311

 FROM CONTEMPLATION TO SPECTACLE:

TRANSFORMATION OF THE WAY OF SEEING IN THE 19TH CENTURY

ABSTRACT

In this study, by suggesting two different ways of seeing as contemplative and

spectatorial, which are based on the distinction made between the concepts of

tefekkür (contemplation) and temaşa (spectacle), the transformation of worldview

experienced by the Ottomans in the modernization process taking place in the 19th

century is interpreted through the transformation of the way of seeing in the Ottoman

culture. In the process of Westernization, the way of seeing based on contemplation –

which was prevailing in Ottoman culture– gradually turned into the way of seeing

based on spectacle. This transformation process can be examined in four different

stages: religious, metaphysical, naturalist and impressionist. In this transformation

process, in which each stage develops around a unique characteristic, the view

towards reason, nature and the individual has also changed. Accordingly, while the

religious stage is shaped around the stylization tendency; the metaphysical stage is

dominated by a kind of indecision between two ways of seeing. While the naturalist

stage is determined by the picturesque attitude; impressionist gaze dominates the

impressionist stage. Since the art forms in which contemplative and spectatorial way

of seeing were most visible in the Ottoman Empire were poetry and canvas painting

respectively, these four stages and transition between them have been examined on

literary and visual planes, through the works of poets and painters from successive

generations. In this context, through the transformation between two different ways

of seeing, this study aims to suggest a different interpretation concerning the change

in the Ottoman worldview as a result of Westernization and modernization processes

in the 19th century. Keywords: contemplation, spectacle, way of seeing, worldview,

Westernization, Ottoman Modernization

v

ÖZET

Bu çalışmada, tefekkür [contemplation] ve temaşa [spectacle] kavramları

arasında yapılan ayrım üzerinden, tefekküre dayalı ve temaşaya dayalı olmak üzere

iki farklı görme biçimi önerilerek, on dokuzuncu yüzyılda yaşanan modernleşme

sürecinde Osmanlının deneyimlediği zihniyet dönüşümü, görme biçimindeki

dönüşüm üzerinden yorumlanır. Batılılaşma sürecinde, Osmanlı kültüründe egemen

olan tefekküre dayalı görme biçimi aşamalı olarak temaşaya dayalı görme biçimine

dönüşmüştür. Bu dönüşüm süreci, dinsel, metafizik, doğalcı ve izlenimci olmak

üzere dört farklı aşamada incelenebilir. Her bir aşamanın kendine özgü bir

karakteristik etrafında geliştiği bu dönüşüm sürecinde, usa, doğaya ve bireye yönelik

bakış da değişmiştir. Buna göre dinsel aşama biçemleme eğilimi etrafında

şekillenirken; metafizik aşamaya iki görme biçimi arasında yaşanan bir tür

kararsızlık hâkimdir. Doğalcı aşama pitoresk tavır tarafından belirlenirken; izlenimci

aşamaya izlenimci bakış egemendir. Osmanlıda tefekküre dayalı ve temaşaya dayalı

görme biçimlerinin en görünür olduğu sanat biçimleri –sırasıyla– şiir ve tuval resmi

olduğundan, bu dört aşama ve aşamalar arasındaki geçiş, farklı kuşaklara ait şair ve

ressamların yapıtları üzerinden incelenmiştir. Bu çerçevede bu çalışma, iki farklı

görme biçimi arasındaki dönüşüm üzerinden, Batılılaşma ve modernleşme süreçlerini

takiben Osmanlının on dokuzuncu yüzyılda yaşadığı zihniyet dönüşümüne ilişkin

farklı bir yorum getirmeyi amaçlamaktadır.

Anahtar sözcükler: tefekkür, temaşa, görme biçimi, dünya görüşü, zihniyet,

Batılılaşma, Osmanlı Modernleşmesi

vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

From the beginning to the end, there has been so much guidance and support

from so many people for this work that I would like to acknowledge each and every

one of them.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Asst. Prof. Dr.

Özlem Özkal, without her guidance and advice this dissertation would not be

possible. With her questions, the breakthroughs she made happen, by always

believing, trusting and supporting me unconditionally, Asst. Prof. Dr. Özlem Özkal

helped me immensely all throughout my Ph.D. journey. I would like to thank Asst.

Prof Dr. Metin Çavuş and Asst. Prof. Dr. Saliha Türkmenoğlu Berkan, who

provided me with questions, comments and suggestions that helped me to finalize

this work not only in terms of content but also in form, and who gave me the greatest

support by believing and trusting me.

I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Dilek Kaya, who has been my advisor during my

master’s studies and who paved the way for my further academic studies with her

support during the most difficult times. I also thank Asst. Prof. Dr. Candan Türkkan

Ghosh for attending my dissertation defense and for her valuable comments and

suggestions.

I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Alpay Er, who helped me frame my work with

his inspiring questions and striking conclusions and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Simge Esin

Orhun, whom I have started my Ph.D. journey with, albeit on a completely different

subject, and who had a great share in my acceptance to this Ph.D. program. I am also

grateful to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dilek Hocaoğlu and Asst. Prof. Dr. Özge Gül for being a

part of my Ph.D. qualifying jury and encouraging me to undertake this research

work.

vii

To my family; I would also like to thank Duygu, my life partner and best

friend, who has worked as hard as I did to complete this work, who lifts me up every

time I fall, who shows patience in all circumstances, who always loves me, and

whom I love more than anyone else in this life. I thank my son Bulut for his patience

and love. I am thankful to Ömer Beykal, who supports me and my family without

question, who is always there for us, whom I look up to always. I also thank Sıdıka

Beykal and my sister-in-law Burcu Beykal for their continuous support. I would also

like to thank my mother Şükran İz, my father İsmail İz and my sister Merve İz who

have helped me become who I am today and also for their belief in me always.

I am grateful to my friends Baran Akkuş and Sinem Aydınlı, who spent hours

listening to my ideas, troubles, delusions, questions and who have supported me.

