Thirty years later:
It was a dull and cool autumn night. In the literary hall in the middle of the magnificent garden that resembled a fairy garden far from reality with its massive trees, a conference was being given about the life and characteristics, art and success of the poet Perviz who had died a week ago. At the end of the orderly path that stretched like an illuminated dream avenue and became more dreamlike as it stretched, the door of the hall resembled the distant and mirage-like entrance of a palace; the steps of the white and massive porch were shining with dazzling clarity under the dull and sweet lights pouring from the red and shining electric globes held in the hands of mythological women made of marble rising in rows on their sides. The old and indifferent moon was passing lazily and hastily among the sparse and thin clouds; from outside, the noises of the street were echoing with ambiguity like the music of accusations of a cheerful city, a land of mysterious pleasure, creating invisible shivers in the life-bearing and light-laden darknesses of the large and dense trees mixed with light. On the wide and white pedestals, the white statues as if contemplating eternity—these affecting and death-bringing symbolic memories of these now-deceased famous people—seemed to come alive, seemed to move with the sad melodies of the unconscious wind under the leaf shadows falling on them like lipless and non-human kisses…
The conference had started half an hour ago. In the melancholy solitude of the illuminated path, like a moving shadow, a delicate young man was advancing with his hands in his pockets, looking ahead. Apparently he now wanted to go to the edge of the large and empty pond where swans slept, to this thickest and dormant place of the garden; he was about to turn onto the half-dark path, under the majestic trees embracing each other; a voice came from beside him: “Where are you going, son, like this…”
He turned. This was a seventy-year-old man leaning on the ornate and carved pedestal of a clean and still very new statue. He recognized him. “What’s this, dear master,” he said, “what are you doing here all alone?”
The old man, pointing to the statue he was leaning on, answered: “I’m talking with my friend, my companion of youth.” In this man with white and abundant hair, with his strong and upright body that seventy years couldn’t break down, still vigorous and robust, whom the young people, all of Istanbul, perhaps all of Turkiye called “the philosopher,” there was a very strange temperament, a very peculiar nature. A severe egoism dominated his entire existence. Whatever he spoke about, he spoke about himself, boring his interlocutor.
The young man he casually addressed as “son,” Vedit, was Istanbul’s most fiery, most learned, most respected deputy. During his student days he rather enjoyed listening to this old philosopher in public gardens. But now… He was most tired of his claims, his literariness. The hollow and primitive literary movements of half a century ago could no longer be listened to. Besides, he had already heard all these meaningless chatter perhaps a hundred times from the philosopher himself five or six years ago, had memorized them. Again, not to be caught by this strange old man, not to suffer under his exhausting knowledge and chatter consisting only of endlessly obscure writer names like a library catalog, of forgotten book titles: “I was walking,” he said. “I just ate. I have an article to write tonight, a speech to prepare. I won’t be late.”
The old philosopher asked in surprise: “So you don’t know about the conference given for Perviz?”
Vedit answered with a shrug: “I do. But I have no patience to listen. Literature bores me now…”
The philosopher had approached, had put his thick muscular arm on the young man’s shoulder. “Poor Vedit!” he said. “I pity you. Then you’ve grown old. When a person begins to feel hatred toward literature, when verses and rhymes begin to appear empty, futile, tiresome in his view, it means old age’s cold and skeletal hands have reached for his heart.”
And pointing to the statue, he added: “Yes, this one too… This poor Tevfik Fikret also, when he aged in the labor of feeling, began to hate literature, lost all the enthusiasms and imaginations of his youth, became a pessimist. Then he always sang of pain, composed the tears he couldn’t shed, and left his mourning to our souls for eternity…”
Vedit had suddenly become nervous: “Please, master, don’t talk about literature!”
The philosopher, with a clear displeasure his interlocutor couldn’t see, said as if moaning: “Why?”
“Why? Because your manner is very old… Very classical! For example, I find your current words, even your pointing to that statue with your hand, antiquated and classical. Before you I imagine myself a school student condemned to tolerate the unnaturalness of literature teachers.”
Vedit, who had been first in all classes, after receiving his diploma first in economic and social sciences, with his first published social article gained sudden fame not only in Turkiye but throughout Europe and America; immediately translated into international languages, it was deemed worthy of the greatest prize by the international “United Humanity and Sciences Society.” But all these successes hadn’t changed him; he was neither humble nor at all arrogant and conceited.
