"Bir Edebi Fikir Olarak Terslik: Fernando Pessoa'nın Modernizminde Edgar Allan Poe'nun İzleri"
"Perversity as a Literary Idea: Traces of Edgar Allan Poe in Fernando Pessoa's Modernism"
Hakan Atay | Hivren Demir Atay
Portekizli şair ve yazar Fernando Pessoa, farklı isim ve kimliklerle oluşturduğu külliyatıyla yirminci yüzyıl modernist edebiyatının en önemli figürleri arasında yer almıştır. Yaşarken yayımladığı yapıtlarının yanında, ölümünden sonra birkaç sandıktan çıkan ve zaman içerisinde okurla buluşan el yazmaları da Pessoa’nın iyi bir dünya edebiyatı okuru olduğunu açıklıkla gösterir. Çocukluk ve ilk gençlik yıllarını geçirdiği Güney Afrika’da İngilizce öğrenim gördüğü için Anglo-Amerikan edebiyatına özel bir ilgi duyan Pessoa, hayatı boyunca Amerikalı şair ve yazar Edgar Allan Poe’yu okumayı sürdürmüş, Poe’nun kimi yapıtlarını Portekizceye çevirmiş, kimi öykülerini çağrıştıran öyküler kaleme almıştır. Bu yazı, Poe’nun bir kompozisyon felsefesi oluştururken ortaya koyduğu terslik fikriyle Pessoa’nı...
"The Literary Turn: Comparative Literature as Deconstructive Pedagogy"
Hakan Atay | Hivren Demir Atay
Deconstruction as a mode of thinking has long informed Comparative Literature studies, especially through the influence of the Yale School in the 1970s. Having always been exposed to criticism for performing unworldly readings, blurring real and political problems, and using theoretical jargon with no practical consequences, deconstruction is now considered an obsolete style of approaching literary texts. More than two decades after the death of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), the most prominent philosopher of deconstruction, this article questions the assumed tension between theory and praxis in the studies of Comparative Literature. It argues that problematizing the structure of representation, as Comparative Literature scholar Christopher Fynsk (b. 1952) suggested, has practical consequenc...
"Feyyaz Kayacan's Art of War: Multiculturalism and Surrealism in the Shelter Stories"
Hivren Demir Atay
Feyyaz Kayacan, one of the pioneering figures of the Turkish short story, pursued a multicultural life and published his works in French, English, and Turkish. His literary journeys across languages and cultures not only enabled him to get in touch with the literary and artistic movements of his time but also allowed him to take an active part in the surrealist groups in London. After surveying Kayacan’s international identity and his quest for belonging both in his actual life and in his short fiction, this article concentrates on The Shelter Stories (Sığınak Hikâyeleri, 1962), a collection of the short stories that portray the Londoners during the Second World War. It traces the possible sources that might have incited Kayacan’s imagination in writing such idiosyncratic short stories ful...
"Turning the Screws on a Life: A Literary Experiment with Fitzgerald, Wilson, and James"
Hakan Atay | Hivren Demir Atay
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze often expresses his belief in the power of experimentation in writing and praises Anglo-American literature for its venture into experimenting with lives. According to him, reading a long list of Anglo-American writers, including Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald, shows us that the sense of a life cannot be grasped, as it is full of unknown materials and their obscure, immaterial effects. Deleuze argues that healthy writers, having faced the impossibility of encompassing the entirety of a life, create lines of flight, move along with them, and discover worlds that enable themselves to transform. Then writing, as a process of becoming, turns out to be impersonal, while cracks and ruptures, often considered failures in life, appear as opportunities for lit...