P. S. The cat is still alive

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B

78

when you write outside your original 

language, I would not say my mother 

tongue because it was not the 

language of my mother but my nurse. 

But my first language. 

When I write in Spanish, for instance, 

there is a small moment of very 

brief second of translation. My mind 

seems to form certain ideas in English 

but then I wrote them in Spanish. 

The second thing is very important. 

When you begin to think in another 

language, which you’ll write, your 

ideas change. It is very important 

to understand to what point the 

language in which you write or 

speak or think, affects the thoughts 

themselves, the ideas themselves. 

You do not have the same notions in 

English as in Turkish. You do not have 

same notions in Chinese as in Greek. 

Because the syntax of a language 

allows the formation of certain ideas 

that are not allowed or not easily 

allowed in another. I will give you an 

example: There is a common device 

in literature which is getting to the 

reader to play the game of fiction. The 

reader knows that this is an invented 

story. But to help the reader play the 

game, the writer will say “I found the 

story in a manuscript hidden in a box. 

This is a true story.” Or for instance 

the writer will say “I cannot give you 

the facts because the characters are 

still living but I will call the characters 

so and so. I won`t give you the real 

elements to make you believe that it 

is real.” 

The most famous novel in Spanish, 

Don Quijote, begins with in a literal 

English translation, “In a place of La 

Mancha whose name I do not want to 

remember.”  

If Cervantes would write it in English 

and he thought “I will play that game 

and not tell the reader the name of 

the village so that the reader will 

believe it is real,” he would have 

started to write in a place and then 

immediately because of the music 

of the language, he would say, there 

is syllable missing. He cannot say 

in English “in a certain place” you 

have to say “in a certain place of 

La Mancha.” So, you add that word 

nothing much changes. But you 

come to whose name I do not want 

to remember that is very clumsy 

in English. So, if he would write in 

English, the syntax and music of the 

language would not allow him to 

express that idea in the same way in 

Spanish. So, that would be a different 

idea. 

One of the most famous novels in 

English, Moby Dick, begins with the 

same device, “Call me Ishmael.” And 

“Call me Ishmael,” is the same device 

because he does not say “My name is 

Ishmael,” or “There was a man called 

Ishmael,” He says “Call me Ishmael,” 

like “Call me whatever you want,”  but 

“Let’s say Ishmael.” So, he introduces 

that doubt. But if Melville would 

write in Spanish, in Spanish, he would 

not have been able to say “Call me 

Ishmael.” Because “Call me Ishmael” in 

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English addresses the readers in the 

entire universe. The readers plural, 

the reader singular, the reader who is 

a friend, the reader who is unknown, 

the reader in group. Because “Call me”  

addresses the plural, the singular, the 

formal, the intimate. In Spanish you 

have to make a choice. You have to 

change according to whom you want 

to address and the effect is spoilt. 

You are eliminating the notion of 

universal audience. So Melville would 

not have written like if it were written 

in Spanish. But this happens in much 

more fundamental ways. Since you 

are fluent in Turkish and English, you 

will know there are certain moments 

that you have an idea in Turkish. 

That is almost impossible to put 

into English and that you will have 

to find a different way of trying to 

come to the same idea. But that is the 

problem of translation. 

What would you like to say 

about translators?

I think that translation makes 

clear the fundamental problems 

of language. But translator is the 

keenest reader, the most careful 

reader who is able to go in depth into 

a text. Because the translator has to 

take the text part by part and rebuild 

it in another language. But the act 

of translation poses a much more 

essential question: “What is a work of 

art?” “What is a text?” 

If we revert to Tanpınar, “Time in 

Bursa” consists of the words he chose 

to write the poem. The notion of time 

in the poem is implicit and it implies 

Turkish culture thrown back to 

Ottoman period and a whole poem 

is regulated by a certain grammar 

and the words are in a certain order. 

Then imagine that you take the 

words, the music, grammar, cultural 

connotations in a way replacing by 

others. Do you still have a poem by 

Tanpınar called “Time in Bursa”? 

Your conference was on “The 

Dangers on Curiosity.” What 

would you like to say about it?

The lecture is based on my new book, 

which will be out in a few months 

in English and it’s about the idea 

of curiosity. I am interested in the 

questions that we asked not in the 

answers. The answers are away not 

going forward, once you have an 

answer it closes the door, which is 

why literature is made of questions 

not of answers. But asking questions 

in every culture has been considered 

a good thing and a bad thing. It has 

been considered something should 

be encouraged and something that 

should be forbidden. I am interested 

to see how we play with those two 

notions. What freedom we claim 

for our curiosity within these two 

notions?

How would you comment 

the curiosity notion in the 

literature?

We said first that a work of art, a 

literary text consists of failures. 

Mallarmé spoke of the muse of 

impossibility. So the muse that 

inspires you to do something 

impossible. So, when literature 

approaches subject when Flaubert 

writes Madame Bovary. However 

well written and well-constructed 

and well thought work -if it works 

as a literary work- will not reach a 

definitive conclusion. “Is Madame 

Bovary guilty or not?” ,“Is she fully 

conscious what she is doing or not?”, 

“Does she want to commit suicide or 

not?”, “Is she right to have an affair or 

not?” ,“Is Monsieur Bovary guilty for 

not understanding her or wants to 

help her by allowing her to come into 

her own?” The novel does not answer 

any of those questions. So, the genius 

of Flaubert allows us to follow the 

development of those questions, 

but then it remains at the verge of 

an answer. The work of art exists in 

the tension between the expectation 

of an answer and the asking of a 

question. If the work of art can hold 

that tension then we continue to 

read it.  

B

79

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