Yaban
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Context:
This is one of many of Karaosmanoglu's novels in which the writer/author/protagonist plays a very didactic role, as is explained in Jale Parla's book. Some of his other books include:
Kiralık Konak (1922): Tanzimat'tan I. Dünya Savaşı'nın sonuna kadar yetişmiş üç neslin düşünüş ve yaşayışlarındaki değişiklikleri ele alarak ailenin çöküşünü anlatır. Üç nesli barındıran konak, Osmanlı'nın sembolüdür. Seniha, Faik, Hakkı Celis hiçbir sağlam değere sahip değillerdir.
Nur Baba (1922): Anadolu'nun Türkleşmesinde ve İslamlaşmasında büyük önem taşıyan tekkelerin toplum için zararlı bir hale dönüşmelerini ele alır. Yakup Kadri'nin en çok eleştirilen eseridir.
Sodom ve Gomore (1928): İşgal altındaki Osmanlı'nın başkenti olan İstanbul anlatılır. İstanbul artık Tanrı'nın lanetine uğrayan şehirlere dönmüştür. Bu eserde kendi basit çıkarları için Türk zaferine sırt çevirmeye çalışan insanları eleştirel bir dille ele alır ve bu şehrin ancak ateşle temizleneceğine inanır.
Ankara (1934): Savaş Ankarası, Cumhuriyet Ankarası ile on yıl sonrası Ankarası hakkında hayallerini Ankara adlı eserinde yazar.
Summary:
first look at Yaban, which most blatantly thematizes the alienation of the intellectual. Ahmet Celai, the central character of the book, is a pasha's son from Istanbul, who lost his right arm during the First World War. He feels that as a handicapped soldier his personal life is over. Refusing to return to Istanbul, which is under occupation, he decides to go to the village of his aide-de-camp by the Sakarya River. He expects to be embraced as a war hero, and to be venerated for the sacri- fice of his arm for his country. Instead, he is hated as the cause of the present war, which is destroying the villagers' harvest and causing the death of their sons. They don't even notice his missing arm since more than half the people in the village are themselves handicapped: They are either blind, lame or hunchbacked. Ahmet Celal is a "yaban," an alien, an enemy who talks to them of being Turkish when they claim they are nothing but Muslims. Frustrated by their rejection, Ahmet Celal responds with equal contempt.
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Quotes:
"As each day passes, I comprehend much better that the Turkish intellectual, the educated Turk is an isolated solitary figure in this vast and desolate world called the Turkish country... As the Turk- ish intellectual goes inward toward the bottom of the country, which he regards as his own, he feels he is moving away from his roots. Even if he does not feel this, the emptiness surrounding him, the cold and repelling air around him, announces to him that he is a strange plant deracinated from his soil. Does the same abyss exist between the villagers and the educated of all lands?"
" You are guilty, you Turkish intellectual. What have you done for After sucking their blood for years and centuries, you've thrown this dilapidated land and for these impoverished human masses? the residue upon a heartless soil. And now you find you have the right to look down upon them... This thing that pains you is your creation"
Notes:
Berna Moran
The book might see disorganized on the surface, but the random events of the village is undergirded by the events of the independence war taking place in the background.
The real antagonism is not merely between village life and the Yaban, but between the ideals of nationalism and the struggle for independence vs. those villagers who are antagonistic at best and opposed to national identity.
-in a twist to naturalist novels, Yaban is more abstract, but uses mainly negative images of village life: villagers are disabled, bad smells are invoked (there is an affect theory paper laying in wait here). Compares villagers to animals.
-Not a real Anatolia but that which existed in the mind of a 1930s bureaucrat.