EZRA POUND AND A. H. TANPINAR: TWO MODES OF AUTHENTICITY IN MODERNIST WORLD LITERATURE

Abstract

This study is based on the premise that modernist literature, presented as an essentially Western current in the established narratives of literary history, is global in nature, and that there are works all around the world that fall within its scope. This premise rests on the fact that the condition called modernity itself is a global phenomenon. Not only colonialism and imperialism, but also the projects of modernization and Westernization witnessed in different geographies made modernity extend over the entire globe. This article argues that the formal and technical novelties distinguishing modernist literature from what preceded it intend to represent and respond to new subjective and social experiences caused by modernity. In this context, Ezra Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro” and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s novel A Mind at Peace (Huzur) are examined, and their formal and technical aspects are discussed with regard to a common experience of modernity. This experience bearing different forms and contents in different places is identified as fragmentation, loss of the sense of totality, alienation, and the ensuing desire for authenticity. It is demonstrated that the notion of the image in Pound’s poem and the method of dream aesthetics in Tanpınar’s novel are two literary inventions addressing that common experience of fragmentation and the quest for authenticity. This study also identifies the distinct traits of the two modes of authenticity imagined by Pound and Tanpınar.