MY COMMENTS :
Written by author Samiha Ayverdi and published in 1952, the work portrays Istanbul and the Turkish people in the 1900s, and includes descriptions of important districts of Istanbul.
It is seen that the author makes it possible for the reader to experience a literary visualization, especially in terms of his command of the language and his display of the richness of the Turkish language.
The work, which also includes social descriptions of the period, shows the extent to which Western admiration has reached in the country, along with stories that touch on the excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol, especially in those years. In addition, the author, who also provides detailed information about our old culture and traditions, has clearly succeeded in showing the reader and the stage of degeneration of the society of the period. Since these traditions and cultural elements are given in detail in the quotations section, this much will be sufficient in the comments.
Despite all these negativities, it was stated that Turkey and Istanbul would always regain their civilized position in the hands of the Turks as they did in the past.
If we have to say a few things about the current situation of Istanbul, our city, which has received a lot of migration from the villages with the ongoing gold-paved soil proposal since the 1900s and has even surpassed 66 countries in the world in terms of population, has slowly entered the stage of migration to the villages. Although this situation may at first glance suggest that old cultural values should be better protected, it is obvious that attention should be paid to the nature of the migrant mass.
In conclusion, it should be clearly stated that the work is one of the books that should definitely be examined, considering that it not only describes the demographic structure of our country and Istanbul very well in terms of cultural, economic and historical aspects, but also manages to embellish these descriptions with one of the most impressive literary styles possible.
MY QUOTATIONS(*) :
Istanbul, at least as much as Istanbul Turkish, is a rich composition (mixture, combination), a unique conclusion (result) compiled from all centuries and from distant and near homelands.
In recent centuries, Turkey has worked so persistently to hybridize its national face a little more every day, yet Istanbul has managed to hide a national face in every corner and remain beautiful.
This has always been the case throughout the ages and centuries. Mankind always watches them with eyes that have not seen, listens with ears that have not heard, and as if they are attracted to them with hardened hearts. In this way, like the heedless thieves who take the wandering ruler among them without recognizing him and who first go to rob the palace with him, we find them in our memories and think of them as one of us, unaware that their participation in our gatherings, invitations, actions and pleasures is a game. They conceal themselves under the cover of their formal attitudes and behaviors that are the same as ours in every society. Sometimes they are educated; sometimes they are ignorant… sometimes they are rich; sometimes they are poor.
The enemy of remembrance, change (transformation, transformation), has made us forget the accent, color, taste and personality of the worlds we have come and gone, the reigns we have led, the disappointments and sufferings we have suffered. Thus, while making us deny the past indiscriminately, it has unfortunately also erased and destroyed the marks of those great people from our eyes and our lake.
I cry with burning tears, tell me your troubles, so that I can be a servant to you and to your creator.
Isn't it always that heedlessness that makes us forget the unforgettable, that we cannot see two steps ahead of us in our poor boat, which is crashing from danger to danger, from pain to pain, or from pleasure to pleasure. Human beings are creatures that have come so far in forgetfulness that they can even see the darkness of their own feelings with the sparks scattered by events and the ironies of life.
Once upon a time, when Turkish taste and intelligence were working on the magnificent civilization of Istanbul, they reached out to every corner of it, embellished and decorated it, paying attention from top to bottom with a loving criticism that would not tolerate even the slightest deficiency or flaw, as if preparing a young and beautiful bride.
In a world that constantly gives examples of rhythm within irregularity and harmonies made from contrasts, the plane tree of Beyazıt must be a wonderful example of this principle.
When the journeyman proved his worth with the years of work in which art and morality progressed side by side, and the tradesmen decided that he should become a master among them, they would notify the young man to get ready, and this time, a larger ceremony would begin.
Here, the young man would swear that he would not tarnish the honor of his profession, hands would be kissed, prayers would be said, and after the mevlid was read, the shop would be opened to the young master. At that time, the new master would need a nickname (nickname, nickname).
Yes, he said that hadith is a science; unfortunately, he did not know that the field of application of this science is his own existence. The one who forbade the man who put on the guise of religion and made religious science his profession to stand still, to keep watch at the door of flat-footed ideas, to limp from behind with shaky feet while the measurements of time and space took their heads away, while he was the broad, gentle and infinitely thoughtful owner of those hadiths, Bab-ı Meşihat (Sheikh-ul-Islam) hit him on the head with the stick of ijtihad, stunning him and intimidating him whenever a current arose in the name of thought.