And I thank my dear friend Sinan Şencan, one of the most beautiful people in the

world, who is no longer with us today. I would also like to thank Ceren Aydos and

Sevda İşçi from OZU Institute of Social Sciences and Selen Erşahin from OZU

library for all their valuable support.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... İV

ÖZET ........................................................................................................................................ v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................................................................................................... viii

LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................. x

1. CHAPTER 1 ......................................................................................................................... 1

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 The Aim of the Study ..................................................................................................... 1

1.2 The Scope of the Study .................................................................................................. 5

1.3 Methodology .................................................................................................................. 9

1.3.1 On the Relationship between Different Stages and Generations .......................... 10

1.3.2 On the Choice of Poetry and Painting .................................................................. 11

1.3.3 On Considering Landscape and Its Depiction as Filters ...................................... 13

1.3.4 On the Notions of Nature, Environment and Landscape ..................................... 14

1.3.5 On the Notions of Truth, Reality and Appearance ............................................... 17

1.4 Limitations of the Study .............................................................................................. 20

2. CHAPTER 2 ....................................................................................................................... 22

FROM THEŌRIA TO SPECTACLE .................................................................................... 22

2.1 On Modernity and Visuality ........................................................................................ 22

2.2 On Definition of Temaşa ............................................................................................. 26

2.2.1 On Definition of Contemplation ........................................................................... 28

2.2.2 From Theōria to Contemplatio ............................................................................. 29

2.2.3 From Contemplatio to Tafakkur ........................................................................... 32

2.2.4 Usage Examples of Temaşa, Tefekkür and Contemplation ................................. 37

2.2.5 Temaşa or Tefekkür: Seeing and Seeing That ...................................................... 42

2.3 Contemplative vs. Spectatorial Worldviews ................................................................ 52

2.4 Confrontation of Two Worldviews .............................................................................. 57

2.5 On the Differences Between “Oriental”and “Occidental” Worldviews ...................... 65

3. CHAPTER 3 ....................................................................................................................... 82

RELIGIOUS STAGE: THE NATURE OF CONTEMPLATIVE WAY OF SEEING ......... 82

3.1 Contemplative Way of Seeing in Divan Poetry ........................................................... 83

3.1.1 The Palace Metaphor ............................................................................................ 86

3.1.2 The Conception of Nature in Divan Poetry .......................................................... 94

3.1.2.1 The Concept of Garden in the Ottoman Culture ........................................... 95

3.2 Stylization Tendency in Divan Poetry and Miniature .................................................. 99

3.2.1 Stylization Tendency and Its Roots in Islamic Aniconism ................................ 100

3.3 Contemplative Way of Seeing in Miniatures ............................................................. 112

3.3.1 Use of Perspective .............................................................................................. 112

3.3.2 Uses of Light, Shadow and Color ....................................................................... 114

3.3.3 Representation of Nature In Miniatures ............................................................. 115

3.3.4 Narrative in Miniatures ....................................................................................... 122

ix

3.3.5 From Narrative to Landscape in Miniatures ....................................................... 126

4. CHAPTER 4 ..................................................................................................................... 130

METAPHYSICAL STAGE: THE CONFLICT OF TWO WAYS OF SEEING ................ 130

4.1 Three Discoveries: Reason, Nature and the Individual ............................................. 132

4.1.1 The Discovery of Reason ................................................................................... 137

4.1.1.1 Şinasi ........................................................................................................... 137

4.1.1.2 Ziya Pasha ................................................................................................... 142

4.1.2 Discovery of Nature ........................................................................................... 148

4.1.2.1 Namık Kemal .............................................................................................. 149

4.1.2.2 Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem .......................................................................... 152

4.1.2.3 Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan .............................................................................. 159

4.2 The Metaphysical Stage on the Visual Plane ............................................................. 163

4.2.1 Landscape in Murals ........................................................................................... 163

4.2.2 Landscape in Canvas Painting ............................................................................ 165

4.2.3 The Effect of Photography on Painting .............................................................. 167

4.2.4. Şeker Ahmet Pasha ............................................................................................ 171

5. CHAPTER 5 ..................................................................................................................... 184

NATURALIST STAGE: ADVENT OF THE SPECTATORIAL WAY OF SEEING ....... 184

5.1 The Transition from Poetry to Prose .......................................................................... 184

5.1.1 Transformation between Generations in the Context of Form and Content ...... 191

5.1.2 Transformation between Generations in the Context of The Simplification of

Language ..................................................................................................................... 191

5.2 Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Servet-i Fünun) Generation ........................................................ 193

5.2.1 Different Approaches to Nature Between the Old and the New ........................ 194

5.2.2 Picturesque Attitude ........................................................................................... 198

5.2.3 The Directive Effect of Painting on Literature ................................................... 204

5.2.4 Cenap Şahabettin ................................................................................................ 209

5.2.5 Tevfik Fikret ....................................................................................................... 211

5.3 Naturalist Stage on the Visual Plane: The Case of Hoca Ali Rıza ............................ 214

6. CHAPTER 6 ..................................................................................................................... 222

IMPRESSIONIST STAGE: THE BIRTH OF A NOVEL GAZE ....................................... 222

6.1 Impressionism as a Way of Seeing ............................................................................ 222

6.2 Impressionist Technique ............................................................................................ 231

6.3 Line vs Color & Contemplation vs Spectacle ............................................................ 235

6.3.1 The Idea of disegno ............................................................................................ 237

6.3.2 The Line vs. Color Debate .................................................................................. 239

6.4 Impressionism in the Ottoman Empire ...................................................................... 240

6.4.1 The 1914 Generation .......................................................................................... 241

6.4.2 Impressionist Stage vs. Naturalist Stage ............................................................ 251

6.5 Impressionist Stage on the Literary Plane: The Case of Ahmet Haşim ..................... 253

7. CHAPTER 7 ..................................................................................................................... 259

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................... 259

REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 265

x

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Matrakçı Nasuh, Istanbul, 1537, miniature…………………. 113

Figure 2: Abdullah Buhari, Book covers……………………………… 127

Figure 3: Eyüplü Cemal, “Çinili Köşk”, n.d…………………………... 166

Figure 4: Ahmet Ragıp, “Yıldız Sarayı Bahçesinden”, n.d……………. 168

Figure 5: Photograph by Abdullah Brothers, Yıldız Palace…………… 168

Figure 6: Şeker Ahmet Pasha, “Orman-Ormancı”, n.d………………... 172

Figure 7. Guo Xi, Early Spring, 1072…………………………………. 180

Figure 8: Şeker Ahmet Pasha, “Still Life with Quinces” n.d………….. 182

Figure 9: Hüseyin Zeka Pasha, “Yıldız Parkı”, 1897………………….. 183

Figure 10: Şeker Ahmet Pasha, “Forest”, 1894……………………….. 183

Figure 11: Hoca Ali Rıza, “Çengelköy”, n.d………………………….. 215

Figure 12: Avni Lifij, Cami, n.d………………………………………. 246

Figure 13: Nazmi Ziya Güran, Karacaahmet, 1933…………………… 247

Figure 14: Nazmi Ziya Güran, Moda, 1934…………………………… 249

1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Aim of the Study

As a result of various historical, political and economic circumstances

experienced in the 17th century and a series of steps which were taken in the early

18th century (beginning with 1720s), both the Ottoman state and society went

through a transformation process. This transformation process, which became official

towards the middle of the 19th century (1840s) and gradually became radical towards

the middle of the 20th century (1920s), came to be called Westernization or

modernization. In this Westernization/modernization process, the worldview of the

Ottoman society, which prevailed until that time, also began to transform into a more

different one. Here, with its ontological, epistemological, moral and aesthetic

aspects, the notion of worldview denotes a set of beliefs which underlie and shape all

human thought and action. It is the fundamental perspective from which one can

address every issue of life. More importantly a particular worldview also projects a

way of seeing by the means of structuring understanding and comprehension of the

society.

