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language: Ottoman Turkish (English tr. Melih Levi and Monica M. Ringer)
country: Ottoman Empire/Turkey
year: 1875
form: novel
genre(s): literary
dates read: 6.3.19-9.3.19
aaaand just finished Ahmet Midhat’s Felâtun Bey and Râkım Efendi (tr. Melih Levi and Monica M. Ringer). this was objectively not the best book ever written. but. I extremely enjoyed the reading experience — the balance of humor and moralizing worked really well and made for a very engaging book.
Now, when you look at these two young men from the moral point of view…How perfect! We are offering you two kinds of morality by showing you the behavior of two young men of our time. You’re free to choose the one you prefer. You’re also free to dislike both of them!
there were, as we might expect from an Ottoman novel from 1875, problematic elements here, not least the fact that Janan (Râkım’s eventual wife) is a slave (she’s also only a teenager to Râkım’s 25). I don’t mean by anything positive I say about the book to downplay or minimize this aspect — although A. Holly Shissler’s afterword suggests that in the context of Ahmet Midhat’s œuvre as a whole this narrative choice should be understood differently. I think that some parts of the novel do suggest a certain unease about Janan’s status, but it’s not the focus of the text so these moments of unease are never really explored.
Now, we can cut the rest of this story of the Kağıthane outing short by saying, “They enjoyed themselves greatly and then returned home.” However, is there any need for that? If we were to cut everything short, we could’ve told this story in a single page rather than in an entire volume.
other than the fun melodrama, my favorite part of the book was definitely Ahmet Midhat’s metafictional interruptions. the self-awareness of the text was I think a large part of what made its moralizing work: if it had tried to play the morality tale aspect straight, it would have fallen flat. because he instead draws attention to what he’s doing, he gives the reader permission to find it obvious and a little ridiculous — which in turn, weirdly, I think inclines me to take it more seriously, because it feels less like an imposition.
“What happened to this poor girl? She has begun to look almost ghostly. Honest to God, it’s hard not to like her. Reading Persian poetry is her particular skill. Ah, see, isn’t it Hafez’s poetry that brought her to this state? I couldn’t predict that it would have had such an impact. How she listened to and absorbed the most passionate couplets with a fire in her heart! Now I realize she was poisoning herself with them. Alas, poor Jan, alas! If something happens to her, I swear I’ll die.”
there’s something to be said about the portrayal of Jan and Margaret (especially) in the context of other ~warnings about the danger of reading~ from the late 19th century, but I’m not really in a position to say it, lol.
anyway, fun book; I’m really disappointed now that there doesn’t seem to be any other Ottoman prose available in translation — I’d love to explore Ahmet Midhat’s work further, and I’m even more curious now about other writers from the 19th and early 20th centuries.