Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

Mümtaz let his arms hang down and said, “Don’t be vindictive, Suad. I’ve suffered plenty.”

Suad again laughed expansively. “Very well, in that case, come with me and let me be your salvation.”

“I can’t, I have work that I must see to.”

“You won’t be able to accomplish anything! Come with me. You’ll be delivered of the whole lot. These are burdens that you can’t bear. .”

Mümtaz once again stopped in his tracks and stared at Suad. “No,” he said. “I need to take on my responsibilities. And if I can’t, I’m prepared to be crushed beneath them. But I can’t go with you.”

“You will!”

“No, that would be cowardice.”

“In that case, remain here in your cesspool…”

Suad spread his arms and struck Mümtaz forcefully in the face. He staggered and fell to the ground.

When he stood again, his face was bloody. The medicine bottles were broken in his hands. Despite this, he wore a strange, almost imperceptible smile. From one of the nearby windows, a radio announced the order for attack that Hitler had made that very night. Mümtaz had forgotten about the entire ordeal.

“War’s begun. .” he said. And he opened his palms, which still held shards of broken vials, and gazed at his wounds. Then he slowly plodded toward the house. Passersby at this early hour glared in shock at the odd grin on his bloodied face.

He unlocked the door. The foyer mirror had assumed once again its terrestrial face in the morning light. He stared at his own face for a time. Then he slowly climbed the stairs.

Macide was sitting with the physician in the hall, listening to the radio.

“Good God, Mümtaz, what’s happened to you?”

Mümtaz again opened and closed his aching hands before the window.

“You don’t want to know,” he said. “I had an accident.” That strange smile — which seemed to hold within it the mysteries of an entire life — persisted on his lips.

“The medicine bottles broke!” he said. Then he turned to face the doctor. “How is he?”

“So-so,” he said. “He’s better. He doesn’t need anything more. Have you heard the news?”

Mümtaz, no longer listening, had withdrawn to a corner where he stared at his palms, then darted from his spot and walked toward the stairs.

But he couldn’t ascend. There, on the first step, he sank back down with his head in his hands. The doctor looked at him as if to say, “Now you’re mine, all mine!” Wiping her eyes, Macide approached him. In the stillness of the house, a lone booming voice on the radio spoke for them all.

1757 — 99: Shaykh Galip, Ottoman divan poet and Mevlevî sheikh, establishes himself in the Ottoman court. He is renowned for his mystic romance Beauty and Love .

1778–1846: İsmail Dede Efendi, a hafiz, a muezzin, a Mevlevî, and one of the greatest composers of Ottoman classical music, composes more than two hundred works.

1789–1807: Reign of Sultan Selim III, a Mevlevî, a patron of the arts, and a composer. Selim introduces the first military and political modernizing reforms into the empire under the Nizam-ı Cedid (“New Order”) and appoints the cosmopolitan painter and architect Antoine Ignace Melling (later landscape painter to Empress Josephine of France) as court architect. Among the regular attendees to his court is the poet Shaykh Galip. (In A Mind at Peace , Mümtaz’s unfinished historical novel is set during this era.)

1808 — 3 9: Reign of Sultan Mahmud II, who continues the legal and military reforms begun by Selim. Mahmud II abolishes the Janissary corps and replaces them with a modern standing army and institutes European-style clothing reform, including the introduction of the fez in place of the turban.

1829: Treaty of Edirne. Autonomy is granted to Serbia, Greece, and principalities under Russian protection. Beginning of secession movements and expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans, Crimea, and the Caucasus between the 1820s and 1920s. (A Refugee Commission, Muhacirin Komisyonu, is eventually established in 1860 to resettle Muslim refugees in Central and Eastern Anatolia.)

1839: On April 3, İsmail Dede Efendi performs the Mevlevî ceremonial suite in the new Ferahfeza makam (mode of classical Turkish music). This work was commissioned by Sultan Mahmud II, who listened to it only months before he died of tuberculosis. (The music is described in the “Suad” section of A Mind at Peace .)

1839 — 76: The Tanzimat, or “Reorganization.” Begins with the reign of Sultan Abdülmecit I (1839 — 61). This era of reform attempts to turn “subjects of the sultan” into “modern citizens” by creating a new centralized government and new educational and legal systems. Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861 — 76) continued on this path of reform, and under his successor, Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909), the era culminated in the promulgation of a constitution and parliament in 1876, the first modern constitution in the Muslim world. Though this constitutional sultanate lasted less than two years, it was reinstated in 1908, ushering in a second constitutional era. This era also witnessed the first novels in Ottoman Turkish.

1877 — 78: Russo — Ottoman War. Concluded by the Treaty of San Stefano signed with Russia. The Ottoman state loses sovereignty over territories in the Balkans and Eastern Anatolia.

1901: Poet, scholar, and novelist Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar is born in Istanbul. His father was a kadi (Islamic judge). Tanpınar graduated with a degree in literature from Istanbul University in 1923, then worked as a high school teacher and university professor, and served as member of parliament from 1942 to 1946.

1907: “Young Turks” in Paris establish contact with the Ottoman Liberty Society in Salonika, uniting to become the Committee of Union and Progress with the goal of restoring the constitution.

1908 — 20: Second Ottoman constitutional era, which begins after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908.

1912 — 13: First and Second Balkan Wars. Ottoman Empire loses most of its Balkan territories.

1914: Ottoman Empire enters World War I on the side of the Central powers. After Ottoman defeat, the Allied powers occupy Istanbul between 1918 and 1923 while former Ottoman territories are partitioned into mandates, nation-states, and kingdoms, giving rise to the modern Middle East.

19 1 9 — 22: With assistance from Allied powers, Greece invades Western Anatolia, and a mass exodus of Anatolian Muslims follows. (In A Mind at Peace , Mümtaz’s father is killed during the invasion and Mümtaz flees to the southern Mediterranean coast before moving to Istanbul.)

1922 — 38: The Kemalist cultural revolution (led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) introduces a program of secular social engineering, including the abolishment of the Islamic caliphate and dervish orders, the institution of clothing reform, a change in the alphabet from Ottoman script to Latin, and the purging of Perso — Arabic words from the language. (Discussions on revolution and social change by İhsan, Suad, and Mümtaz in A Mind at Peace focus on the cultural revolution.)

1923: Establishment of the Republic of Turkey after the Turkish War of Independence against Allied occupations.

1938: Death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of the Republic of Turkey. (In A Mind at Peace , Mümtaz meets Nuran around this time.)

1939: Start of World War II. Turkey remains neutral until several months before the end of the war. ( A Mind at Peace concludes with declarations of war in Europe.)