Original resemblance: the function of similarity in Tanpınar’s “Yaz Gecesi”

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines how Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s short story “Yaz Gecesi (A Summer’s Night)” engages in a dialogue based on “resemblance” to James Joyce’s short story, “The Sisters.” In doing so, Tanpınar interrogates the discourses on authenticity and originality that emerged from the cultural politics of the early Turkish Republic. Read alongside Tanpınar’s other literary critical concepts like terkip, his story forges important links to Joyce’s concerns about narrative’s ability to contain cultural continuity while grounding them in and for the Turkish context. Examining Tanpınar’s critical writing on the Turkish novel, particularly the relationship between literary traditions and the concept of originality in the early Republic, this article demonstrates that Tanpınar’s short story is a creative embodiment of his concept of terkip. Through analyzing Tanpınar’s affirmation of the way literature from the past and from the West is integral for readers to interpret and derive meaning from contemporary Turkish literature, “Yaz Gecesi” can be read as a creative theorization of intercultural dialogue and intertextuality in the Turkish literary tradition.