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A Mind at Peace, by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
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A Mind at Peace, originally published in 1949, is a magnum opus, a Turkish Ulysses and a lyrical homage to Istanbul. With an innate awareness of how dueling cultural mentalities can lead to the distress of divided selves, Tanpinar gauges this moment in history by masterfully portraying its register on the layered psyches of his Istanbulite characters. Set on the eve of World War II in the “city of two continents,” this literary feat is a narrative of duality: a historical novel and a love story (of the senses and the mind), language and music, tradition and modernity, East and West—and of the vital juncture where one young man must attempt to bridge all of these worlds at once.
Surviving the childhood trauma of his parents’ untimely deaths in the early skirmishes of World War I, Mümtaz is raised and mentored in Istanbul by his cousin Ihsan and his cosmopolitan family of intellectuals. Having lived through the tumultuous cultural revolutions following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the early Turkish Republic, each is challenged by the difficulties brought about by such rapid social change.
The promise of modernization and progress has given way to crippling anxiety rather than hope for the future. Fragmentation and destabilization seem the only certainties within the new world where they now find themselves. Mümtaz takes refuge in the fading past, immersing himself in literature and music, but when he falls in love with Nuran, a complex woman with demanding relatives, he is forced to confront the challenges of the World at large. Can their love save them from the turbulent times and protect them from disaster, or will inner obsessions, along with powerful social forces seemingly set against them, tear the couple apart?
- Sales Rank: #203933 in Books
- Published on: 2011-02-25
- Released on: 2011-02-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.51" h x 1.29" w x 6.03" l, 1.40 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 451 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Originally published in 1949, Tanpinar's sweeping literary masterpiece is a love story of his native Turkey and of the flesh. As Turkish culture shifts from its traditional roots to a more modernized society in the 1930s, protagonist Mümtaz seeks to preserve the past. After his parents' untimely death, he becomes a devotee of Turkish literature under the tutelage of his cousin and mentor, Ihsan. Mümtaz is like a figure in a novel, confronted by tragedy at a young age, ensuring that its effects would always afflict him and perhaps that is why he chooses to focus on a disappearing past. He soon falls in love with Nuran, an unattainable woman with a complicated background. Mümtaz believes that his love for Nuran will be enough to save them both from the changing times and protect them from disaster. Tanpinar's lyricism and resonant plot will leave U.S. readers wondering why they've had to wait so long to read this exquisite novel. (Oct.)
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Review
Tanpinar (1901-62) was a formative figure in modern Turkish letters, although 50 years after his death, his career in English is just getting off the ground. His monumental A Mind at Peace (1949), which Orhan Pamuk has called “the greatest novel ever written about Istanbul,” found its way into English in 2008 (Archipelago). Set just before World War II, it conjures on a vast scale the world of Istanbul during the early Turkish Republic, a time when modern Western values were abruptly imposed upon a people and a culture unprepared for them. The ramshackle modernity that resulted, in which Ottoman history and tradition were largely written over, became Tanpinar’s lasting subject: the “void,” as he once described it, of a people “suspended between two lives.” — New York Times Book Review
[A] masterpiece. . .[A] honeyed, searching, and melancholy epic. . .The novel is as much about its setting and colors as about the stories and wonderfully eccentric and varied panoply of characters. . .One of the 20th century's notable literary love stories and cultural watersheds. — The Los Angeles Times
The greatest novel ever written about Istanbul. — Orhan Pamuk
Tanpinar′s sweeping literary masterpiece is a love story of his native Turkey and of The flesh…His lyricism and resonant plot will leave U.S. readers wondering why they've had to wait so long to read this exquisite novel. — Publishers Weekly
Every page is full of sharp insights into human nature, delivered with a linguistic confidence that cracks like a whip and warms one from the inside with a glow of recognition—the recognition that no matter how far away we think we might be from one another in time and space, we are all distilled from the very same mixture of passion and compassion, intelligence and foolishness. — Ugur Akinci
A beautifully melodic picture of Istanbul and the Bosphorus during a crossroad of Turkish and world history. We shouldn’t have had to wait this long for such an important work. — Literary Fiction Review
Written by the man who almost single-handedly defined the modern Turkish novel, A Mind At Peace follows a group of westernized, urban intellectuals in 1930s Istanbul as they drift through the city in a permanent state of ennui, seemingly caught between the past and the present, tradition and modernity, the East and the West. — Reza Aslan
His great novel combines the emotional storminess of Dostoevsky with the refined artificiality and cruel psychological analysis of Marcel Proust. — Ha'aretz
About the Author
Ahmet Hamdi Tanipar (1901-1962) was a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, literary historian, member of the Turkish parliament, and professor at Istanbul University. Deeply influenced by Valéry and Bergson, he created a cultural universe in his work, bringing together a European literary voice and the sensibilities of Istanbul cosmopolitanism. His work, notable for its aesthetic complexity and its vivid descriptions of a lost Ottoman world, was rediscovered a decade after his death. He is considered one of the most significant Turkish novelists of the 20th century and is credited as an influence on many Turkish writers, including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. His work has been translated into more than 25 languages.