Following the transformation of the traditional worldview, which had farreaching

results, the way of seeing which was prevailing in the Ottoman culture had

also transformed. In this study, being based on this framework, it is argued that the

Westernization process which entailed the transformation of worldview can be

examined through the transformation of the way of seeing. Here, the phrase “the way

2

of seeing”1 corresponds to historically, socially, culturally, ideologically or

technologically determined and constituted visual experiences. It points to a visuality

system framing the gazes, thoughts and actions of the individuals. Unlike vision,

which is a physical process that is closely related to sight, visuality corresponds to a

non-natural and constructed phenomenon. This process –in which different factors

from history to technology take part– determines how individuals look, what they

see, what they believe, how they think and how they act in different realms (Foster,

1988, p. ix).

In this framework which was summarized above, the starting point of this

study is the notion of “temaşa (contemplation)” which both Hasan Bülent Kahraman

(2013) and Hilmi Yavuz (2009) used to describe the traditional visual regime of the

Ottoman Empire. By attaching the notion of contemplation in parenthesis to temaşa,

both Kahraman and Yavuz seemed to consider that temaşa is the only equivalent of

“contemplation” in Turkish. However contemplation can also be translated into

Turkish as tefekkür. But Kahraman and Yavuz never mention the notion of tefekkür

in terms of considering the traditional way of seeing in the Ottoman culture. At this

point, in this study, it is argued that making a distinction between notions of tefekkür

and temaşa is significantly important, because these notions don’t mean the same

thing and moreover, they imply two different ways of seeing.

One of the most important obstacles to carry out the examination concerning

the transformation of way of seeing is the fact that in the former attempts to make

1 The inspiration for the expression “way of seeing”, which is used many times in this study, comes

from the title of John Berger’s notorious work Ways of Seeing (1972). Although Berger (2014) does

not clearly define what he meant by the phrase “way of seeing”, he states that ways of seeing are in

force both in the processes of creating and perceiving images (p. 10).

3

such a reading, the notion of temaşa had been used in a manner as if it also includes

the notion of tefekkür. Eventually, this preference resulted in reducing the notion of

tefekkür to the notion of temaşa and prevented the possibility of a more proper

interpretation.

In other words, as a result of reducing tefekkür to temaşa, critical and

substantial importance of tefekkür in Islam and Ottoman culture is overlooked;

temaşa culture –which has its own Western-originated history– is evaluated

differently than it actually is; differences between two ways of seeing based on two

different acts of seeing are eliminated; and the true way of seeing in Islam and

Ottoman culture is situated in a completely different ground. In the end, examining

the transformation –which was experienced by the Ottoman Empire during the

Westernization– by the means of the transformation of the way of seeing cannot be

carried out properly.

In order to perform such a task, first of all, this reduction should be

questioned. After that, the distinction between these two concepts should be reestablished

around different contexts and finally an alternative reading can be

composed around this distinction. Following the distinction between the notions of

tefekkür and temaşa, their English equivalents is offered as contemplation and

spectacle, respectively. In the context of this study, it is further argued that these two

notions are the sources of two ways of seeing which are different from each other,

namely:

• the contemplative way of seeing which is the way of seeing based on

contemplation and

• the spectatorial way of seeing which is the way of seeing based on spectacle.

4

In this study, it is asserted that the traditional way of seeing –which was based

on the worldview being predominant the Ottoman society– was the contemplative

way of seeing.

It is further argued that transformation of contemplative way seeing into the

spectatorial way of seeing through different stages which are religious, metaphysical,

naturalist and impressionist, respectively.

In this sense, what this study is proposed to do are

• To make a distinction between the notions of tefekkür and temaşa;

• To suggest their English equivalents as contemplation and spectacle,

respectively;

• To offer two different ways of seeing which are built on these concepts;

namely contemplative way of seeing and spectatorial way of seeing.

• To illustrate their corresponding manifestations in different cultural spheres

of the Ottoman culture such as poetry and painting;

• To suggest a mechanism for how the prevailing way of seeing transformed

through manifestations in different cultural spheres in different stages;

• Thus, to examine the transformation of the Ottoman way of seeing, by

dividing it into four stages, and to examine each stage separately.

• Ultimately, to provide a reading or interpretation that may be an alternative to

others.

In accordance with these aims, the following research questions will be

answered within the scope of this study:

RQ 1: How are the concepts of contemplation and spectacle defined and

differentiated in the context of Ottoman culture?

5

RQ 2: What are the main differences between contemplative way of seeing and the

spectatorial one?

RQ 3: In the context of the Ottoman culture, how did the transformation from the

contemplative way of seeing to the speculative one occur?

RQ 4: What were the manifestations of this transformation in different cultural

spheres of the Ottoman culture such as poetry and painting?

1.2 The Scope of the Study

In order to answer the questions, the principal ones of which are mentioned

above, the main body of this study will consist of five chapters. Following the

introduction, by answering the first two research questions, theoretical framework on

which this study is based will be discussed in Chapter 2. After stating why it is

necessary to make a distinction between notions of tefekkür [contemplation] and

temaşa [spectacle] in order to show more clearly the transformation of the Ottoman

worldview and way of seeing in the 19th century, two different worldviews and

corresponding ways of seeing will be suggested: The contemplative way of seeing

which is the way of seeing based on contemplation and the spectatorial way of seeing

which is the way of seeing based on spectacle. Following this distinction differences

between contemplative and speculative worldviews in Ottoman context will be

discussed in more detail. In this framework, firstly the historical background of how

two different worldviews and ways of seeing confronted in the Ottoman context will

be given. Then, the effects of this encounter on the intellectual sphere will be

discussed through Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s distinction between “Oriental” and

“Occidental” worldviews.

6

Before moving on to the content of the other chapters, it will be proper to

underline the importance attributed to Turkish literary scholar and novelist Ahmet

Hamdi Tanpınar within the scope of this study. The central importance attached to

Tanpınar's views, particularly in the Chapter 2 and in this study in general, lies in the

fact that in his elaborations, Tanpınar constantly prioritizes the transformation of

worldview experienced in the Ottoman Empire, particularly in the 19th century. Not

only with his inclusive and versatile view of Ottoman history, culture and art, but

also as a member of a generation that has had the opportunity to witness the results

of the transformation since the Tanzimat, Tanpınar had a privileged place in the

context of reading the worldview transformation that the Ottomans went through

during the Westernization process. Thus, the works that emerged as a result of the

combination of the inclusive and versatile view of Tanpınar with his wonderful style

constitute one of the main starting points for many researchers and writers who

discuss the cultural and artistic echoes of the Ottoman modernization process.