Here, the logic of the madrasah called respect for this creation of humanity (to be obsessed with it until one gets bored) blasphemy. Thus, while the world of philosophy and science on one side and the world of matter and discoveries on the other side were running around as fast as they could, the formalist clergyman who thought that bigotry and stubbornness were two personal doomsday, unfortunately, did not forget to stone the people of heart who carried their world wherever they went and did not carry the burden of any record on their backs, as well as those who pursued the cause of science and technology.
There was hardly a woman who did not share in the essential qualities of Turkish homes: cleanliness, agility and industriousness. The very rare ones, the sloppy and lazy ones, were labeled as "slobs" and isolated amidst the general contempt (scorn, humiliation) of society. Even if they were respected by their husbands or fathers, their personal grades would always and everywhere be low.
It was customary for anyone who mentioned the four-skirted women condemned by the women's world to spit on the end of their collar or on the nails of their hands, fingers together, and say " Tu... tu... away from home! " as if they were spitting, so that the same laziness would not affect them, and to be shown as a warning sign to young girls.
The hadith, “ A person who is full while his neighbor is hungry is not considered a believer ,” did not reach out to those in need and completely eliminate the quality of loyalty with a ruling that would overshadow every home social aid organization? And for this reason, Turkish morality provided welfare and peace within class differences without the need for the slaughterhouse (cut throats) of socialism and the savage guidance of communism.
But as the east blocked its own vents and expanded its drowning channel as much as it could, everything we had accumulated over the centuries was lost among the waves of this flood.
He was a drug addict, a man who had abandoned society and was faced with punishments and persecution.
The drug addict who fell like a rotten fruit at the foot of the Istanbul tree and chewed haphazardly, has polluted these nights that smell like musk, with his body wrapped in the smell, flavor and air of the Istanbul nights, his rudderless perception, his disordered mind and his bad breezes from time to time.
Today's man is perhaps on the way to reaching the final steps of material and technical wonders; but in terms of his inner value, he is perhaps struggling in the Gayya of Gayyas (the name of a well believed to be in Hell).
The West gained a destructive, self-destructive civilization from the materialism of the last century, and counted down those who had advanced on this path of destructiveness and became masters over them in terms of matter.
Oh son of man, Sufism is that tent pitched within this dome of the sky, where bigotry, treachery, hypocrisy, deceit, cruelty and corruption cannot find a way, where knowledge and humanity flow freely and without expecting anything in return, and whoever they wish, from Solomon to an ant, can enter this roof and take a deep and comfortable breath, and this will remain so until the Day of Judgment.
But, alas, the son of Adam, while he is the meaning of the universe and the essence of the world, is more insensible than mountains and rocks. That mountain and stone, even with unconscious conscience, never fail to repeat and repeat the words shouted to it word for word. He who shouts the name of his beloved does not say the name of his enemy. He who shouts the name of saint receives the voice of saint. He who shouts the name of madman is answered as mad.
Weddings, which were a privileged entertainment for women, would become so crowded, especially when the seats were made, and the space for the bridegroom to pass would become so narrow that the young man who left his young wife in the bridal chamber and withdrew had to resort to an elegant excuse or a trick appropriate to the weather of the day in order to be able to break through the crowd and return.
If the bride was the daughter of a wealthy family, she would have two or three female servants (female slaves, concubines) with her, depending on her wealth, and in this way, she would not have to worry about the household chores and living that she did not know about.
If the young woman who was the owner of a house came from a middle-class or more modest family, then it was her duty to take care of all the affairs of her house the day after the wedding.
I think I forgot that in Istanbul, it is customary for the host to offer a “coffee to go” to guests who have been staying for a long time, to elegantly remind them that it is late.
The proverb “The stones and soil of Istanbul are gold”, the countryman who has captured his mind with its indestructible spell, often sells his fields, ploughs and cattle for next to nothing and runs to tradesmanship, farmership, servanthood or apprenticeship with the desire of cheap and easy earnings, but when he does not hear a response from any of the doors he knocks on, he crawls hungry and miserable on the soil of the stone he expects to turn into gold. But if things go well for him, he settles his family and children he brings from his homeland in inns, in the corpses of mansions destroyed by heirs, in rooms converted from shops, or in a fellow countryman’s house, and thus a family life that he has added to the poverty and ignorance, almost completely separate and deprived of the privileges and blessings of the city, rolls on untidy, tasteless and unkempt. Especially the rude crowd of the porter community from Siirt, which formed neighborhoods, used to look down on the city they lived in and to show loyalty to the living conditions of the country where they were born and raised, and therefore, they used to bring down the social level of the neighborhood they lived in.