Translator: Erdag Göknar is an assistant professor of Turkish Studies at Duke University. He is the translator of Orhan Pamuk's historical novel, My Name is Red, which received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003. He is also the recipient of an NEA translation grant for A Mind at Peace.
Most helpful customer reviews
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
A lyrical novel of Istambul
By las cosas
Orhan Pamur speaks of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar as an essential part of his sense of Istambul. Based on his descriptions of Tanpinar in his book Istambul, I was excited to read this translation of Tanpinar's masterpiece.
The physical book is extremely attractive, even sensual. With an old photo on the cover of several rowboats on the Bosphorus you are being introduced to the world within the book's covers. Elegant endpapers, thick off-white paper, and an unusually square shape to the book all present a pleasant, inviting physical object. Archipelago Books, I publisher I'd not encountered before, did an excellent job (though their editor missed a few too many errors).
On opening the book the first thing you notice is the lack of any notes, introduction, or even an index to the various Parts of the book. This is puzzling, and unfortunate. The dust jacket provides a few sentences on the author and this work (in addition to a few sentence plot summary). And even those sentences tell us little. What does it mean to say that this book is "a Turkish Ulysses"? The book deserves a wide readership, beyond the niche of people already familiar with this author. And that readership needs at least some minimal sign-posts to help navigate this dense examination of Istambul's intellectual, philosophical and moral dilemmas at the start of World War II. One method would be an introduction explaining the dynamics of Turkey at that time, and explaining Tanpinar's place in that debate. Another would be to provide a few footnotes, or end notes, explaining certain words or concepts unlikely to be understood by the average English speaking reader. For example, the debate over whether a character is mevlevi or bektashi was completely lost on me. How about you?
The novel starts "(City of Two Continents, August 1939)". And that could also be the one sentence summary of the novel. Turkey and its citizens are about to be plunged into WWII, a Western war that is very on the periphery of its interests, history and consciousness. But what is consuming the characters in this novel is the doppelganger of living in the past and the present, in the East and in the West, in two continents, two realities.
The novel is told using both the first and third person views of the main character, Mumtaz. And even the third person observations are claustrophobic, told from a ground level prospective never far from the immediate observations of Mumtaz, a young writer and intellectual who "does" essentially nothing during the 1939 focus of the book. He thinks, observes, feels. His love for Nuran, his hatred of yet attraction to Suad, the filial love and respect for Ihsan...these are drawn out in long, complex worlds of emotion that slowly built and deepen as the novel progresses.
But the central character in this novel is Turkey, Turkish, Istambul and the Borphorus. What do these things mean to a well educated, not-poor (I'm not sure what "class" these intellectuals belong to...but few have a conventional job) group of largely male intellectuals? The answer is a deep ambivalence. They live in a city of past architectural glory, the capitol of a vast empire. And while they are part of that heritage, they are also drawn to the present, to the Western. This is most often described in descriptions of music. Some of the most lyrical parts of the book describe Turkish classical music, the sound of the ney while a singer intones verses composed for various sultans. And while this is being lyrically described Mumtaz will realize that he is actually thinking of a Beethoven sonata. Quoting a Farsi couplet the discussion will veer to French symbolist poets. But oh the longing, the sorrow, of those couplets:
The days foreshortened, aged men in Kanlica
Conjure memories of past autumns one by one.
By the end of the novel you are left with a deep understanding of the longing felt by Mumtaz, to be his own person, not dragged down by the weight of his history and culture, yet aware that without those things he would be empty. "The vast fallout of two centuries of disintegration and collapse, of being the remnants of an empire and still unable to establish our own norms and idioms."
So why only 4 starts (and actually I would give it a 3.5)? Because of the lamentable translation. My definition of a good translation is one I don't notice. And this fails my test miserably. There is little plot in this novel. It is a closely observed study, and by necessity that means a book that is slowly, closely, read and observed. The lyrical content simply must be accompanied by similar prose or the image is shattered. On every page the reader encounters a variety of translation ticks: the hackneyed phrase, the unnecessarily complex words, the odd spelling, the anti-lyrical and the weird.
Hackneyed: hither and yond, oft times, by and by, by and large, truth be told, kith and kin, hale and hearty, sing a ditty, let the cat out of the bag, a slave of his baser desires.
Big words: in one paragraph we encounter quiddities, haecceities and ideational.
Odd spelling: phantasy and magick [each used many, many times].
