul. She is the author of Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's, Too, and Lion Eyes, a novel set in Paris and Istanbul.
Muratcıgım ben de sana sunu okumanı hararetle tavsiye edeyim:
Claire Berlinski is a writer living in Istanbul. She is the author of a couple of books that nobody has read and has won nothing for her writing as far as we know.
Nabokov okuyup, romanın kahramanını child molester diye tanımlayan birini fazla ciddiye alma, tabii edebiyet seviyorsan.
Bu makale falso dolu (Pamuk ile ilgili yazılan şeylerin bazıları doğru dahi olsa) ama benim tavsiyem Lolita'yı okuyup buradan çocuk tacizcisi sonucunu çıkaran birini edebiyat konusunda kaale alma. Aşağıda Wikipedia'dan bir alıntı, ha bak, çok ciddi bir edebiyat dergisi, edebiyet eleştirisi kaynağı falan değil, Vikipedi'den bu:
Some critics have accepted Humbert's version of events at face value. In 1959, novelist Robertson Davies excused the narrator entirely, writing that the theme of Lolita is "not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child".
Bunu Robertson Davies'in görüşü doğru diye yazmıyorum, ama Lolita'ya bakıp babaannemin vereceği "vay ahlaksız, kızı taciz etmiş" tepkisini veren biri de bize edebiyat ve edebiyatçılar hakkında akıl vermesin diye yazıyorum.
Thomas Mann'ın Death in Venice hikayesinin kahramanı Gustav von Aschenbach bir salgın zamanı Venedik'te kaldığı otelde kalan 14 yaşında bir erkek çocuğa duyduğu estetik hayranlık sonucu yaşamını yitirir (uzun bir hikayenin çok çok kısa özeti). Thomas Mann her edebiyatsever için gelmiş geçmiş en iyi romancılardan biridir. Ashenbach da onun en trajik kahramanlarından biri.
Bu hanıma sorsan sana muhtemelen Ashenbach oğlancıymış der, muhtemelen rahmetli babaannemin de diyeceği gibi.
Edebiyatseverler aralarında paralleller olan bu iki roman kahramanına bakıp güzelliğe veya gençliğe tutulmanın trajik yönünü yazmış diyebilir, aslında Lolita veya 14lük genç Tadzio aslında gücü kullanan taraf diyebilir, diyebilir de diyebilir. Ama edebiyatı mahalle arasında başkalarının özel hayatlarını didikleyip eleştiren dedikoducular gibi okuyup, Humbert'a child molester diyenler Paris ve Istanbul'da geçen kimsenin okumadığı romanlar yazıp oturur.
Yazardan bir de alıntı vereyim sana, iyice fikir verir:
Front Page: Okay Claire. So introduce us briefly to the menace in Europe.
Berlinksi: In brief: Europeans are lazy, unwilling to fight for anything and willing to surrender to anyone; they are fascinated by decadence; they favor the bureaucracy over the corporation; they are unable to assimilate their immigrants; they no longer have children; they no longer produce much of cultural or scientific significance; they have lost their religious vocation and they no longer hold their lives to be meaningful.
Yine Pamuk konusunda epey derin yazmış, buradaki standardına bakarsan.
Claire'den bir alıntı daha, Pamuk'la ilgili bazı sözlerini daha iyiy anlarsın diye:
John Hawkins: Do you think Americans should regard France as an enemy nation? Why or why not?
Claire Berlinski: Oh no, of course not. An enemy nation? Like North Korea? It's not widely appreciated that we actually receive excellent counter-terrorism cooperation from the French. Their anti-terror officials are brutal as hell and twice as ruthless, too, so this is quite useful to us. No, France is not an ally, precisely, but neither it is an enemy. Ask me again in 75 years, when France will be the first Islamic nuclear power in Europe. Then we may have a real problem on our hands.
75 sene sonra Fransa Avrupa'da ki ilk Müslüman nükleer güç olursa ciddi bir problemimiz olurmuş. Orhan Pamuk hakkında yazan insanın entellektüel düzeyi bu.
Bence boşver, Pamuk'u oku, iyi veya kötü kendi kararını ver ama böyle Amerika'dan eğitimsiz fırlamış, edebiyatı, uluslararası ilşkileri anlayış kapasitesi şu yukarıda örneklediğim kadar olan birinden cidden Pamuk hakkında fikir alma derim.
Ali
Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 12:12 pm
by Murat Kara
Daha once de buraya not dusmustum. Orhan Pamuk ancak icinde bulundugumuz siyasi hava icersinde degerlendirilebilir. Elbette bu durum zamanimiza etki eden butun sanatcilar, bilim adamlari, siyasetciler, vs icin de gecerli.
Tek basina Orhan Pamuk diye bir sahsi degerlendirmek mumkun degil. Bu yola girilirse Claire Berlinski gibi abuk subuk yerlere varmak kolay. Berlinski'nin bazi soylediklerine katilmak mumkun iken, cikardigi sonuclara katilmak zor. Mesela, insanin kendi hakkinda yazmasi elbette garip ve kendini alay konusu yapmasi kolay bu yolla. Ote yandan Pamuk'un saftirikligi artik ayyuka cikmis durumda. Bu durumda "benim tecrubelerimden gencler de ogrensin" mantigi ile hareket ettigini dusunmek mumkun. Ama o yasa gelmis birisinin bu islerin boyle olmadigini ve bu ogretme isinin roman yazarak degil, ders kitabi yazarak yapilmasi gerektigi bilmesi gerekir. Ancak Turkiye'nin carpikliklarindan bir tanesi burada da kendisini gosteriyor. En onemli romancimiz, kendini bir odaya hapsetmis, anti-sosyal ve gercek dunyadan pek de haberi olmayan birisi. Ama bunun boyle olmasi Pamuk'un gunumuzun konjokturu icersindeki yerini azaltmiyor.
Elbette konu Orhan Pamuk'un Nobel standardinda olup olmadigi veya Turkluk yapip yapmadigi veya Kurtlerle ve Ermenilerle ilgili soyledikleri degil. Bu soylediklerini yillardir soyluyor (sonra da basina is acilinca sasiriyor, tirsiyor. Tam saftirik bu adam yahu!)
Konu, bu soylediklerinin su anda icinde bulundugumuz donem icersinde on plana cikariliyor olmasi. Bunun nedenini de daha once tartismistik burada. (Genel hatlariyla tekrar etmek gerekirse: gectigimiz 3 yillik sure icersinde gerceklestirilen asiri sagci kampanyanin bir asamasi idi Pamuk'a karsi yapilan kampanya. Bu kampanyanin kendisi AKP ve diger bazi liberal adimlara verilen yanit idi ancak AKP'nin secim zaferi ve Gul'un CB secilmesi ile husrana donustu sonunda.)
Orhan Pamuk hakkinda cesit cesit sahsi gorus bildirmek mumkun. Ancak Orhan Pamuk'un su andaki konjoktur icersindeki yerini belirlemek sabir isteyen ve tek tek bir cok olayi incelemeyi gerektiren derin bir konu. Bunu saglikli bir sekilde yapabilmek icin ise bu konuda ciddi olmak onkosulu gerekiyor.