For answering the last two research questions, the different stages of the

transformation in the way of seeing will be examined in four chapters following the

Chapter 2. In this sense, each stage will correspond to a chapter as follows:

Chapter 3: Religious Stage: The Nature of Contemplative Way of Seeing. In

this chapter, it will be examined how the contemplative way of seeing is manifested

in two art forms such as Divan poetry and miniature art. The similarities between

Divan poetry and miniature art are striking in that they are influenced by the same

way of seeing. In both, the artist avoids depicting the visible world as it is. The

invisible realm behind the visible world is tried to be implied through metaphors and

clichés. The artist, who wants to escape from the uneasiness created by the multitude

and the realm of becoming, finds the peace in describing the outside world by

7

stylizing it (Yavuz, 2009, p. 15; Aksel, 2011, p. 242; Ayvazoğlu, 2019, p. 222). In

this context, the stylization tendency is the reflection of the aniconism in Islam,

which is formed around the belief of tawhid (the oneness of God) on both verbal and

visual planes.

Chapter 4: Metaphysical Stage: The Conflict of Two Ways of Seeing. In this

chapter, the transition process from the religious stage to the metaphysical stage will

be examined in the context of the transformation of the Ottoman's dominant way of

seeing. Transition from the religious stage to the metaphysical one takes place

around three spheres of discoveries. These are respectively the discovery of reason,

discovery of nature and the discovery of the individual. The discovery of nature and

the individual is especially emphasized by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar in his legendary

The Nineteenth Century History of Turkish Literature (1949). The discovery of

reason, which is thought to be prior to these two discoveries, will be proposed within

the scope of this study. In this stage, the discovery of reason is carried out by the first

generation Tanzimat writers such as Şinasi (b. 1826) and Ziya Pasha (b. 1829). The

discovery of nature takes place in the works of Namık Kemal (b. 1840) and the

second generation Tanzimat writers such as Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem (b. 1847) and

Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan (b. 1852). The issue of the discovery of the individual, on

the other hand, will not be examined as a separate title since it is basically the subject

of the novel, but will be briefly mentioned. This stage, in which subjectivity slowly

began to step in, has been shaped by poets and painter born roughly between 1820

and 1860. Şeker Ahmet Pasha (b. 1841), from the second generation of Soldier

Painters, was one of the most important artists who shaped this stage on an artistic

plane. Although the works of first generation Soldier Painters such as Ferik İbrahim

Pasha (b. 1815), Hüsnü Yusuf Pasha (b. 1817) and Ferik Tevfik Pasha (b. 1819) can

8

be interpreted as a kind of transition from the religious stage to the metaphysical

stage on the artistic plane, we do not have enough information about the works of

these artists (Erol, 1980, p. 106).

Chapter 5: Naturalist Stage: The Advent of the Spectatorial Way of Seeing. In

the naturalist stage, which is the third stage, it is seen that the spectatorial way of

seeing comes to the fore. This stage is shaped around the picturesque attitude. This

stage, in which subjectivity slowly began to step in, has been shaped by poets and

painters born roughly between 1860 and 1880. Naturalist stage will be examined

through works of Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Servet-i Fünun) poets such as Tevfik Fikret (b.

1867) and Cenap Şahabettin (b. 1870) on the literary plane; and Hoca Ali Rıza (b.

1864) who was among the Third Generation Soldier Painters on the visual plane.

Chapter 6: Impressionist Stage: The Birth of a Novel Gaze. In order to create

a conceptual theoretical framework for the impressionist stage, the place and

significant of impressionism as a way of seeing in the history of Western art will be

examined. After comparing classicism and impressionism, which are the products of

two different ways of seeing, what kind of transformation impressionism caused in

the way of seeing will be discussed. After considering how two different ways of

seeing through the contour line and color, which are the two formal elements of the

painting, confront with each other in the history of painting, the adventure of

impressionism in the Ottoman Empire will be discussed through the painters of the

1914 Generation. Finally, in this section, Ahmet Haşim (b. 1887), who was the most

competent representative of the impressionist gaze in the field of literature, will be

examined from his unique point of view.

9

1.3 Methodology

Concerning the issue of methodology, we can begin with by making a

distinction between a science and a study. As Alan McKee, who is a Professor in

Digital and Social Media in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at University of

Technology Sydney, argues that while fields such as natural and social sciences are

very strict in terms of their methodologies, cultural studies do not consider their

methodologies in this manner. Beneath such a manner, there lies the idea of

limitations which strict methodologies bring with themselves (McKee, 2001, p. 138).

This overemphasis on methodology stems from the hegemony created by the

conception of science –which is based on the ideals of objectivity and truth to facts–

over other academic fields such as humanities and cultural studies. It is apparent that

this study is not a scientific one based on observation and experiment. Since it

fluctuates between social sciences, humanities and cultural studies, it can be argued

that this study lacks a kind of objectivity and logical soundness based on the

scientific method. Due to its multi-disciplinary character and a lack of strict and

definite methodology, it has more subjective character in terms of being close to the

cultural studies and humanities rather than social sciences. But this does not mean

that it also lacks a specific program and conceptual framework.

In this study, how the prevailing way of seeing in the Ottoman culture

transformed is examined through four different stages (which are religious,

metaphysical, naturalist and impressionist) in two planes (which are literary and

visual) and in two axes (which are horizontal and vertical). On the horizontal axis,

the transitions between the stages are examined chronologically over successive

generations through the works of poets and painters born between roughly 1820 and

1900, respectively. On the vertical axis, how the transformation experienced at each

10

stage manifested itself in different art forms such as poetry (on literary plane) and

painting (on the visual plane) is discussed. Thus, while the horizontal axis offers a

comparison possibility between different generations corresponding to the different

stages; the vertical axis offers a comparison possibility between literary and visual

planes in a particular stage.

1.3.1 On the Relationship between Different Stages and Generations

On literary plane, the four stages of transformation is based on the

classification of generations which was made by literary historian Orhan Okay

(2010, pp. 54-60). On visual plane, transformation of way of seeing is examined

through the classification of generations which was made by art historian Sezer

Tansuğ (1999, pp. 63-64).

In terms of literary plane, following the religious stage –in which a general

overview of contemplative way seeing in Divan poetry is given–, the metaphysical

stage is discussed through works of the first and second generation Tanzimat writers

such as Şinasi (b. 1826), Ziya Pasha (b. 1829), Namık Kemal (b. 1840), Recaizade

Mahmut Ekrem (b. 1847) and Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan (b. 1852). The naturalist

stage is examined through the works of Cenap Şahabettin (1870) and Tevfik Fikret

(b. 1867) from the Edebiyat-ı Cedide (New Literature), generation. Finally the

impressionist stage on the literary plane is discussed through works of particularly

Ahmet Haşim (b. 1887) who was a member of Fecr-i Ati (Dawn of the Tomorrow)

circle.

