STORIES OF CATASTROPHE IN REFIK HALIT KARAY’S MEMLEKET HIKÂYELERI

Abstract

Refik Halit Karay is considered one of the most important novel and short story writers in the Turkish Literature in the 20th century. He was born on 15 of March 1888 in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman State at that time. He died on 18 of July 1965 after a life lasted for 77 years. He was buried in his birthplace Istanbul in the cemetery of Zincirlikuyu. He wrote and published several works in different fields of literature. He added a great deal of contribution to Turkish literature especially in the republican period. Memleket Hikâyeleri is one of the books of the second stories of Refik Halit Karay. It is the most important and famous short story for the writer in the field of stories. Among other important stories are: the Poor Amina, Peach Gardens, the Big Bull, Wahbi Afandi Doubts, Yellow Honey, The Joke, The Brown Donkey, Neighbor‟s honor, the Deposit, Omar‟s Contest, Once a Year, a Teacher‟s Painting, Strange Gift, Attack, and the Destiny of Angry Aisha which contains about 18 short stories. It is undoubtedly the most interesting book in the field of short stories in Turkish Literature. The first edition of this book published in 1919 while the second edition published in 1947 received a revision by the writer himself. Although the subject of the story changes from one story to another, the book comes in the first place among stories of depression and sorrow. Depression is a state of being unable to exit from the current situation in addition to suffering from difficulties and hence feeling exhausted. Depression has its own concept and its own details. It reflects the dilemma in facing the unsolved problems or impossible to be solved. It has been studied earlier by the writers themselves. Depression, as humane and psychological concept, appears repeatedly in the book Memleket Hikâyeleri by the Turkish writer Refik Halit Karay and analyzes deeply this concept through accurate original expressions. This paper starts with this detailed abstract. After presenting life of the writer Refik Halit Karay and his literary personality as well as his works, there is an emphasis on his work entitled Memleket Hikâyeleri. After the introduction about the concept of depression, the paper studies this concept in Refik Halit Karay‟s Memleket Hikâyeleri