POSTMODERN BLUES OF SEEKING PLEASURE: “BIN HUZUNLU HAZ”

Abstract

Hasan Ali Toptaş is one of the writers who have made significant contributions to Turkish Literature since 1990s. Especially in the transition from modern literature to postmodern literature, he has taken his place as a cornestone of this period with successful examples of this transition in novels and his reformist attitude. As he writes his novels, Mr. Toptaş constructs his narration by making the language the most vital component of the text, away from traditional depictions and inclinations. Another important aspect of this construction is about keeping distance to the ideals of modern life and novelts, even dissenting these ideals, as part of respecting the distinctive features of postmodern narration. “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” reflects best Mr. Toptaş’s sense of postmodern novels, and it comes first among the writings that best fit postmodern narration. This novel where the indispensible elements of the puzzle in constructing a novel such as event, person, time, place and narrator have become invisible makes the characteristics of postmodern narration felt strongly. In this paper, taking into consideration these characteristics, the postmodern features of this novel were examined and an analysis has been offered based on this examination. The novel titled “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” has been analyzed through the methods given in İsmet Emre’s book titled “Postmodernism and Literature”. The analysis is based on event chain, time concept, site construct; person establishment, perspective in the novel and internal components of postmodern text such as play concept, person view of subject and object, pastishe, montage, collage. The results have shown that the text titled “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” reflects competently the qualities of postmodern narrationHasan Ali Toptaş is one of the writers who have made significant contributions to Turkish Literature since 1990s. Especially in the transition from modern literature to postmodern literature, he has taken his place as a cornestone of this period with successful examples of this transition in novels and his reformist attitude. As he writes his novels, Mr. Toptaş constructs his narration by making the language the most vital component of the text, away from traditional depictions and inclinations. Another important aspect of this construction is about keeping distance to the ideals of modern life and novelts, even dissenting these ideals, as part of respecting the distinctive features of postmodern narration. “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” reflects best Mr. Toptaş’s sense of postmodern novels, and it comes first among the writings that best fit postmodern narration. This novel where the indispensible elements of the puzzle in constructing a novel such as event, person, time, place and narrator have become invisible makes the characteristics of postmodern narration felt strongly. In this paper, taking into consideration these characteristics, the postmodern features of this novel were examined and an analysis has been offered based on this examination. The novel titled “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” has been analyzed through the methods given in İsmet Emre’s book titled “Postmodernism and Literature”. The analysis is based on event chain, time concept, site construct; person establishment, perspective in the novel and internal components of postmodern text such as play concept, person view of subject and object, pastishe, montage, collage. The results have shown that the text titled “Pleasure with A Thousand Sadnesses” reflects competently the qualities of postmodern narration. Having extensively studied the literary identity and works of Hasan Ali TOPTAŞ, Yıldız Ecevit has expressed especially the multilayer structure of Toptaş’s texts, and the role of his distinguished and masterful performance in building this structure. Çimen Güray, another contributor to this field, pronounces the importance of qualified and cultured readers for post-modern narratives in general, and for Toptaş’s texts, specifically. This is because, in post-modern narratives, the reader re-fictionalizes and reproduces simultaneously with the author as he or she reads the text. Based on the texts she reviewed, Pelin Aslan stated the distinguished position of Toptaş in establishing the postmodern tradition in Turkish literature. I. INTERNAL MECHANISM OF THE TEXT A. Linguistic Mechanism Post-modernism has an anti-modernist nature which it exhibits when it comes to language as well. Indeed, modern thought has reconstructed the language in accordance with the grammar rules as a means of transmitting the discourse from center to the periphery, whereas post-modernism has used the methods including subject-verb disagreement, elliptical sentences, compound words, misspelling, omitting the punctuation so that it would eliminate each and every natural usage specific to modernism. As an extension of such understanding, one can observe all these aspects in the narrative of the text titled BHH (Bin Hüzünlü Haz which translates as A Thousand Sad Pleasures). Additionally, incomplete sentences followed by spaces, words with no spacing, or words lacking some letters are among the characteristics of linguistic performance as well. Thus, in post-modern writing the reader who plays an active role in the creation process of the narrative is supposed to fill in the blanks, and personally contribute to the writing process. B. The Concept of Game In this type of text in which the traditional narrator is replaced by the post-modern one, and the narrator and the reader exchange roles in a fiction of game, the narrator and the reader are so identified with each other that the narrator turns into the reader, and vice versa. Furthermore, just like a person talking to his/her own reflection in the mirror, these two acquire completely identical identities as separate reflections of a whole.C. From Individual to Subject The types or characters whose characte

Özet

Hasan Ali Toptaş, 1990'lı yıllardan itibaren Türk romanına önemli metinler kazandırmış yazarlarımızdan biridir. Özellikle modern romandan postmodern anlatıya geçiş sürecinde, roman türünde görülen evrilmenin başarılı örneklerini sunan eserleri ve avangardist tutumuyla Türk edebiyatının önemli bir dönemecinde yer alır. Toptaş metinlerini kaleme alırken geleneksel tanım ve beğeniden uzak anlatımlarını, dili, metnin en önemli unsuru haline getirerek kurgular, bu kurgunun diğer önemli özelliği ise postmodern anlatının kendine has niteliklerine bağlı olarak modern metinlerin ve modern hayat kurgusunun ideallerinden uzak, hatta bu ideallere muhalif oluşudur. Bin Hüzünlü Haz, onun metin anlayışını en iyi yansıtan, postmodern anlatı tamına en çok uyan metinlerinin başında gelir. Özellikle bir romanın inşasında kaçınılmaz olarak bütünün olmazsa olmaz parçaları olan olay, kişi, zaman, mekân ve anlatıcı unsurlarının ufalanıp görünmez hale geldiği bu eserde, postmodern anlatının özellikleri güçlü bir biçimde varlığını hissettirir. Bu çalışmada, eserin bu özelliklerinden hareketle postmodern anlatı olarak taşıdığı nitelikler incelenmiş ve metnin tahlili yapılmıştır. Bin Hüzünlü Haz adlı anlatı, İsmet Emre'nin Postmodernizm ve Edebiyat adlı kitabının yöntemleri kullanılarak çözümlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Çözümleme, romanda olay örgüsü, zaman kavramı, mekan kurgusu, şahıs kadrosu, bakış açısı ile postmodern metnin iç mekanizmaları olan oyun kavramı, bireyden özneye, nesneye bakış, pastiş, montaj, kolaj gibi öğeler üzerinden yapılmıştır. Çalışmada, Bin Hüzünlü Haz adlı anlatının postmodern niteliklerinin yetkin bir şekilde kullanıldığı sonucuna ulaşılmıştır