Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

“But it’s quite simple” — and his eyes registered Nuran gliding through the back door with a tray of glasses and an ice bucket. She was genuinely beautiful, and she exhibited style and appeal through her stride, her figure, her laugh. If Mümtaz knew his own strengths, life could be quite decent. But, strangely, from the very beginning he’d become mired in a web of tribulations. And what am I to do? He should just go on and overcome these hurdles! İhsan couldn’t be of any help to his nephew. If I advise patience, he’ll waste time. If I say, “Have conviction, act without giving too much thought to others or your surroundings, act quickly and with abandon even,” he’ll falter. In ten days’ time the legal waiting period after a divorce ended and Nuran would be free to remarry. Mümtaz went to help her. It pleased İhsan to see them working together.

“Yes, you were saying it’s simple.”

İhsan waved his glass about. “It’s simple because it exists in reality… and this need comes paired with the other. In fact, they’re not even separate, but two sides of the same coin. On one hand we’re experiencing a crisis of civilization and culture; on the other we’re in need of economic reform. We must enter into the world of business and trade.

“We’re in no position to choose one over the other. We wouldn’t be justified in doing so, either. Mankind is universal. It discovers itself through work and productivity; the notion of a work ethic gives birth to modern society.”

Mümtaz, contemplating: “In that case, work both fosters its own civilization and culture as well as gives rise to society. It falls to us to simply organize our material lives.”

“Do you suppose it’s that easy? First off, for us to do this, economic life must start and flourish, and society must regain its creative impulses. Not to mention that one can’t just let life develop on its own. It’s too dangerous. The past is always nipping at our heels. A surplus of half-dead worldviews and modes of being lie in wait to interfere in modern life. Furthermore our present engagement with the modern and the West amounts to emptying into a gushing river as an afterthought. We’re not simply water, we’re human society, and we’re not a tributary joining a river; we’re a society appropriating a civilization along with its culture, within which we possess a particular identity. Presently, we’re doing nothing more than adopting the accoutrements of Europe while neglecting the social contingencies. We’re conditioned to regard the modern with suspicion because it’s foreign to us, and we look upon tradition as of no consequence because it’s outdated. Our existence hasn’t even attained the level of meeting our own basic needs… It hasn’t achieved the prosperity and creativity necessary to present us with intrinsic values and ways of being! This duplicity, this paradox, continues to confound us in our aesthetics, entertainment, morality, etiquette, and conceptions of the future. We’re content to simply exist on surfaces. As soon as we delve into the depths, indifference and pessimism overwhelm us. No tribe exists without gods, and we must forge our own gods or rediscover them. We must be more conscientious and willful than any other nation.”

Orhan broke from his observation of Nuran: “In that case, you’re of the opinion that a crisis is inevitable and unavoidable.”

“Not simply inevitable. I believe we’re experiencing it now.” İhsan took a long sip from his glass. “Wherever I look, my ideas don’t encounter anything that can hold out against them. Like an animal trying to make a nest on pliant ground, I can focus my concentration wherever I want to. But this ease is detrimental. It might seem that we can go wherever we want, but we always end up in the same void, amid decayed roots or among a host of possibilities that amount to nothing but impossibility itself. Of course, this stupefies us. Today one could say that a country like Turkey might become anything. Meanwhile, Turkey should become only one thing, and that’s Turkey. This is only possible if it develops through its own contingencies. As for us, we possess nothing besides habits and a name, we hold nothing definite in hand. We know what our society is called as well as its population and territorial extent. Of course, I’m not referring to everyone and I’m not talking about vague intimations. I’m referring to culture in the shape of pure knowledge and ethics. But what of context and potential? We were born out of the collapse of an old agrarian empire. And we’re still floundering in its economic mode of production. More than half of our population isn’t engaged in any form of production. And those who produce don’t do so effectively. They just work and expend their energy. But he who toils in vain tires quickly. Take a look, we’re all exhausted! Neither factors of human labor nor land reform have been taken into close consideration with respect to our economy or existence. We can’t seem to get beyond the isolated efforts of individuals. Today’s labor should increase tomorrow’s pace of progress. We’re living in a dynamic geography full of predicaments; the world is increasingly moving toward unity; crises are erupting one after another. Granted, at present we’re in relative calm. We’ve bound ourselves economically to Central Europe, and through clearing accounts we get by one way or another. But this delicate agreement might be upset, and what’ll we do then? Anyway, this isn’t the real matter at hand; the real issue rests in not being able to incorporate land and human labor into our lives. We have forty-three thousand villages and a few hundred towns. Venture out beyond İzmit to Anatolia, or beyond Hadımköy to Thrace. Except for a few combines, you’ll find the persistence of traditional farming. The terrain sits idle in places. We have to embark upon a rigorous politics of population management and production. And we’re faced with similar exigencies in matters of education and training. We have a certain number of schools and we teach various subjects. But we’re striving only to fill a deficient civil service administration, nothing more. What will we do the day that administration is complete? We’ve made it customary to educate children to set ages. Wonderful! One day, however, these schools will only graduate a cadre of unemployed, and a class of quasiintellectuals will permeate society. Then what? Another crisis. Meanwhile, we could put the education system into the service of economic production, thereby increasing domestic trade. This is the crux of the issue. Developing the domestic market. We could create a semi-agricultural, semi-industrial workforce. We have such exceptional resources in need of manufacturing. Take Istanbul. Only recently it was a city of elite consumers. All the goods of the Near East flowed here. To such a degree that once every thirty years the city burned to the ground, and yet the estates, manor houses, Bosphorus yali s, markets, and bazaars were practically rebuilt from scratch. The farm animals of old Yanya, the tobacco of Yenice, Egyptian cotton, in short, the products of half the Islamic world were consumed in this city. Now eighty percent of the population consists of small-scale traders. At every step there’s a small workshop, a tobacco works, or this or that type of factory, and guess how they all get by? Most often by gathering what’s produced in the ground. Meanwhile, in Istanbul, a coordinated effort could transform the face of society in twenty years’ time. Take Eastern Anatolia. There you’ll find a treasury of immense possibilities in agriculture and animal husbandry. Begin from the Tortum waterfall in the north and phase by phase bring electricity southward to the Mediterranean. Not to mention that the Sea of Marmara is slumbering within its own riches.”