The Byzantine Empire
No need to master dead languages or to be a history buff to be interested in the writings left to us by Byzantium, which became Constantinople in 330 AD. Some names have survived the centuries, including that of Roman the Melodian. The monk, now a saint, was in his time nicknamed "the Pindar of rhythmic poetry", so the comparison is flattering. From the sixth century, a few hundred of his hymns(kontakion) have come down to us. It is in a completely different field that Paul the Silent one evolves who, chamberlain of his state, is charged to make reign the order and the silence near the emperor. His epigrams, most of them erotic, are referenced in thePalatine Anthology, and his Description of Saint Sophia in Constantinople remains a rare and precious document. If the one he served, Justinian, did not necessarily act in favor of education, it is to another statesman, Photios I of Constantinople, patriarch of the city in the 9th century, that we owe an invaluable archive. His famous Library contains the summary and criticism of 280 works of Greek literature, certainly one of the first examples, preciously preserved, of literary analysis.
Another scholar has marked history: Michel Psellos (1018-1078). A polygraph and a relentless letter writer, his writings are a testimony of his time, as is the Alexiad, a long epic poem by Anne Comnenus (1083-1153), the daughter of an emperor who never succeeded in seizing the throne and ended her days locked up in a convent. The end of the following century saw the birth of Gregory Palamas, who remained famous for his theological writings and for the Eulogy dedicated to him by his disciple Philotheus Kokkinos, who became Patriarch of Constantinople in 1353. Exactly one hundred years later, the city was taken by the Ottoman troops led by Mehmed II. If this episode sounds for some the end of the Middle Ages, it inspires the Valencian Joanot Martorell his novel of chivalry Tirant le Blanc, published in 1490, in which a young Breton from Nantes goes to fight against the Turks and falls in love at the court of Constantinople. This book, praised by Cervantes, who quoted it in his Don Quixote, was also praised by the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa.
Opening up to the West
Although a man of war, Mehmet II, who earned the title of "Conqueror" after the capture of Constantinople, was nonetheless a polyglot scholar who wrote poetry. Turkish became the official language, but Persian was used assiduously, which gave the poetry of the Dîwân, strongly influenced by the Persian ghazal, plenty of room to flourish, notably under the pen of the preceptor turned vizier Ahmed Pacha, son of Vali ed-Din, or under that of the "Sultan of poets", Bâkî (1526-1600).
On the prose side, writers became explorers. The Book of Travels of Evilya Çelebi, who surveyed the Ottoman Empire as early as 1640 and for more than four decades, is full of humor, and perhaps of some exaggerations. Nevertheless, the ten volumes of his work are now part of the heritage and serve as a reference by virtue of the dialects he recorded. Mehmet Effendi, Ottoman ambassador in Paris from 1720 to 1721, also contributes to the Turkish literary edifice. Le Paradis des infidèles, translated by La Découverte, gives an original point of view on France at the beginning of the 18th century. The opening to the West was confirmed during the Tanzimat era which began in 1839. This term, which means "reforms", also designates a literary school contemporary with this period which will end in 1876, with the promulgation of the Ottoman Constitution. The ideas circulate. Thus, the diplomat Ahmed Vefik Pasha ensured the translation of Molière's comedies into Turkish, making some cuts, while Ibrahim Şinasi encouraged the translation of French poetry. This Ottoman journalist was well acquainted with Paris, where he stayed several times; he was also a friend of Namik Kemal (1840-1888), an editor, novelist and playwright, whose revolutionary writings, including his play Vatan yahut Silistre, earned him several years in prison.
Western thought continues to influence. Tevfik Fikret is interested in French symbolism before directing the magazine Le Trésor des sciences which will gather between its pages the most promising writers of the time, of which those of the current of the New Literature. But the group dispersed at the very beginning of the 20th century, and the country had to face a revolution before the Republic was established in 1923. The authors have a sharp vision, sometimes a political role, like the feminist and nationalist Halide Edib Adivar whose opinion on the Armenian question is still ambiguous. Others choose to bear witness under the guise of fiction, such as Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu who, in Yaban, describes the misery he discovered in Anatolia. His book, published in 1932, would not be translated into French until 1989, under the title L'Étranger.