While Şinasi and Ziya Pasha were born during the reign of Mahmut II

(between 1808 and 1839); Namık Kemal was born in the reign of Abdülmecid I

(between 1839-1861); but their works were largely influenced by the climate of reign

11

of the Abdülaziz (between 1861 and 1876). Works of the second generation of

Tanzimat writers such as Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan –who

were born during the reign of Abdulaziz (between 1861 and1876)– were largely

influenced by the atmosphere of the reign of Abdulhamid II (between 1876 and

1909). In the period of Edebiyat-ı Cedide –in which Tevfik Fikret (b. 1867) and

Cenap Şahabettin (b. 1870) made great contributions in poetry– the oppressive and

pessimistic atmosphere of the Abdülhamid II reign had a significant effect (Okay,

2010, p. 54). With the declaration of the Second Constitutional Monarchy in 1908,

the oppressive atmosphere of the Abdulhamid II period would leave its place to a

very lively and active literary environment that has never been experienced before.

The short lived community of Fecr-i Ati of which Ahmet Haşim was a member was

an output of such an atmosphere (Okay, 2010, pp. 55-56).

In terms of visual plane, after discussing how contemplative way of seeing

becomes visible in miniature art in the religious stage; the metaphysical stage

following the religious one was discussed around the works of Şeker Ahmet Pasha

(b. 1841) was a member of The Second Generation Soldier Painters. The naturalist

stage on visual plane is examined in terms of the works of Hoca Ali Rıza (b. 1864),

one of The Third Generation Soldier Painters. Finally the impressionist stage is

discussed through the works of 1914 Generation Artists, born around 1880s, such as

Nazmi Ziya Güren (b. 1881), Hikmet Onat (b. 1882) and Hüseyin Avni Lifij (b.

1886).

1.3.2 On the Choice of Poetry and Painting

In such a context, it is not accidental that poetry and painting were chosen as

different art forms which are influenced by different ways of seeing. While the

12

poetry was chosen to reveal the course of the transformation on the literary plane; the

painting was chosen to reveal its course on the visual plane. When evaluated in terms

of the their place of the period in Ottoman culture, poetry can be considered as one of

the most traditional art forms in terms of being based on a long tradition beginning

with Divan poetry. Whereas painting –canvas painting in particular– was a fairly

novel art form that had begun to be studied with the modernization. In this respect,

whereas poetry corresponds to an art form in which contemplative way of seeing is

more dominant; painting corresponds to an art form in which spectatorial way of

seeing is more effective. What happened in the historical change of these two art

forms in Ottoman culture and how they interacted with each other contain many

clues about how the Ottoman's way of seeing changed during the modernization.

Painting which is made in Western conventions had not have any counterparts

before Tanzimat era. Therefore, the first examples of these artistic emerged through

imitation of their Western counterparts, particularly in France. In this sense,

examples of these forms are considered as both being manifestations of spectatorial

way of seeing and a sphere where contemplative and spectatorial ways of seeing

confront each other. Since the painting in the Western style had no established and

systematic traditions in the Ottoman culture, this conflict of two ways of seeing is

less apparent or more indirect in them. However, how these two ways of seeing are

in conflict with each other can be read more directly through poetry. Thus poetry

written since 1860 was the main sphere of the encounter of contemplative and

spectatorial ways of seeing.

13

1.3.3 On Considering Landscape and Its Depiction as Filters

In this study, it is presupposed that how one perceives the landscape and then

depicts or describes it can be considered as one of the most important manifestations

of her/his way of seeing. At this point, landscape and its depiction can be taken as a

kind of intersection between poetry and painting. By being manifestations of a way

of seeing, both poetry and painting reveal and demonstrate the corresponding way of

seeing. On the other hand, commentaries and interpretations which are made about

poems and paintings can be considered as articulations of the way of seeing in

charge (Taylor, 2010, p. 109). By the means of them, the way of seeing –which is

manifested in an artistic form such as painting and poetry– is cogitated, analyzed and

articulated in a written form. By the means of these articulations, how cultural

productions relate to other cultural productions is also evaluated.

In a nutshell, it can be said that the main method used in this study is the

interpretation of different kinds of texts which are literary texts such as poems, visual

texts such as paintings and finally commentaries made by historians and scholars on

them. In other words, if there is a transition from one way of seeing to another, it is

possible to pursue this transformation by examining the texts that are cultural

manifestations of those different ways of seeing and comparing them with each

other. Considering the notion of text here, it is used in a very broad sense from

novels to columns, from painting to cinema, from a garden to the planning of the

whole city. Then, how could such a vast area be limited in order to make an inclusive

reading? At this point, the notion of landscape and its depiction in various media

come to fore.

14

If a way of seeing is accepted as the perception of the external world through

the senses as a result of the mind’s perceiving capacity; in order to achieve the

above-mentioned limitation, using two filters such as landscape and its depiction in

various media can be a proper starting point. The sensible world is, of course, not

limited to landscapes. However, as an extension of the sensible world, the landscape

can be regarded as a kind of interface of reality, which human beings constantly seek

to depict during their contact with external reality. In this sense, landscape can be

considered a kind of interface of reality in which human beings constantly pursue

depiction during their contact with external reality. Here depiction reveals how

external reality is perceived and evaluated. Nature as a function of reality, landscape

as a function of nature, and depiction as a function of landscape can filter countless

examples illustrating the transformation of worldview in both visible and verbal

contexts. In this sense, paintings and poems are manifestations of the way of seeing

in charge. Via them, the way of seeing is revealed, made apparent, demonstrated or

realized by action.

1.3.4 On the Notions of Nature, Environment and Landscape

Within the scope of this study, nature corresponds to the physical, material,

concrete world in which we live as a part of the universe. In this sense, nature is

closely related to words such as the universe, the world, life, and the aforementioned

external or sensible reality. The environment is used to mean the part of nature with

which we come into contact, interact and rearrange according to our purposes.

Finally, landscape refers to a particular part of external reality (nature or

environment) seen from a particular point of view.

