DisOrientations: German-Turkish Cultural Contact in Translation, 1811–1946 by Kristin Dickinson

Abstract

Reviewed by: DisOrientations: German-Turkish Cultural Contact in Translation, 1811–1946 by Kristin Dickinson Berna Gueneli DisOrientations: German-Turkish Cultural Contact in Translation, 1811–1946. By Kristin Dickinson. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021. Pp. vii-xi + 257. Cloth $99.95. ISBN 978-0-271-08984-3. Kristin Dickinson's first book DisOrientations looks at the longue durée of Turkish-German interrelations by focusing primarily on (Ottoman) Turkish and German literature and translations, while at the same time eloquently juxtaposing and tracing connections between a dizzying array of texts and authors linked to multiple geographies and temporalities. Analyzing in particular (Ottoman) Turkish literature and translations to and from European languages (French and German) in the period from 1811 to 1949, Dickinson elegantly exposes the disorienting and destabilizing processes involved in such intellectual and literary endeavors. That is, on the one hand, these processes distort ideas of national "originality" or "authenticity," and on the other, they connect previously separately conceived entities such as the "West" / "Germany" or the "East" / "Turkey" (e.g., 8, 16, 26, 29, 71). Her book, consisting of six chapters, an introduction, and an epilogue, achieves this by moving back and forth, in particular between Germany and Turkey over a period of the past three centuries. In the process, it provides detailed readings, at times various versions of Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem's The Carriage Affaire (1896), Goethe's West East Divan (1819) and Werther (1774), Ahmet Hikmet Müftüoglu's "My Nephew" (1899), Halide Edip Adivar's The New Turan (1911), Sabahattin Ali's "The Comprehensive Germanistan Travelogue" (1929), Madonna in a Fur Coat (1943), and others. While uncovering the history and intricacies of the multidirectional literary traditions and translations in Ottoman Turkish literature and culture, Dickinson's approach reveals intriguing insights into the art and meaning of translation (e.g., 88, 129), world literature/Weltliteratur (e.g., 29ff., 81, 149, 166) and the creation of German Turkology (e.g., 92ff). In the process, she engages with various contemporaneous thinkers, such as Friedrich Schlegel (41), Johann Gottfried Herder (12, 40, [End Page 377] 75) and Friedrich Hölderlin (12), Orientalists like Friedrich von Diez (45ff), authors like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (37ff, 51ff, 64ff) and Heinrich von Kleist (167ff), Turkologists such as Georg Jacob, Erika Glassen and Jens Peter Laut (193ff.), as well as contemporary Germanists such as Todd Kontje and Venkat Mani (23–24, 41). The period primarily under inquiry in the book is the modernization period of the Ottoman Empire and later the Republic of Turkey, in which (Ottoman) Turkish reformers were intending to orient themselves and their country away from the East (Perso-Arabic literatures and cultures) toward the West/Europe (e.g., French and German literatures and cultures), while at the same time trying to locate and highlight a so-called Turkish "national-cultural identity" (81). These (Ottoman) Turkish reformers and intellectuals turned "to European literature as a source of inspiration" (69, 167) while they also "sought to adopt certain innovations from Europe in the realms of technology, military, [and] bureaucracy" (69). In the literary and other realms, this created a sense of "belatedness" (69) for the (Ottoman) Turks, a sense of lagging behind their European role models. Dickinson suggests that the quest for a national character, or literature, seems to mimic, in particular, the colonial and orientalist aspirations of German/European scholars of the nineteenth century, despite the Ottoman Empire never being colonized (70). Dickinson argues further that this Westernization/Europeanization enterprise was at odds with the actual contemporary literary texts and translations she analyzes. While the (Ottoman) Turkish Modernization/Westernization project—like much of Orientalist scholarship in Europe—assumes an origination or fixed point that one can orient oneself to, or start from, the actual (Ottoman) Turkish literary texts as well as their translations reveal themselves as multidirectional in nature and rather disorienting and "messy," instead of clear-cut and fixed (e.g., 167, 199). In the satirical short story "My Nephew," for example, Dickinson uncovers a criticism of over-Westernization and, in general, anxieties about the Ottoman Empire's larger Westernization project (90). Goethe's West East Divan, another example Dickinson discusses, shows the minute complexities and transfers...