Now he regretted hurting the philosopher, whom he knew very well in his feelings was what a weak egoist, this poor old man, and when he said in an offended language “Then let’s not talk at all…” he responded laughingly: “No, let’s talk, dear master! Let’s talk, but you know I’m a deputy. I always want to talk about my profession, discuss it, think about it; tell me, weren’t you once a deputy too?”
To completely win his heart and make him forgive him entirely, he linked arms with the philosopher. They began to walk. The dazed statues of ancient and modern poets, of famous literary figures lined up around the wide path seemed to look at them, suffering and sensitive, in a deep frozen silence.
The philosopher murmured: “Yes, I was even a member of the first Parliament.”
Vedit squeezed his companion’s still-firm bicep: “Then let’s talk about our profession. I’ll benefit too!”
This “I’ll benefit too!” caressed all the old man’s weaknesses. Having his words listened to was his only happiness since childhood. He was delighted like a child. Pointing to a wicker sofa under the dense trees, under the abundant and illuminated leaves at the edge of the path there: “Let’s sit here…” he said. “Let’s sit…”
They sat. Vedit was looking at his old companion in the sweetened lights of the lamps a bit distant; this was exactly like a talking machine; he knew nine languages perfectly, it was rumored he had read nearly a million books. Now beside him, with eloquent and fluent expression, while he was telling about the sudden proclamation of the Constitution, how the first Parliament opened with difficulties, and his own first conferences, speeches, successes, the excited applause he created, how he was appointed to preserve the capital’s peace, how he appeared before the sultan of that time, Vedit was thinking about his seventy years of life, mentally dividing it into years, months, weeks, calculating that to read a million books he would have to read and finish at least three books every day.
The philosopher, with the roaring memories of the past he attached such importance and love to, was saying: “Ah, you are very fortunate. You’re gaining without tiring, without getting upset. You work in an orderly and comfortable way, succeed correctly and confidently. Whereas we! We spent the most beautiful period of our lives, our precious and irretrievably lost youth, in an absolute captivity that you, the next generation, can impossibly imagine or conceive. Knowledge and virtue were the greatest crimes. Honorable people were rotting in prisons. The homeland was dying, giving its last breaths. Yes, today, this strong and majestic Turkiye that all diplomats and party leaders are rushing to as the capital to join the ‘United States of Europe’ that will soon be formed, this magnificent and grand government of ours, our terrible and fearsome army giving constant excitement to our neighbors—back then it had become the capital of ridicule for all the humor newspapers published in the world. The Ottomans, recognized today as Europe’s noblest, most intelligent, richest and most active people, were being insulted as ‘a gang that pitched its tent in Europe’ without hesitation, their civilized existence was absolutely denied.”
Vedit, looking ahead, said: “You’re exaggerating…”
But the philosopher erupted with the involuntary fire given by old age: “Exaggerating? The partition plan of this magnificent government in whose greatness and success you grew up had been made. Even its partition map had been drawn and published. Ignorance, a green and black darkness, had covered these bright horizons that make you drunk and delighted only with financial joy. Everyone was hostile, enemy, traitor to each other! There was only hatred, fanaticism, decline, violation. Those who worked stayed hungry, those who learned were insulted, a general hatred was felt toward those who loved knowledge, expertise was considered an unforgivable blasphemy…”
Vedit again cut off the philosopher’s words: “Exaggeration, exaggeration… master! There was an art in your old literature! Now you’re getting pleasure by doing it, that is, exaggeration… Is it possible for a nation that was so declined to surpass all nations within thirty years?”
