Tanzimat ve Servet-i Fünûn Dönemi Türk Romanında Kıyametvari Bir Son Olarak Ölüm
Esengül Sağlam CanGeçmişten bugüne, kurgusal anlatıların kapanışları ele alındığında, kurmacanın ve hayatın son noktaları arasında taklidî bir ilişki olduğu görülmektedir. Kurmacanın sınırları dâhilinde insan hayatını temsil eden roman türü de anlatının bitirilmesi hususunda hayata öykünmektedir. Bundan dolayı sona uygun metaforik bir durum olan ve mefhumun doğasına uygun olarak bilhassa anlatı kapanışlarında önem kazanan ölümün, nasıl ve hangi işlevlerle roman sonlarında yer bulduğu dikkate değer bir konu olarak öne çıkmaktadır. Roman sanatında ölüm, kahramanların maceralarını mutlak bir şekilde sonlandırma, ölümün şekli, ölümün algılanışı ve ölenin kimliği noktasında ortaya çıkan farklılıklardan dolayı geniş anlatım ve anlamlandırma imkânları sağlama işlevleriyle yazarların en çok başvurdukları kapanış temalarından biri olmuştur. Bu noktada, insanın varoluşunu bir başlangıç ve son ile ilişkilendirme ihtiyacını inceleyerek teorisini, gerçeklik ve kurgu, zaman ve hafıza, yaratılış (genesis) ve kıyamet (apokalips) arasındaki ilişkiler üzerine inşa eden Frank Kermode, ölüm ile kurgu arasındaki bağlantının çözümlenmesinde araştırmacılara farklı bakış açıları sunmaktadır. Bu çalışmada; kurgu, zaman ve dünyanın sonu arasındaki dinamikleri inceleyen Kermode’un görüşlerinden hareketle Tanzimat ve Servet-i Fünûn dönemi Türk romanında ölüm bir kıyamet teması olarak ele alınmıştır. Okura “bir son duygusu” verme ve “küçük bir kıyamet” yaşayan kahramanın bireysel yıkımını vurgulama işlevleriyle roman sonlarında yer alan ölüm mefhumunun süreç içerisindeki değişimi, romanın modernizasyonu çerçevesinde açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır.
Death as an Apocalyptic End in the Turkish Novel of Tanzimat and Servet-i Fünûn Periods
Esengül Sağlam CanConsidering the closure of fictional narratives from the past to the present, there is a mimetic relationship between the final points of fiction and life. The genre of the novel, which represents human life within the fictional limits, imitates life in terms of the conclusion of the narrative. Therefore, the function and characterisation of death, a convenient metaphor for the end by its nature, becomes particularly significant for narrative closures. In the art of fiction, death is a common theme that authors use for bringing the protagonists’ adventures to an absolute conclusion, offering a wide range of expression, and interpreting through the different types and perceptions of death and the identity of the dead. Frank Kermode examines the human’s need to associate his existence with a beginning and an end, and then builds his theory on the connections between reality and fiction, time and memory, genesis and apocalypse. The study stands out as a work that offers researchers different perspectives on the analysis of death and fiction. Based on Kermode’s analysis of the fiction, time and apocalypse, this study examines the phenomenon of death as an apocalyptic theme in the Turkish novels of the Tanzimat and Servet-i Fünûn periods. The transformation of the death in the process, which takes place at the end of the novel with the functions of providing “the sense of an ending” to the reader and emphasising the individual destruction of the protagonist who experiences a “micro-apocalypse”, is explained within the framework of the modernisation of the novel.
The endings, which Georg Lukács describes as “essential turning points on a precisely mapped path”, also mean the end of the fictional world, limited by the scope of the protagonist’s possible experiences. Narrative endings, which constitute one of the most significant thresholds of a fictional narrative, have been shaped according to different criteria in the history of literature. In parallel with the question of what an ideal fiction should be, ideal endings have also been one of the topics on which ideas have been produced. From myths, epics, fables, fairy tales and picaresque narratives to the rational and realistic novels of modernism, the phenomenon of “death” at the end of the fiction has been accorded great importance.
This study focuses on the phenomenon of death as an apocalyptic theme in the prominent Turkish novels of the Tanzimat and Servet-i Fünûn periods, drawing on the views of Frank Kermode, whose work The Sense of an Ending established a link between fiction, time, and apocalyptic thought. Frank Kermode’s thesis that all mythical, literary, or religious fictions is related to the concept of apocalypse, a theological worldview, gains significance in this issue by stating that the giving of meaning to life and events is always made real through fiction. According to Kermode, the apocalyptic themes that sustain the entire structure of a fictional narrative are both long-lasting and constantly changing. Just as the stories or themes of the end of humanity allow people to think about their own death, to make sense of their place in the cycle of life and time, their relationship to beginning and end, and to live together with chaos by humanising the reality of death. Thus, in the art of the novel, the hero’s correlation with death makes the reader reflect on various issues.
Analysing the exemplary novels from Taaşşuk-ı Tal’at ve Fitnat (1872) to Kırık Hayatlar (1901) within the framework of the concept of the apocalypse, the results show that there are similarities and differences in the perception of death at the end of the novels. In the first place, the apocalyptic effect of death is essential in both periods. A voice of “rebirth” rises from the endings of the Tanzimat novels, as both the victims and the guilty experience their own “micro-apocalypses” for the educational mission of the fiction. In these novels, which end with the physical death of the heroes, death is present as a phenomenon that closes a world with a tock sound, but it brings genesis with a new tick sound. In other words, in the Tanzimat novels written within the scope of the concept of chronos, which Kermode associates with the period of myths and epics, the tick-tock of time is more noticeable, and the beginning and ending in the fiction are more definite. Since the need for an ending requires the production of meaningful finals.
On the other hand, in the novels of Servet-i Fünûn, even if there is no physical death, there is a psychological death for the heroes whose souls are opened to the reader. This situation is related to the changes in the novel, both with the transition of fiction from chronos to kairos and with the transformation of the “collective” hero into the “unique” hero. In this period, the apocalypses appear as deep wounds in the soul. In the works of Halid Ziya and Mehmed Rauf, the phenomenon of tragedy came to the fore with the acceptance of the self, and the novel took on the identity of a crisis narrative. In the works of this period, death is not an objective annihilation as a product of collective discourse, but a destruction of the soul.
As it is seen, the relationship between death and the concept of apocalypse changes with the modernisation of literature. The common element in the novels of the Tanzimat and Servet-i Fünûn periods is that death or the disappointment after death takes place at the end to satisfy the reader’s need for absoluteness and completeness. This attitude changes in the unfinished / open-ended endings of the modernist novels in which the idea of apocalypse weakens. In the new process, the concept of death loses its meaning. The protagonists of the Tanzimat novels, who experience their own miniature-apocalypses by dying, and the apocalyptic protagonists of the Servet-i Fünûn novels, who are thrown out of the chronos cycle and remain in kairos, in a moment of eternal crisis, are replaced by the protagonists of the modernist novel, who question the existence and the meaninglessness of death and life as a matter of itself.
