A private reading of Andre Gide's public Journal

Social Research, Fall, 2004 by Orhan Pamuk

The Swedish Academy praised Gide's writings as "a form of the passionate love of truth that since Montaigne and Rousseau has become a necessity in French literature." Such a sincere passion for the truth of his own feelings and impressions prompted Gide to say something else no one else had the courage to voice. After his return from Turkey he remarked of Europe: "For too long I thought that there was more than one civilization, more than one culture that could rightfully claim our love and deserve our enthusiasm.... Now I know that our occidental (I was about to say French) civilization is not only the most beautiful; I believe, I know that it is the only one" (20).

These words by Gide, which could easily win him a prize for the politically most incorrect comment at an American university, illustrate that a passionate love for truth does not always lead to a politically correct statement.

But my object here is not to dwell on Gide's devastating honesty, or to condemn him for his undisguised reclaims. I love Gide, his work, his life, and his values just as Tanpinar did. In my childhood and youth his books were much loved in Turkey. May father had all of them in his library; and I experienced all the love of Gide previous generations had felt.

I know that I can best approach the concept of Europe from this angle: by simultaneously thinking of the dislike Gide felt for other civilizations--for my civilization specifically--and the great admiration Tanpinar felt for Gide and through him for Europe. I can only express what Europe means for me in terms of this combination of contempt and admiration; love and hate; revulsion and attraction.

At one point in his article, which he concludes with praise of Gide's "pure thought" and "sense of justice," Tanpinar intimates that he is aware of these lines in the Journal (Tanpinar, 1995: 477). But with understandable difference, he does not go into detail. Tanpinar's teacher and mentor, Yahya Kemal, one of the greatest twentieth-century Turkish poets, had also read Gide's account of his visit to Turkey: this came to light in a letter addressed to A. S. Hisar and published after his death in which he described these notes as "a travel diary which sets out to revile the Turkish character with the most poisonous animosity." He complains to his fellow writer, "Of all the defamatory writing against us ever written, this is the most venomous.... It vexed me to read it" (Beyatli, 1990: 97). An entire generation had read these pages by Gide, and like an indiscretion to be passed over in silence had, apart from a little whispering, behaved as if they had never been written or they had been written in a locked diary. Not surprisingly, when selections from Gide's Journal were translated into Turkish and published by the Ministry of Education, his remarks about Turkey were quietly left out.

In other articles Tanpinar writes about the unmistakable influence on Turkish poetry of Gide's book Les nourritures terrestres (Fruits of the Earth) (Tanpinar, 1995: 477). The custom among many Turkish writers to keep a diary for publication before their death comes from Gide. A style of diary inspired by Gide's Journal, written more in anger and denunciation than as confession, was made popular by Atac, the most influential critic of the Turkish republic's early years, and found a following among the next generation of critics too.