Certainly, the ancient man knew how to love much more strongly than today. He was brought up with a more suitable upbringing to know that love is what unties every knot, solves every difficulty, overcomes every difficulty, thwarts every cause, and makes everything impossible happen.
The Beyoğlu mentality has always known how to take advantage of the weakness, confusion, hesitation and laxity of faith of the homeless Istanbulites.
Worst of all, the disease of considering the enemy as friend and the friend as enemy has kept the doors of opportunity open for arsonists even in our times of power and strength.
We have a lover, maybe we have seen him once, and maybe we cannot find an answer even if we ask him questions about his eyes and eyebrows. But still, he is the only one we know with a perfect sensitivity (emotion), and because we cannot forget, he is the only one we cannot forget.
In Üsküdar, where the working and business environment had become very narrow compared to the old times, earning a living was left to a very small group, and this crowd, which flocked to Istanbul every day because of the alimony, and which had almost no artisans, merchants, or tradesmen, was made up of the majority of the civil servant class. In the old days, it was customary to name this civil servant class working in state institutions with the word katip. In fact, in folk psychology, the word katip had a very broad and popular, and at the same time, a very deep meaning, which was endearing. He had a handwriting like a katip whose calligraphy was desired to be praised, he spoke like a katip to those who were rich in expression, he was a man like a katip in terms of knowledge and eloquence (ease of speaking properly), he was unique in being a katip, with wayward rulings, he was always shown as an example of skill, knowledge, understanding, and expression.
The day comes when a person who has been a candidate for a long time, who has lived in the atmosphere of the lodge he wants to be affiliated with (attach to, enter) and whose familiarity and intimacy increases, will finally be accepted into the order according to the rules and procedures of the lodge. In the semahane (the section where dervishes hold special rituals in Mevlevi lodges) where his four caliphs are present, the sheikh would sit the dervish who came with his guide in front on his fur spread on the ground and hold his hand and after receiving an oath that he will be direct with his hand, waist and tongue, and that he will serve and love Allah and people with love and enthusiasm, he would congratulate and pray for him. The dervish would kiss the hands of his sheikh and those present and thus take his first step into the order.
The new dervish was first assigned to the coffee house and became the apprentice of the coffee nakibi, then the coffee nakibi, and when he advanced a degree further, he was promoted to the nakibi of the square (the leader or deputy of a tribe), and then to the nakibi. However, undoubtedly, while following all these practices, the main issue was not only the fulfillment of the requirements of a gradual chain, but an endless self-struggle (work, effort), a state of purification, selection and calmness on the way to determining and fulfilling the values that he would give of himself and take for himself.
There is a degree of beauty that the pleasure felt from it is no longer pleasure, but pain. Perhaps it is not pain at all, but an unflavored taste that the sense and consciousness have never tasted with the lips of humanity.
MY EVALUATIONS:
Subject : In the work, a portrait of Istanbul and Turkish people in the 1900s is drawn, and depictions of important districts of Istanbul are the subject.
Style: The book, which the author has created by combining the vocabulary and old Turkish expressions with modern Turkish, should be considered as one of the literary masterpieces in this respect alone. Moreover, for an author who uses old Turkish words, he distinguishes himself considerably from other old writers in this field by using an absolutely understandable description and vocabulary.
Originality : The work will not be evaluated in this category due to its nature.
Character : The work will not be evaluated in this category due to its nature.
Fluency : Considering the issues expressed in the subject and style sections, the work should only be examined in terms of fluency, as it does not have a compelling plot. Although old Turkish expressions are sometimes used, the lack of elaborate language should be considered a positive effect on fluency.
General : In the evaluation made out of 10 according to the criteria stated above:
Subject: 8.5
Style: 9
Fluency: 7.5
The overall average of the work, which received the scores, is 8.3 points . As can be seen, the work should definitely be noted as one of the books that should be examined, especially for literature and history enthusiasts.
(*) : All parts in the title Quotations:
İSTANBUL NIGHTS
Author : Samiha Ayverdi
Publisher : Kubbealtı Publications
Edition : 5th Edition - 2007
The photo used on the cover was used as a quote from the book.
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