15

Based on W.J.T. Mitchell's "Imperial Landscape" (1994), it is possible to

further develop this rather narrow definition of landscape. Accordingly, landscape –

whether created by a certain physical transformation as in landscape gardening or

architecture, or by nature– refers to a physical and multi-sensory medium where

cultural meanings and values are encoded. As a kind of medium, landscape is a

material means, a set of symbolic forms shaped to express meaning and values, just

like language embedded in the tradition of cultural communication (p. 14). In other

words, landscape means the transformation of the external world through subjective

human experience. In this framework, rather than the world seen from a certain point

of view, the construction of that world is almost a composition. In this sense,

landscape refers to a kind of way of seeing (Cosgrove, 1984, p. 13). The places

where this way of seeing is most visible are the representations of the perceived

landscape in media such as painting, poetry or novel. As a matter of fact, the

American philosopher Edward S. Casey (2002) also stated that the representation of

the landscape is not something secondary; but an integral part of how the landscape

is perceived, this perception is essential for its manifestation (p. xv).

In his 1913 article titled "Philosophy of Landscape", German sociologist

Georg Simmel argues that landscape is not something that already exists in nature; it

is something created later. What already exists is nature itself. Simmel suggests that

the landscape is a unity beyond its constituent parts. Accordingly, this

wholeness/unity is something created when the landscape is shaped. It is even the

same formative act that creates the mood of the landscape; that is, the form or

composition that brings together the individual elements that make up the landscape

as a whole (Simmel, 2007, p. 21). In other words, Simmel describes nature as a unity

in flux that finds its expression in the continuity of temporal and spatial existence.

16

Nature, which corresponds to the unity of the whole, does not consist of parts. When

a piece from the whole is parceled, that parceled part is no longer pure and simple

nature; because nature is nature only in this limitless unity and flow, as a wholeness.

As a matter of fact, it is the parceling act above that creates the landscape. The

landscape created as a result of parceling based on frames determined by this

temporary or permanent field of view will no longer be that pure and simple nature.

Although the parts that make up the landscape can also be seen as a part of nature,

taking these as a landscape requires an optical or aesthetic attitude, unlike nature.

This raw material, which is offered by nature and is a candidate for a landscape,

shows an unlimited variety. Therefore, rather than the intertwining of trees and hills,

waterways and stones, the landscape is actually an intellectual formation, an

intellectual formation or arrangement. In this sense, the landscape is not something

outside of us that we can touch or go into; it is formed only as a result of the

unifying, composing and creative powers of the soul (Simmel, 2007, p. 28). The

question of how a selection and composition process takes place in the presence of

such a situation leads Simmel to landscape painting. Landscape as a work of art

emerges from the impressions created by discrete objects in nature, as a result of a

purification process. The artist selects and depicts a piece of this chaotic flow and the

infinity of the directly given world, shaping it as something indivisible (Simmel,

2007, p. 23). Unlike the others, the artist looks at the "landscape" with a different

eye. Simmel calls this situation the formative act of contemplative perception.

Perceived as a result of this act are completely assimilated and recreated by the artist

in a completely different way as if they were spontaneous (p. 29).

Thus, Simmel reveals as clearly as possible what kind of a perception of the

landscape has been formed in the West as a result of the transformations experienced

17

since the Renaissance in the early 20th century. In this context, it can be said that

how the person perceives the landscape and how s/he describes it in the next step is

one of the most important expressions of his worldview. Within the scope of this

study, to understand the content of the way of seeing which the Ottomans have

increasingly experienced since the early 19th century, and also understanding how the

landscape is perceived and how it is described in visual and literary art forms such as

painting and poetry is possible by examining different figures from different periods.

1.3.5 On the Notions of Truth, Reality and Appearance

In a nutshell, through the courses of modernization, the contemplative way of

seeing transformed into a more naturalist outlook which is called spectatorial way of

seeing. This naturalist/spectatorial way of seeing was no longer based on the act of

contemplation [tefekkür], but it began to be shaped by the act of viewing [temaşa].

Whereas the contemplative way of seeing was based on seeing with the eye of the

mind [basiret (Uludağ, 1992, p. 103)], the spectatorial way of seeing was based on

seeing with the bodily eye [rüyet (Uludağ, 2008, pp. 310-311)].

In the course of transformation of the traditional way of seeing based on

contemplation [tefekkür], “traditional hierarchies” (Kahraman, 2013, p. 22) between

Truth [hakikat] and reality [gerçeklik], intellect [akıl] and reason [us], reality

[gerçeklik] and appearance [görünüş], seeing with the eye of the mind [basiret] and

seeing with bodily eye [rüyet], contemplation [tefekkür] and spectacle [temaşa] also

changed in the opposite direction.

Through changes in hierarchies, which are emphasized above, nature and

physical reality were also demystified. Nature was not considered as a mean for

reaching or grasping some transcendental Truth anymore; but it became an end-in18

itself. Stemming from the reason and scientific knowledge of free and critical

individual, curiosity about the nature and the desire to dominate it replaced the

feelings of awe and wonder experienced before nature.

Based on the distinctions to be made between the concepts Truth, reality and

appearance on the one hand, and between nature, landscape and its representation

on the other hand, it can be said that through how the landscape is represented or

described in art forms such as poetry and painting transformation in the way of

seeing can be explored in four successive stages, namely religious, metaphysical,

naturalist and impressionist.

Before expressing what kind of transformation had taken place over these

aforementioned stages, it will be proper to underline the distinction between the

words truth [hakikat] and reality [gerçeklik], which can be used as synonyms. In

Islam, especially in Sufism, a distinction is envisaged between permanent reality and

transient reality. The permanent reality corresponds to the original, the essential, the

and the fundamental one. It is called truth [hakikat]. Moreover, this fundamental

reality, i.e. truth, is identified with Being itself, with God. The Turkish word Hak

[Ar. haqq]–which means “true”, “real”– is used synonymously with the words

“Allah, God”. As a matter of fact, Hak [Ar. Al-Haqq] – with its meaning “the

determinant of truth, right and law”– is one of the names of Allah, which is

mentioned in the Quran. On the other hand, the transient reality corresponds to the

entire universe or external reality and is regarded as the manifestation of God. This is

the main framework of the distinction between permanent reality and transient reality

in Islamic context. In this context, transient reality –which is created, temporary and

a kind of manifestation– corresponds to the sensible reality and permanent reality –

which is the original and the essential– corresponds to intelligible reality. The

19

distinction between the sensible and the intelligible can be traced back to the

philosophy Plato which had many influences on Sufism. According to Plato, behind,

beyond or above the sensible world –which was perceived through the senses and

consisted of visible, sensible, tangible things– was the world of Ideas or Forms,

which is only intelligible. Contrary to common sense, it was this world of Ideas that

was essential, true and final (Stumpf, 1977, p. 49). Considering both their Islamic

and Platonic contexts, in order to underline the distinction between transient/sensible

reality and permanent/intelligible reality, the former is called reality [gerçeklik] and

the latter is called Truth [Hakikat] within the framework of this study. Underlying

such emphasis on the subtle but deep distinction between truth and reality lies one of

the ontological differences between contemplative and spectatorial ways of seeing.

