Yollarda – European Literature Goes to Turkey / Turkish Literature Goes to Europe
The cultural caravan “Yollarda – European literature goes to Turkey/Turkish literature goes to Europe” passes thru Bucharest between 11th and 14th of may. The cultural project is visiting 24 cities from Turkey and 8 countries from Europe, and it belongs to the “Cultural Bridges” program. The writer Buket Uzuner and the pop-rock band “Model” joined the Turkish literature caravan in Bucharest. On a fixed schedule, the writer Buket Uzuner held meetings of lecture and discussions at the Romanian Institute of Culture, Museum of the Romanian Peasant, the University of Bucharest, and the International School of Bucharest.
Buket Uzuner is considered one of the most important writers in Turkey, although she refuses to say that she is writing Turkish literature. In her opinion, literature is universal, written for the people, and should not be separated because of a different language of culture. Her novels had been translated into 8 languages. The only one translated into Romanian is “Mediterranean Waltz”, from which the writer has read fragments at the Turkish literature caravan meetings. In each of the three meetings of lecture and discussions, the author Buket Uzuner has read a chapter of her novel, “Mediterranean Waltz”. The novel is about a civil war and a love story. In fact, the whole novel is a parallel between the civil war and the war every person has with itself, inside. Even the love story between three characters – two men and a woman- is becoming a drama, an internal war. During the whole action of the novel, the main character, Tuna, is trying to find out the true meaning of war. Tuna is taken away from home, into the army, to fight in the civil war; the questions he asks himself are: “What is a civil war?”, “Who is my enemy?”, “Do I have to kill my own neighbors?”. Tuna wants to create some sort of inventory: who kills who and why do we kill each other.
Amongst the fragments read from the novel “Mediterranean Waltz”, Buket Uzuner speaks about how much literature can influence our lives. She also tells us how important it is to have a guide which recommends you the best books to read. She always tells her readers and the literature lovers that if they are lucky enough to have such guidance, they will get used to this kind of books and “they will grow beautiful, like children who eat good, healthy food instead of fast-food”.
“In a man’s life, there is only one miracle, the other miracles we are told about exist only in the religious books”, says the writer. For her, this miracle was to have a good teacher and guide. “I had the luck to experience such miracle myself, in the person of the great Turkish poet Atilla Ilhan. Since I was just a child, he guided me to read good novels, so I can discover and know what good literature means. I can say this was a great fortune in my life… Also, Goethe was a sort of mentor to me, because Atilla Ilhan recommended him to me while I was still a child, and I started to know him thru his literature…influencing me. This is the miracle of life for me.” Her literature “relatives” as she likes calling her favorite authors, are Goethe, Dostoievsky and Cervantes.
And because the writer spoke with such pleasure about mentors or literature “relatives”, she recommended to the Romanian readers some of her favorite novels: “Istambul” by Orhan Pamuk, “The New York Trilogy” by Paul Auster, “The Curtain – Essay in seven parts” by Milan Kundera, and “A Separated Room” by Virginia Woolf.
Madalina Tichie, Teodora Stefan
