مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Between East and the West Two Ambivalent Figures: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Oğuz Atay

Abstract :

This article explores the question of how two highly controversial writers of Turkish literature approach the rupture between the past and the present, or more precisely, between tradition and modernity. Atay and Tanpınar brought a new perspective to Turkish literature by questioning and overcoming the usual approaches to the East-West issue. What distinguishes them in the Turkish literary tradition is the awareness that the rupture between the past and the present creates an unbridgeable gap and the way they handle the symptoms of this gap at times with sorrow, at times with irony, transforming it into the resource that their literary ingenuity draws upon. They do not aim to move beyond the void which is a continuous source of anxiety. They are aware of the impossibility of going back to tradition. They also reject the superficiality and lack of identity brought on by identifying without hesitation with the modern. That is precisely why they transform their ambivalence into a new consistency, suggesting another form of confrontation. The East-West divide is not a problem to be resolved in their novels. Formerly a matter to be overcome through the idea of synthesis, this issue becomes the power that gives their literature a genuine voice. In the process of the article preparation, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Oğuz Atay’s treatment of the relationship between the East and the West was thoroughly researched and their approaches to the concepts of identity and civilization were determined. Following this, the similarities and differences between the two authors’ conceptions of identity and civilization are presented in this article.