While the spectatorial ways of seeing is oriented towards to sensible reality;

contemplative way of seeing is oriented towards intelligible reality, i.e. truth.

Just as there is a kind of source-manifestation relationship between Truth and

reality in the context of Sufism, it can be said that there is a similar relationship

between reality and appearance in philosophical context. In this framework while

reality can be defined as something whose existence is principally present in the

outside world and which objectively exists in the face of all subjectivity (Güçlü et al.,

2003, p. 597); appearance corresponds to the apparent state of a thing given to

impression, sensation or perception (Güçlü et al., 2003, p. 614). Whereas reality is

absolute, objective and indirectly knowable; appearance is relative, subjective, time

dependent, directly knowable (p. 614).

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1.4 Limitations of the Study

It would be more appropriate for a study aiming to examine the

transformation in the way of seeing, both on a literary and visual plain, to include

other literary mediums such as novels, theater plays, short stories and essays, in

addition to poetry, in order to present a more complete picture. Similarly, including

photography and cinema in addition to painting in the field of visual arts would have

been more accurate in terms of showing how the transformation in the way of seeing

was manifested in different fields. However, some limitations were set, as it would

exceed the limits of this study to examine the period of nearly a century, from 1820

to 1920, in the context of Ottoman culture for each art form mentioned above.

Accordingly, it is possible to examine the above-mentioned and other excluded art

mediums, especially novels, in the context of their own history within the

transformation of way of seeing.

This study, which could have been much more vivid and effective if it had

been presented in Turkish within the framework of both the conceptual content of the

subject under examination, but unfortunately it has lost some of its soul during the

translation process. The difficulty of finding the exact equivalents of the concepts in

one language in another language, the loss of the richness of expression in one's

mother tongue in a foreign language, caused a work, which could have been more

sincere, to gain a duller identity. In this respect, it would be appropriate to publish

this study once again in a more comprehensive and detailed way, in Turkish.

Divan poetry and miniature art, which are the two art forms in which

contemplation-based way of seeing had been the most dominant and most visible in

Ottoman culture, are subjects that deserve a more detailed examination with their

long history spanning centuries. On the one hand, the size and duration of this study

21

was not suitable for such a study, and on the other hand, because these fields require

an expert view that deals with the issue in depth, within the scope of this study,

Divan poetry and miniatures have discussed in a very limited way according to the

historical background they were based on. How the contemplative way of seeing

affected these art forms could be examined in more detail through the stylistic

differences seen in different centuries. An analysis could be made on how and in

which contexts other concepts that might be related to temaşa and tefekkür, had been

used in different periods of Divan poetry.

Since the interpretation of poetry is controversial and is a field that requires

expertise and the Ph. D. candidate who completed this study was not a literary

historian, providing examples of poems belonging to the relevant periods and their

interpretation were consciously avoided. Instead, the views of literary historians and

theorists, who were much more knowledgeable about poems and poets and periods,

have been presented and analyzed. Another reason for the limited number of poetry

examples included within the study was the possible loss of meaning with

translation. It is inevitable that a literary form, such as poetry, in which not only the

content but also the same form is decisive, loses its meaning while being translated

into another language. In this respect, it can be suggested to enrich the Turkish

version of this study with examples of poems from different periods and poets.

As a note on translation: Unless noted otherwise, all Turkish texts have been

translated by M. Kemal İz.

22

CHAPTER 2

FROM THEŌRIA TO SPECTACLE

2.1 On Modernity and Visuality

In the preface of his book Türkiye’de Görsel Bilincin Oluşumu in which he

examines Turkey’s experience of modernization through visuality, Hasan Bülent

Kahraman (2013) expresses that he thinks quite differently about Turkey's

modernization process. After emphasizing that modernization –which has continued

since the Tanzimat period– has a visual content, essence and structure; Kahraman

makes the following claim: “In Turkey, modernity did not establish the visuality.

Visuality established the modernity” (p. 8). Theoretical framework of visuality which

Kahraman mentions here is structured around the notion of scopic regime which was

offered by Christian Metz (1982). Through the notions such as scopic regime and

visual ideology, Kahraman emphasizes the relation between visuality and power and

asserts that this network of relations is connected to the power. According to him, the

issue of art (visuality) produced by ideology, i.e. the use of visuality by political

power to establish its proper ideology and the gaze to which the society is exposed

have been discussed a lot, but the issue of ideology produced by art is begun to be

discussed only recently (2013, pp. 14-16). The relationship between visuality and

modernity which Kahraman wants to constitute is a varied form of the relationship

between art and ideology. Regarding the modern state as a mediation of visuality,

Kahraman considers the visuality as a constituent element of consciousness (2013, p.

16).

23

Here, it is important to point out what the concept of visuality means,

especially in the context of its relation to modernity. When a notion such as visuality

which is a very complex concept to be defined in a simple way is used in relation

with a notion such as modernity which is fairly complex, too, in a rather challenging

proposition; grasping the issue is getting much harder. First of all Kahraman,

suddenly leaps from modernization to modernity. It is obvious that there is a close

relation between modernization and modernity, but this proximity should not make

us to forget that the two concepts have quite different meanings, too. Though it is

problematic, for the sake of clarity, some preliminary definitions can be given. In this

sense, modernity corresponds to “the birth of a new intellectual and cognitive world,

which gradually emerged with the Reformation, the Renaissance, the scientific

revolution of the 17th century, and the Enlightenment of the 18th century” (Hall,

1996, p. 8). Modernism, which emerged due to transformations in Western societies

during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, stands for particular attitudes in art,

literature and philosophy, which are put against certain aspects of modernity.

Modernization, on the other hand, refers to appropriation of the concepts of

modernity in order to determine the individual's worldview and the structure of

society by the means of power and ideology. Additionally, the claim that Turkish

modernization has a visual essence is also quite challenging. Concrete and visual

content of the Turkish modernization are apparent. Moreover modernization process

had consequences in visual context as in many other contexts and these

consequences also shaped many conceptualizations along with of the visuality itself.

But these do not necessarily mean that Turkish modernization is essentially visual or

visual in essence. Kahraman (2013) argues that in Turkey, modernity did not

establish the visuality, but the visuality established the modernity (p. 8). This

24

proposition can be taken as true, when the 18th and 19th century Europe is taken into

consideration. But, if it is the 19th century Ottoman Empire which is under

consideration, asserting such a definite claim will not be so straightforward. The

difference between experiences of Europe (i.e. Western countries) and Ottoman

Empire in terms of modernization necessitates the reconsideration of this claim.