Anti-lyrical: "Ihsan's personality was more agreeable than those personae of his preconceptions might have indicated" "exercise her volition to live apart" "the verdure assaulted one's casing of skin."
Weird: "at whiles." Synonym for periodically or at times. And used way too often!
So maybe Tanipar is addicted to archaic spellings, has a huge vocabulary that he throws around, is addicted to hackneyed phrases and the translator is merely following the original. Maybe, but adding all of these quirks together, if the translator has merely followed the original, this book would not be "the greatest novel ever written about Istambul," quoting Orhan Pamur.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
A Mind at Peace
By Patrick Oliver Kelley
This is a novel more in the spirit of a wm Faulkner novel than a Robert Graves piece. Why did I expect more war than personal, romantic intimacy? Frankly, I wonder if the translator has ever been in Turkey for any period of time. Imagery is good, but for me the translation is 'too high brow' maybe I should have tried to read the original Turkish, before turning to the English version because much of the English seems too 'unTurkish.' So much of what is translated seems more an invention of the translator than the intent of the author. I am soldering on reading the book because of the unique subject and unique period it encompasses.
Hope I am not offending anyone, but it's my review
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
A Mind at Peace
By Steven Davis
"What is it that should be done?" This is the central question of A Mind at Peace at both the public and personal levels. The novel is set on the eve of World War II in Istanbul, Turkey. Its protagonist, Mümtaz, is a young, unmarried academic and would-be novelist. He is principally occupied at the moment, however, with caring for his older cousin İhsan who suffers from what appears likely to be a fatal case of pneumonia. İhsan had been Mümtaz's guardian and mentor ever since the latter's parents died as a result of the Greek invasion of Anatolia in 1919--events which Mümtaz recalls at the beginning of the novel.
Mümtaz also reflects ruefully upon his recently broken love affair with Nuran, a divorced woman slightly older than Mümtaz. In the long walks he takes to escape from the sick room, every sight and sound seems to recall the times he spent with Nuran.
After this prologue, the novel shifts back a year or more in time to Mümtaz's first meeting with Nuran. It is a relationship we know is doomed to failure, but not how or why. In the meantime, the two lovers, enraptured with one another, spend many idle hours in all seasons exploring their city--from palaces to bazaars, from waterways to ancient ruins. Eventually Mümtaz even wonders "Do we love each other or the Bosphorus?"
On a par with their passion for Istanbul is the pair's enthusiasm for traditional Turkish music. There are lengthy discussions about it, as well as sessions where Nuran's uncle, a noted vocalist, and his friends perform for guests. (It's a shame that the novel couldn't have included a CD to satisfy readers' inevitable curiosity about the folk music described in such rapturous terms.)
Notwithstanding the love story and travelogue, A Mind at Peace is essentially a novel of ideas. It is August 1939, and the world is obviously on the brink of another great war. The Turks have no reason to expect that they won't be involved, but should they just let the currents of history carry them into another bloodbath? What is the responsibility of the individual, especially of the intellectual, at times like this? After long talks with his cousin, Mümtaz asks himself: "Maybe İhsan does have a point! This society wants ideas and maybe even a struggle out of me. Not romantic posturing! But to achieve this end must I forget about Nuran?"
There is obviously much of Hamlet's "To be, or not to be..." in Mümtaz's dilemma. Readers of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities will also find themselves on familiar ground with a protagonist full of ideas but lacking in direction. In contrast to Mümtaz there is Suad, a key character introduced fairly late in the novel, who is his mirror image: a man of intellectual attainment but impulsive, irresponsible, self-indulgent and proud of his Sadean amorality. Nuran, in contrast to both of these men, is centered on her feelings, her family, and her cultural roots. In the author's words, "Nuran depended on a minimum level of selfhood. She lived through her milieu."
A Mind at Peace is a great novel that brings forth ideas of epic scale out of an intimate story, and does so against an unforgettable historical and cultural backdrop. The principal characters, notwithstanding their penchant for philosophical abstracts, are convincingly complete and complex. The author's prose, beautifully translated, has an evocative and lyrical quality in keeping with the musical theme running through the novel. Here, for example, is a passage describing Nuran:
"Not a single spot existed on her small face with which he wasn't familiar. For Mümtaz, her face became his panorama of the soul: the way it blossomed to love like a flower, closed definitively upon a despairing smile--the metallic radiance burning in her eyes asquint--and not least of all the way her face changed by degrees like a daybreak over the Bosphorus.... With a look, she dressed him up and stripped him down, at one moment turning him into a pitiful, forsaken malcontent with no recourse but Allah, and at the next into the very master of his fate."
For both its profound discussion of ideas central to the human condition and its vivid portrayal of a place, a time and a people, A Mind at Peace is highly recommended.
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