A private reading of Andre Gide's public Journal

Social Research, Fall, 2004 by Orhan Pamuk

I ASK MYSELF WHETHER IN GOING INTO ALL THIS DETAIL I AM LOSING sight of the real question. Is there really a contradiction between Gide's account of his journey to Istanbul and Turkey after the Balkan War and his dislike of the Turks, and the admiration felt by Tanpinar and a whole generation of Turkish writers for Gide? We admire writers for their own worlds, values, and literary skills, not for whether they approve of us, our country, or our culture. In his Diary of a Writer, published in installments in a newspaper, Dostoevsky describes what he saw on his first journey to France; he talks at length of French hypocrisy, and of how the sublime values of that country were fading and being replaced by money. But when he read these words later they did not stop Gide from admiring him, or from writing a marvelous book about Dostoevsky. In this respect, to the extent that he distanced himself from a narrow patriotism, I regard Tanpinar, who was an admirer of Dostoevsky who despised the French, as taking a "European" attitude.

When in 1862, fuming with rage, Dostoevsky declared that the concept of fraternity no longer existed in France, he went on to expand the topic, prefacing his remarks with the words, "In French nature and in occidental nature in general...." Here, when he identifies France with the Occident, there is no difference between Gide and Dostoevsky. Tanpinar's outlook is the same, but unlike Dostoevsky he did not feel an increasing anger toward France and the West, but an awkward admiration, mixed prickings of conscience.

I can now tackle my earlier question better: perhaps there is no contradiction in admiring a writer who scorns one's own culture, civilization, and nation; but there is a strong bond between the two states of mind--disdain and admiration. From the window through which I look out, the idea of Europe appears to be in the shadows of this bond. My image of Europe or the West is not a sunny, luminous, grandiose, and sublime idea. My image of the West is of a tension, a clash between hate and love, aspiration and disparagement.

I do not know whether Gide had to travel to Istanbul and Anatolia to discover that his own France, or Occidental civilization, was, in his own naive words, "the most beautiful of all"? But when Gide arrived in Istanbul I have no doubt that he set foot in an(other), different civilization from his own. For the past two centuries, Occidentalist, Ottoman, and Turkish intellectuals have been convinced, like Gide, that Istanbul and Anatolia, our places, are completely divorced from the West. But at this point, where Gide feels irritation and scorn, they feel longing and admiration, and experience a kind of identity crisis. When, like Tanpinar they begin to identify themselves excessively with Gide, either they silently pass over his disdainful comments about themselves, or at the opposite on the edge of Europe, torn between West and East, is obliged to have a faith in Europe even stronger than that of Andre Gide. The extent of Gide's influence on Turkish literature despite his tirade against the Turks and derisive opinion of them can perhaps be explained in this way.