Modern Turkey, Real Time, and Other Functional Fabrications in Tanpınar's <em>The Time Regulation Institute</em>

Abstract

This article is an attempt to examine temporality in Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s The Time Regulation Institute against the background of the historical transformation of indigenous “temporal culture” in the late Ottoman era. While Tanpinar was in many ways a product of that process, in The Time Regulation Institute he draws on Henri Bergson to criticize the Kemalist flattening and standardizing of both time and identity. Instead of the alienated and soulless time of the modern state he offers a composite, more personal time that would allow one to change without losing one’s self in the process. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901–62) is one of the most prominent Turkish literary figures in the twentieth century, and yet outside Turkey his work is still little known. Only a handful of his poems have been made available to readers in English and his most famous novel, Huzur (1949), was first translated to English in 2008. The novel that represents the focus of this article, The Time Regulation Institute (first serialized in 1954), was first translated in to English 2001 but remained virtually unknown to readers of that language. It was only the new Penguin edition that finally garnered attention for the novel. This belated interest in a book, more than half a century after it was Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, A Mind at Peace, trans. Erdag M. Goknar (New York: Archipelago ks, 2008). Translations of Tanpinar’s poems have been included in a few collections and ologies of Turkish literature. For example, see Kemal Silay, ed., An Anthology of Turkish ature (Bloomington: Indiana University Turkish Studies, 1996). Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, The Time Regulation Institute, trans. Ender Gurol (Madison: o-Tatar Press, 2001). For this article I used the twelfth Turkish edition of the novel pubd by Dergah Yayinlari (2008). All translations from the novel are my own. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, The Time Regulation Institute, trans. Alexander Dawe and reen Freely (New York: Penguin, 2013). For some of the reviews in the American press wing the publication of the new edition, see Martin Riker, “A Ramshackle of Modernity: Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar,” New York Times, 3 Jan. 2014, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 379–400 yright © 2015 Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.2.2.08 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.35 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 06:20:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 380 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 2.2 published, is a good opportunity to examine what is clearly one of the main themes of the novel: time, both quotidian and historical. While in the English-speaking world Tanpinar has attracted little attention, in Turkey he has continued to be the subject of countless analyses and critiques. Much of the discussion about Tanpinar revolves around his political orientation. While some critics have characterized him as “progressive” or “modern,” others claimed that he was “conservative” or “reactionary,” and still others contended that he was a “modern conservative” or a “conservative modern.” These insightful studies have offered keys for at least some of the doors opening onto Tanpinar’s world. However, as regards time, most extant studies share a problem that bears directly on their ability to examine Tanpinar’s worldview and values. They tend to use unreflectively the very same terms and concepts used by their object of study, therefore hindering any ability to examine analytically these terms. Almost all the participants in the discussion, including Tanpinar himself, share a particular understanding of history as a universal timeline along which different nations race for progress. The first part of the article historicizes the development of this conceptualization of linear historical time in the late Ottoman period and shows how it was connected with an emphasis on time thrift and productivity on the quotidian level. I argue that in his views, Tanpinar was a product of this process. But he was also its sharpest critic. The second part of the article shows that The Time Regulation Institute exposes “modern time” on both the historical and quotidian levels as an absurd fabrication that flattened and standardized an earlier “temporal culture” that had been much richer, more diverse and ultimately more humane. Drawing on the ideas of Henri Bergson, Tanpinar digs under the linear time of state-imposed modernization, seeking not only an “authentic identity,” as already noted by other scholars, but also an “authentic time,” a temporality that is closer to one’s inner self.