Social and political narratives
Turkish texts had rarely been translated into French, but the 20th century saw an evolution, notably with the poems of Nâzim Hikmet, available in some fifty languages, which earned him, along with his political commitment, a prison sentence. Born in 1901 in Greece, died in 1963 in Moscow, his life is a novel, made of exiles, revolts, condemnations and fights. Epic, he tells the story of the Turkish people, using several tens of thousands of verses, in Human Landscapes. Mythical, the first anthology of his poems, C'est un dur métier que l'exil, published for the first time in France in 1951, remains today a must. As a playwright, he opposes the Stalinist regime in his play Ivan Ivanovich did he exist? An innovator, he introduced the free form into Turkish poetry with his friend Orhan Veli, author of Va jusqu'où tu pourras (Go as far as you can), available from Éditions Bleu autour. As a prisoner, he shared his jail with Orhan Kemal, a prolific writer known for the social realism of his work. In Sur les terres fertiles, published by Gallimard in 1971, it is about rural exodus and the poverty of the peasants of Anatolia. It is also in this region that Youssouf le taciturne takes place, the moving story of a young orphan told by Sabahattin Ali (1907-1948). The man, whose death is shrouded in mystery, was a friend of the famous Aziz Nesin, a journalist, writer and humorist, with whom he published the satirical newspaper MarkoPaşa. Their contemporary, Sait Faik Abasıyanık, gains recognition through his short stories, which describe the daily life and precariousness of the little people of Istanbul(Samovar, Bleu autour Publishing, 2011).
The opening of the valves
Constantinople became Istanbul in 1930, and the new generation of writers now used the Latin alphabet. Throughout the 20th century, Turkey alternated between periods of stability and moments of tension during which some writers opposed the ruling power and were imprisoned. In France, the texts are gradually settling on the shelves of bookstores and libraries, and the floodgates are opening more particularly after Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. This distinction came at a time when the author was threatened in his country for having taken a stand on the Armenian genocide, and it was also the culmination of a literary career that began in his student years, during which he had isolated himself to devote himself to writing. His first novel, Cavdet Bey and His Sons, was published in 1982. Although Ohran Pamuk had difficulty finding a publisher, recognition was almost immediate. This great fresco in three parts tells the story of his country through the destiny of a family, and lays the foundations of what will be his recurring theme, the difficult link between respect for tradition and the appetite for an evolution linked to the Western model. Having followed his wife to the United States, the author devoted himself to research for his book Kara Kitap, published in 1990 and published in France five years later, by Gallimard, under the title Le Livre noir. His novels are now among the essentials, including My Name is Red (Best Foreign Book 2002), Snow (Prix Médicis étranger 2005) and The Woman with Red Hair published in 2019, and they are a gateway to a Turkey that seduces readers.
Today, few enthusiasts are unaware of the names of Yachar Kemal (the saga of Mèmed the Thin), Elif Shafak(Sufi, my love; The Bastard of Istanbul), Nedim Gürsel(The Red Angel) or Asli Erdogan(The Silence itself is no longer yours). The more curious will add those of Ahmet-Hamdi Tanpinar(The Institute for Setting Clocks and Watches), Yusuf Atilgan(The Idle Man), Latife Tekin(Tales from the Mountain of Garbage), Mario Levi(Istanbul was a Tale), and the more precursory will swear by the work of Murathan Mungan(The Gloves and Other Short Stories) and that of Mehmet Murat Somer(We Killed Bisou!). While the major houses Gallimard and Actes Sud have been doing remarkable translation work for many years, let us also salute the commitment of Emmanuelle Collas, an editor who brought out Encore by Hakan Günday (Prix Médicis étranger) with Gaalade in 2015 and who now carries the voice of Selahattin Demirtaş, whose L'Aurore (2018) was written in prison, and that of Sema Kılıçkaya(La Langue de personne), in the house that now bears her name. Kontr Editions also plays a real role as a conduit for contemporary and daring titles to be read in French. The Turkish voices of the 20th and 21st centuries now carry their message, often political, always literary, beyond all borders.
If the Turkish pen is often precise, its pencil stroke is no less so. The first drawings of Turhan Selçuk (1922-2010) appeared in the press and it was not until the 1980s that he started to draw in comic books. His flagship hero, Abdülcanbaz, "the incredible Turk", has a moustache and impeccable musculature, the perfect equipment to put his strength at the service of the widow and the orphan. Gurcan Gürsel has the art of caricature although he attended the very serious Fine Arts of Istanbul. He worked for MAD magazine and then decided to follow his second passion, sports, by creating the humoristic series Les Foot furieux and Top 15. Finally, Ersin Karabulut, born in 1981, puts his talent at the service of a fantastic and oppressive universe, allegory of a repressive system and a disillusioned society.
