Istanbul rive gauche - Errances urbaines et bohème turque (1870-1980)
On the other side of the Golden Horn, facing Hagia Sophia and the Sultan's Palace, stretches a somewhat unusual district of Istanbul, Beyogu. In our contemporary imagination, the one we used to call Pera or "the Frankish city" remains a myth. Generations of writers and artists, both Turkish and foreign, rushed there and lost themselves in the 19th century, in search of modernity, otherness and avant-garde.
There, in this mirror of Paris, has bubbled all the intellectual and editorial Turkish life, punctuated by the beats and metamorphoses of the district since the 1870s. With the century and as its architectural landscape deteriorates, its ruins have become the scene of a constantly renewed bohemianism and the breeding ground for national production. Many Turkish artists draw inspiration from their writing brothers, the Loti and other Aragon.
They breathe the fascinating and subversive air of the cultural capitals of the time, Paris or New York, ready to follow in the footsteps of their masters, the Sartres or the Beauvoirs. There are written the texts which give their letters of nobility to Turkish literature today (Attilâ Ilhan, Ferit Edgü, Demir Özlü or Nedim Gürsel). Timour Muhidine leads us to this Latin Quarter in the East and, to better understand this century of Turkish bohemia, takes us between Tünel and Taksim Square, through alleys and places of sociability where modern art has developed.
« Et Beyoğlu fait irruption dans la vie de la cité,
pour le meilleur comme pour le pire. »
Cinq villes
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
« Pera, dit le réceptionniste pour répondre à ma question,
pera signifie au-delà. Au-delà d’Istanbul. »
Les Émigrants
W. G. Sebald
« Lesquels parmi les tiens as-tu rencontrés à Paris ?
Namik Kemal, Ziya Pacha, Mustapha Suphi
Et puis la jeunesse de ma mère :
elle fait de la peinture
elle parle français,
elle est la plus belle du monde.
Et puis j’ai rencontré aussi
les dix-sept ans de Mimi. »
Devinettes sur Paris
Nâzım Hikmet .
“And Beyoğlu burst into city life, for better or for worse. »Five cities Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
“Pera,” said the receptionist to answer my question, “pera means beyond. Beyond Istanbul. »The Emigrants W. G. Sebald
"Which of yours did you meet in Paris?" Namik Kemal, Ziya Pasha, Mustapha Suphi And then my mother's youth: she paints, speaks French, she is the most beautiful in the world. And then I also met Mimi's seventeen-year-old. »Riddles about Paris Nâzım Hikmet ..
"In the body of the text, to name Beyoğlu, we will alternately use the terms “Frankish city”, “Pera”, “Europeanized city or district”
and "Beyoğlu", according to the periods concerned and so as not to repeat. He
is the same set, several districts making up Galata (the part
port and low) and Pera (the top of the hill and its slopes or approaches) that
we group together under the name of Beyoğlu, an almost independent city
less in the literary imagination that interests us here."
Timour Muhidine
[1] Timour Muhidine teaches Turkish language and literature at Inalco. Responsible for the collection "Turkish Letters" at Actes Sud, he has edited many books including Paristanbul. Paris and Turkish Writers in the Twentieth Century (2000) and L'Autre Turkey. Literary reports (2014).
No comments:
Post a Comment