The philosopher shook his head and smiled: “Yes, it’s possible, son! Our revolution was very strange. Many of our contemporaries denied imitation and benefiting, the law of imitation; they said ‘Let’s progress enclosed and conservative in our own environment, our own national environment.’ If they had been able to get their ideas accepted by taking advantage of the ignorance of the majority, indeed such progress and perfection wouldn’t have been possible. But we, the young people of that time, prevailed, made them accept benefit and imitation. We accepted European civilization, Western progress without trembling, without hesitation. How should I put it? To treat the disease of ruin, we didn’t occupy ourselves with making all the medicines ourselves, building chemistry laboratories ourselves and working for centuries. We didn’t undertake to invent and prepare remedies. We found ready-made medicine. We swallowed this external and ready-made pill without suspicion, without disgust, and were cured. Yes, we appropriated in one stroke the progress that the West’s fathers prepared and successive geniuses created and bequeathed. We jumped to the top of the ladder. This was actually a very natural social incident, a communal state. Belated peoples don’t agree to climb the building of perfection slowly, they leap up with centuries’ accumulated force of progress. Look at Japan… In fact, today it’s behind us, but thirty or forty years ago, with a speed that could be called sudden, it too took the fruits of the old West’s labor, appropriated it. While we were exposed to such a contemptuous indifference that we couldn’t be accepted by the international community, it proved its national existence. Ah yes, you were born after the Constitution, grew up in freedom and liberty. If you were ten years younger, you would remember that in place of this beautiful hall, this large and wonderful garden, there were ruins, collapsed shacks, ruined houses, deserted, narrow, despairing streets full of poor and skinny dogs…”
As the old philosopher told, he became more excited, and the more excited he became, the more he detailed even the smallest particulars with a living expression; raising his hands, sometimes standing up, falling exhausted back to the sofa, continuing his story with heat and movement. Vedit was tired of listening. Mentally he was preparing tomorrow’s speech, thinking about the assembly he would enter tomorrow as a new deputy, next to this old deputy seized with the delirium of old age; comparing this thirty-year difference of life to this disproportion, he was imagining the centuries of evolution before humanity.
He was hearing the philosopher’s eloquent composition of words like a distant and resounding speech, remaining indifferent to the lyrics of meaning. Meanwhile the poor old man was telling—with the innocent ease of a free and tireless lawyer reciting a well-memorized defense without hesitation—who was the president of the first Parliament, the level of capability of those coming from the provinces, his own speeches, the first parties, nationality debates, lack of understanding, people’s strange manner of reception. Vedit, occupied with other things and thus freed from the meaning of these words, began to suffer also from their sound. He was getting bored, and a slight heat, like a warm and sensible breath, was rising to his temples; his very hairy head under his small hat was itching. The old and aged deputy was still narrating how he attacked the ignorance of those before him, the influence they had despite the small number of supporters, even repeating exactly the responses he received from opponents. Vedit put his delicate hand scratching his hair into his vest pocket. He was about to suffocate… He took out a small and elegant watch with radium enamel. With violent and flying light, the shining numbers, the bright hand, were showing midnight in the purple and illuminated darkness of the bright night. He couldn’t stand it: “Let’s go now,” he said, “because I’m cold.”
The philosopher, with the weak speed of transition sacrificed to the supernatural intensity of his famous memory, understood that he was boring this capable and respected young man who brought him five liras every hour.
“Yes, yes, let’s go,” he was saying. “It’s really cold. We got lost in talk. The conference is also about to end… If you want, we can go in there a bit too.”
Vedit refused again: “No, I’m going.”
The philosopher said: “Then I’ll go too. I’m just bored.”
They got up. There was no wind. The moon had disappeared, set. Above the high and magnificent trees around the path, the black sky, with its innumerable and endless stars resembling blue and abundant diamonds, was stretching like a glittering star-laden river toward the unknown of eternity; the statues, as fearsome and white specters with frozen and mute gazes, were looking mockingly and smilingly at these two heedless and fame-sick mortals passing before them—at these two lifeless famous men who would one day definitely come and stand beside them with their marble symbolic bodies.
Both were silent. They were approaching the hall now. The mournful tune composed for poor Perviz’s eternal setting was echoing to the philosopher’s humming ears with a divinely and ambiguously excited, sincerely humming sigh, and the electric globes were shining in the darkness like massive pearls of light, thick and majestic tears.
The philosopher stopped; from this broken, heavy, death-bringing melody, his non-existent soul whose existence he had involuntarily and stubbornly denied throughout his life was now suddenly moved. He brought his hands to his hair, which appeared whiter with a strange optical illusion in the darkness. “Poor dear dead!” he said. The young deputy was still thinking, hearing absolutely nothing. Getting nervous to compensate for the time spent with an old chatterbox tonight, this valuable time when he would write his speech, and linking arms with his companion: “Come on, master, walk quickly! Let’s hurry before the audience leaves, let’s find empty dirigibles, otherwise if we’re left with automobiles, I’ll lose forty minutes from the night…” he was saying.
Ömer Seyfettin
