Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Abstract

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (b. 1901–d. 1962) was a Turkish novelist, poet, critic, and historian of literature. He is considered to be one of the leading figures in modernist Turkish literature, writing five novels; sixteen stories; and many essays, letters, and diaries that constitute a rich resource for understanding the last century of the Ottoman Empire and the Early Republican Era. He belonged to the first generation of teachers educated in the Republican period. Although he served as a deputy of the Republican People’s Party in the Grand National Assembly between 1943 and 1946, he mainly focused on his literary studies and worked as a professor of Turkish literature in Istanbul University until he died in 1962. His two novels Huzur and Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü are considered among the best novels written in Turkish. He was heavily influenced by Turkish poet and novelist Yahya Kemal Beyatlı as well as French poet Paul Valéry. He considered himself an outsider who rejected binary identifications of modernist versus traditionalist in Turkey’s intellectual life. As a result, he bemoaned the fact that he was ignored by his contemporaries. He only began to be embraced by the Turkish intelligentsia a decade after his death in the 1970s when Turkey was increasingly struggling with the dilemmas of modernization and the inevitable domestic conflicts that derived from it. While his critique of modernity was considered as a criticism toward the modernization endeavor of the Republican period, he was a proponent of many aspects of the revolution except for the language reform. His reconciliation of the supposedly contrasting themes like the Ottoman past versus modern Turkey, with the help of allegorical narratives, highlighted the duality of the Turkish modernization and made him a pioneer in the Turkish literature. His influence can be seen in many prominent Turkish authors including Oğuz Atay and Orhan Pamuk.