Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar ( born June 23, 1901 in Istanbul, † January 24, 1962 ) was a Turkish writer and university teacher. He was known primarily for his work " Huzur " ( German: " peace of mind ", published in 1949 ).

Influences

Tanpınar was significantly influenced by poets such as Marcel Proust, Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry, especially Valéry's thoughts on aesthetics and philosophy of the arts influenced his literary development. Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson, he was reading at a young age. Great influence exercised his fatherly friend, the Turkish poet Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1884-1958) on him.

Career

The decision to become a man of letters, fell when he had met as a student, the poet Yahya Kemal Beyatli: With rich spiritual experiences and simultaneously driven by a thirst for knowledge, Tanpınar went in 1918 to Istanbul and only began a teaching degree, joined the literature about because Kemal Beyatli (1884 - 1958), who was then already famous poet, taught in this field. Yahya Kemal helped him " from the world of feelings in the world of thought.

After graduating in 1923 Tanpınar was until 1932 in Erzurum, Konya and Ankara as a high school teacher and later as a high school teacher. On his return to Istanbul, he taught at the famous school in Kadıköy, after the death of the poet Ahmet Hasims he became its successor: Teacher of art history, mythology and aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts ( Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi ). 1939 to mark the centennial anniversary of the Tanzimat Decree, appointed him the then Culture Minister Hasan Ali Yücel, professor of Turkish literature of the Tanzimat period at the University of Istanbul. Tanpınar was an outstanding, versatile and competent operator of literary research and expressed his poetic touch this faculty for his term of office on.

From 1942 to 1946, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar deputy of the Republican People's Party, then a short time school inspector. Later he headed until his death in the Chair of Modern Literature at türkologischen Institute of Istanbul University. He is buried next to his friend Yahya Kemal Beyatli in the cemetery Asiyan Mezarlığı below the fortress Rumeli.

Tributes

The Nobel Prize winner for literature Orhan Pamuk designated Huzur as important novel that was ever written about Istanbul. Stefan Weidner, chief editor of the magazine Art & Thought, called the novel in a meeting in the weekly Die Zeit, a " Turkish Magic Mountain".

Works

Tanpınar published except for a few poems, a novel, some articles and essays, only in the daily press and in literary magazines. His only book of poems appeared in 1961 and consisted of 37 poems. Nevertheless, he is considered primarily as a poet. His satirical novel Huzur ( peace of mind ) was published before his death in 1949, all the other novels were published posthumously. His novel The clock adjustment Institute was published in 2008 in German by Hanser Verlag.

His letters were made available by the Turkologin Zeynep Kerman, which has the comprehensive over 4,000 pages manuscripts (mostly in Arabic script ) ordered and partially popped itself.

Translation

• Peace of mind, translated by Christoph Neumann, Zurich 2008, ISBN 3-293-10013-9