CHAPTER 4 – HALIDE EDIP AND YAKUP KADRI
129
Delacroix’s
The Massacre of Chios
hanging on the walls of the Louvre which
showed how the Turks had massacred the Rum. “The value of a composition which
has been accepted as a national anthem is not only in its art, it is at the same time in
the historical moment it evokes”, he explains
57
.
According to Yakup Kadri, the Unionists had offered some members money or
teaching positions, even important administrative positions to some others. But
Ahmet Hâşim, Refik Hâlit and he himself resisted preserving both their material and
spiritual independence
58
.
Finally a story Yakup Kadri told Hasan-Âli Yücel is indicative of the reception of
the Fecr-i Âticiler’s literary novelties by the established reading public: one evening
the door of the room where the Fecr-i Âticiler were having a heated debate burst
open and Raşit Tahsin, a university professor of nervous diseases at the Faculty of
Medicine, came in uninvited and introduced himself. Having first confirmed that the
people in the room were actually the Fecr-i Âticiler, he read two poems aloud: one
by Celâl Sâhir whom he diagnosed as suffering from mental illness and another by
Hamdullah Suphi whom he diagnosed as suffering from the dangerous disease of the
delusional misperception of reality.
Recalling this incident in 1948, Yakup Kadri finished with a laugh and said that
Raşit Tahsin had only been reading poems and was only referring to poets… He had
57
Yücel, 60-61
58
Yücel, 68, 72
CHAPTER 4 – HALIDE EDIP AND YAKUP KADRI
130
not referred to prose...
59
Little did either Yakup Kadri or Raşit Tahsin suspect what
psychoanalytic methods would make of prose in later years
60
.
Yakup Kadri’s Fecr-i Âti period was one phase in the quest of an emerging writer for
a literary identity which he could not find by following more conventional paths. His
search would take him shortly afterwards to other innovative approaches such as the
Nev Yunanîlik
(Neo-Hellenism). Although Yakup Kadri did not share the open
political commitment of some other writers such as Halide Edip and although the
literary movements he was close to took a somewhat etherial approach to art he was
nonetheless not indifferent to social issues and these appear in his writing.
The prose Yakup Kadri published during this period - between 1909 and 1911-
consisted of short stories which appeared in the following periodicals:
Şiir ve
Tefekkür
(Poetry and Reflection),
Serveti Fünun
(Wealth of Sciences),
Eşref Dergisi
(Auspicious Review). The themes were drawn from personal experience from his life
in Manisa and Izmir and he used them as a kind of social critique of customs
prevalent not only in provincial societies but in Istanbul as well. In particular the
young Yakup Kadri was affected by the
baskın,
the unexpected attacks against
females who were suspected of not conforming with the accepted social morality,
and he makes it the subject of his first short story with the title ‘Baskın’ which was
published in
Şiir ve Tefekkür
(Poetry and Thought) in (1325) 1909. Women and their
position in society are central in Yakup Kadri’s work. As will be discussed in the
59
Yücel, 68-69
60
Serdar 16-19
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