Millennium of Turkish Literature : a concise History

The Flower of Darkness
I set foot on the soil of this world
as if I was making love to a sleeping woman
The hot bees of my eyes kept landing
on the bushes of silence and fl ying off again
All for nothing their feet were covered with fl owerdust
I am unrelenting pain the trees are deaf
Dawn’s distilled steel is no comfort for me
All for nothing day arrives its lances
cannot hoodwink me I have read
the fable of land and sea
the simple tale of birth and death
I found the Flower of Darkness in the forest
like the blindman’s armband with three dots
The sea’s desolate banner is all for nothing
The bird that carries the vision to its nest
The moon’s padlock over the sky all for nothing
Melih Cevdet Anday (1915–2002)

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s u g ge s t ed r e a di n g
i n de x
bio gr a phic a l n o t e s

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139
s u g ge s t ed r e a di n g
T
he list given here contains books in English relating to Turkish literature 
(translations, anthologies, histories, critical studies) published in North 
America, England, Turkey, and elsewhere from 1850 on. It is not a complete or 
exhaustive list: numerous titles not available in libraries or for sale have not been 
included. (No works by Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, who wrote his entire corpus in 
Persian, are included in this list.)
Th
e list demonstrates that whereas about twenty titles were published in Eng-
lish from 1850 to 1950, the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century has seen the 
publication of more than one hundred titles.
1850 
Turkish Evening Entertainments: Th
e Wonders of Remarkable Inci-
dents,
John P. Brown, trans. (New York: Putnam).
1854 
Pleasing Tales of Khoja Nasr-iddeen Efendi,
William Burchardt 
Bater (London).
1884 
Th
e Turkish Jester; or, the Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Efendi,
George Barrow, trans. (Ipswich, U.K.: W. Webber).
1898 
Told in the Coff ee House,
Cyrus Adler and Allan Ramsay (New 
York: Macmillan).
1900–1909 
A History of Ottoman Poetry,
6 vols., E. J. W. Gibb (London: Luzac; 
reprint, Cambridge, U.K.: Trustees of the “E. J. W. Gibb Memorial,” 
1963–84).
1901 
Ottoman Literature: Th
e Poets and Poetry of Turkey,
E. J. W. Gibb 
(London: M. W. Dunne).
1901 
Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales,
Ignácz Kúnos, comp. (London: 
A. H. Bullen).
1901 
Turkish Literature: Comprising Fables, Belles-Lettres, and Sacred 
Traditions,
Epiphanius Wilson, trans. (London: Colonial).
1913 
Forty-Four Turkish Fairy Tales,
Ignácz Kúnos (London: Harrap).
1916 
Th
e Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Eff endi,
George Borrow, trans. 
(Cleveland, Ohio: Clerk’s).

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140
Suggested Reading
1923 
Th
e Khoja: Tales of Nasr-ed-din,
Henry Dudley Barnham, trans. 
(London: Nisbet).
1924 
Th
e Shirt of Flame,
Halide Edib Adıvar (New York: Duffi
eld).
1926 
Memoirs of Halide Edip,
Halide Edib Adıvar (New York: Century); 
reprinted as 
House with Wisteria: Memoirs of Halide Edib
with an 
introduction by Sibel Erol (Charlottesville, Va.: Leopolis, 2003).
1933