The Commotion of the Chambord Chateau Brought to the Ottoman Stage: Yi̇rmi̇ Çocuklu Bi̇r Adam yahut Fettan Zaman İnsana Neler Yapmaz
Çiğdem Kurt WilliamsThe “Age of Translations” (1869-1882) was a period in which the men of Ottoman theater provided theater companies with plays to be performed in Turkish, especially at Güllü Agop’s “Osmanlı Tiyatrosu” (“Ottoman Theater”), and these new plays were written using different techniques of text production. By translating and adapting new French plays that were either considered classics or were popular at the time into Turkish, or by rewriting them in Turkish, they created an entirely new repertoire for the theater. Mehmet Hilmi’s Yirmi Çocuklu Bir Adam yahut Fettan Zaman İnsana Neler Yapmaz (The Man with 20 Children or What can't Cunning Time do to People), an adaptation of Molière’s Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, is one of the more successful examples of this. This article will examine exactly how Mehmet Hilmi transformed the source text to make it compatible, both in terms of culture and aesthetics, to the Ottoman audiences for which these plays would be performed.
Chambord Şatosu’ndan Osmanlı Sahnelerine Taşınan Şamata: Yirmi Çocuklu Bir Adam yahut Fettan Zaman İnsana Neler Yapmaz
Çiğdem Kurt Williams“Çeviriler Çağı” (1869-1882), Osmanlı tiyatro adamlarının, Türkçe tiyatro yapan kumpanyaları, özellikle de Güllü Agop’un “Osmanlı Tiyatrosu”nu farklı metin üretme tekniklerini kullanarak yarattıkları yeni oyunlarla besledikleri bir dönem olmuştur. Çevirmenler, artık klasikleşen ya da o dönem revaçta olan yeni Fransız oyunlarını Türkçeye çevirerek, uyarlayarak, Türkçede yeniden yazarak yeni bir tiyatro repertuvarı oluşturmuşlardır. Mehmet Hilmi’nin Molière’in Monsieur de Pourceaugnac’ından yaptığı Yirmi Çocuklu Bir Adam yahut Fettan Zaman İnsana Neler Yapmaz başlıklı çevirisi de bu repertuvarın sahnede çok tutmuş başarılı örneklerindendir. Bu makalede çevirmen Mehmet Hilmi’nin kaynak metni Osmanlı seyircinin beğenisine uygun hale getirmek için ne tür bir kültürel ve estetik dönüşümden geçirdiği incelenecektir.
The “Age of Translations” (1869-1882) was a period in which the men of Ottoman theater provided theater companies with plays to be performed into Turkish, especially at Güllü Agop’s “Osmanlı Tiyatrosu”, and these new plays were written using different techniques of text production. By translating and adapting new French plays that were either considered classics or were popular at the time into Turkish, or by rewriting them in Turkish, they created an entirely new repertoire for the theater. Mehmet Hilmi’s Yirmi Çocuklu Bir Adam yahut Fettan Zaman İnsana Neler Yapmaz (The Man with 20 Children or What can’t Cunning Time do to People), an adaptation of Molière’s Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, is one of the more successful examples of this. Mehmet Hilmi transformed the source text to make it compatible, both in terms of culture and aesthetics, to the Ottoman audiences for which these plays would be performed and produced an “acceptable” translation. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac was a form of palace entertainment that includes music and dance, produced by Molière and Lully for Louis XIV. The play follows the downfall of an unwanted suitor, a common theme in Commedia dell’arte. The play, like many others in Commedia dell’arte, displays a loose and additive dramatic structure: the story isn’t of the utmost importance and the games played on the unwanted suitor Monsieur de Pourceaugnac are sequentially loosely tied together. These games are designed by Sbrigani to discredit Monsieur de Pourceaugnac in the eyes of his potential future father-in-law, Oronte, and to remove any obstacles to the union of Julie and Éraste, who love each other. In each new scene, the audience encounters a new trap set to break Monsieur de Pourceaugnac’s determination and to discourage him from getting married. By the end he gives up and returns to his homeland. Yirmi Çocuklu Bir Adam is a rewriting in which Mehmet Hilmi clearly felt comparatively uninhibited by any norms of translations and used all means and methods to reorganize the source text. Mehmet Hilmi changed the order of the scenes and discarded large parts of others. Almost all of the music, dance and ballet were scrapped in his translation. The parts at the end of the first act were kept, though transformed completely in the target text. There are fewer people in the target text than in the source text. In addition to singers, musicians and dancers, Mehmet Hilmi also cast aside some of the more minor characters. He also brought Molière’s other characters into an Ottoman context, often with names that would be recognized by the Ottoman audience as a particular type of character. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac thus became İbiş Ağa a common character in popular Ottoman theater. Unlike in the source text, no ethnic or geographical origin is attributed to him in the target text. In the source text, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac is bombarded with claims that he is sick in order to discredit him and send him back to his hometown. Mehmet Hilmi shortens this scene considerably and erases various characters from it entirely. The conversation between İbiş Ağa and Musa Ağa (Oronte in the source text) is reminiscent of Karagöz and Hacivat with much word play one after the other, a standard source of entertainment for Ottoman audiences. This type of word play is repeated later in the conversation between İbiş Ağa’s two fake wives. They both claim that he is their husband and engage in a fierce debate for comedic effect. This scene is similar to one of the scenes in Ortaklar, a well-known Karagöz play. The third act of Monsieur de Pourceaugnac presents another interesting example of the intersection between Ottoman theater and Molière. İbiş Ağa leaves the city in the guise of a woman at the suggestion of Fitne Kumkuması (Sbrigani in the source text). He wears traditional Ottoman women’s clothing and covers his face. This theme plays out also in many Karagöz plays wherein the main characters (Karagöz in Sahte Gelin, Hacivat in Salıncak) dress as women. These show how Mehmet Hilmi transformed the source text into something immediately recognizable in the context of Ottoman culture and the popular theater, creating a play at once both original and familiar.