All this aside, based on his claim about modernity-visuality relation in terms

of modernization of Turkey and puts forward another challenging claim concerning

the issue:

“I believe that seeing creates a regime. It is obvious that this new

regime, which emerged or manifested itself with modernity, is quite

different from the temaşa (contemplation) systematic of the previous

Ottoman culture, which had been in its most refined but solidified

form. Therefore, the new system was based on 'bakış' (gaze)” (p. 8).2

Based on the couplet [beyit] saying “Mestâne nukûş-i suver-i âleme baktık / her

birini bir özge temaşâ ile geçtik”3 he quoted from Nâilî –one of the most competent

Divan poets of the 17th century– Kahraman (2013) further argues that in

Ottoman/Eastern aesthetics, temaşa is dominant, but not gaze:

“The hierarchies brought by the gaze were far beyond the traditional understanding

of hierarchy. Likewise, in the objective plane formed by the gaze, the understanding

2 “Görmenin bir rejim oluşturduğu kanısındayım. Modernlikle birlikte ortaya çıkan veya kendisini

gösteren bu yeni rejimin, daha önceki Osmanlı kültürünün biçimde en ince halini almış ama iyice de

katılaşmış temaşa (contemplation) sistematiğinden hayli farklı olduğu apaçık ortada. Dolayısıyla yeni

sistem ‘bakış’ (gaze) üstüne kuruluydu.” (Kahraman, 2013, p. 8)

3 We stared drunkenly at the embroidery of the images of the world. / We passed by watching each one

in a different way. (Dünyadaki suretlerin nakışlarına sarhoşça baktık. / Her birini başka bir şekilde

seyrederek geçtik.)

25

of temaşa, which seems superficial but finds its reality in the subjectivity of the

beholder/viewer, not the doer, was out of question” (p. 22).4

In order to establish his assertions above firmly, Kahraman makes a

distinction between the scopic regime emerged in the course of modernization and

“solidified” [katılaşmış] systematic of temaşa (2013, p. 8). Kahraman does this in

two moves: Firstly, by asserting that modern scopic regime is based on a gaze and

secondly by attaching the notion of contemplation in parenthesis to temaşa in order

to broaden the meaning of the latter. Such a distinction had to be made by Kahraman,

because both the modern scopic regime and traditional systematic of temaşa build on

similar acts of looking/seeing/viewing/watching which are based on the gaze. But by

doing so, Kahraman uses the notion of temaşa as if it also includes the meaning of

tefekkür, but he never mentions the notion of tefekkür in his text. Eventually, this

preference results in reducing the notion of tefekkür to the notion of temaşa and

prevents the possibility of a more proper interpretation regarding the traditional way

of seeing in the Ottoman culture which is actually based on tefekkür. In other words,

by the means of reducing tefekkür to temaşa, critical and substantial importance of

tefekkür in Islam, Sufism and Ottoman culture is overlooked.

Suprizingly similar to Kahraman; Hilmi Yavuz used the term temaşa along

with contemplation in parenthesis in his essay titled “Is the Divan Poetry a Symbolic

Poetry?” in 1987. Here, Yavuz argues that “Divan Poetry is in an intermediate

position where nature is neither fully understood as a concrete usable object nor as a

4 “Bakışın beraberinde getirdiği hiyerarşiler geleneksel hiyerarşi anlayışından çok ötedeydi. Gene aynı

şekilde bakışın oluşturduğu nesne/l düzlemde temaşanın sathi görünen ama realitesini, yapanın değil

bakanın/izleyenin öznelliğinde bulan anlayış da söz konusu değildi.” (Kahraman, 2013, p. 22)

26

mental abstraction (object of knowledge). It is an intermediate position in which

Nature is conceived as a stylized object of temaşa (contemplation)…” (p. 94).

At the end of these remarks, Hilmi Yavuz too attaches the same couplet of

Nailî: Mestâne nükûş-i suver-i âleme baktık / Her birini bir özge temâşâ ile geçtik.5

Nailî’s verse must have a great significance for both Yavuz and Kahraman.

Interestingly, Tanpınar also quotes this couplet of Nailî in his History of Turkish

Literature in the Nineteenth Century (first published in 1949) but in a completely

different context.

In the following pages of this chapter, an elaborate discussion concerning

both Yavuz’s and Kahraman’s usage of temaşa in conjunction with contemplation

will be held. However to clarify the difference between the notions of temaşa and

tefekkür and to grasp the different worldviews attached to these notions in this study,

a more detailed examination is necessary.

2.2 On Definition of Temaşa

Derived from the Arabic word mašā meaning “to walk”, tamāšā (noun)

corresponds to “walking about (together)”, “strolling or sauntering” in Arabic

(Delahunty, 2008, p. 337). From this coverage in Arabic, tamāšā implies “walking

about for amusement, entertainment” in Persian and Urdu (p. 337). Received from

this Persian version, the word means “a grand show, performance, or celebration,

especially one involving dance” (p. 337), “a spectacle, entertainment” or “a fuss, a

commotion” in Indian (“Tamasha definition and meaning”, n.d.; “Definition of

5 We stared drunkenly at the embroidery of the images of the world. / We passed by watching each

one in a different way. Dünyadaki suretlerin nakışlarına sarhoşça baktık. / Her birini başka bir şekilde

seyrederek geçtik.

27

tamasha”, n.d.). In The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theatre (1997) edited by James

Brandon and Martin Banham, the word tamasha is used for implying a form of

theater –developed in the west of India in the 16th century– being a mixture of sexual

and humorous references along with rich and exotic melodies called ghazal songs.

Persian origin of the word meaning “fun”, “play” and “entertainment” is implied

here, too (Brandon & Banham, p. 108). In her 2012 book Taken for Wonder:

Nineteenth Century Travel Accounts from Iran to Europe, Naghmeh Sohrabi

emphasizes the Persian meaning of the word as “observation”, “sightseeing” and

“spectacle” along with “glancing at something with delight or learning a lesson

from” (Sohrabi, 2012, p. 33) Eventually the word tamasha in English, also, entails

this Indian meaning of “a spectacle, show, entertainment” (“Tamasha definition and

meaning”, n.d.). Tamāšā is transliterated into Turkish as temaşa or temâşâ meaning

1) viewing something with delight, 2) a vista or landscape worth seeing, 3)

promenading, sightseeing, 4) play or show in theatre and as temaşa etmek meaning

“to view”, “to look”, “to watch” (Püsküllüoğlu, 2012, p. 1848).

At this point, it is vitally important to note that the coverage of tamasha such

as spectacle, entertainment play, strolling, promenading, sightseeing in Arabic,

Persian, Indian and Turkish involve physical or bodily acts of either “viewing,

looking, watching” or “walking, roaming, wandering for viewing”. Therefore,

contrary to Kahraman’s way of thinking, the act of temaşa does not exclude the

notion gaze necessarily. Like other acts based on looking/seeing/viewing, the act of

temaşa, too, builds on gaze or is shaped by the gaze itself. Similarly, the modern

scopic regime which is based on gaze, as Kahraman asserts, has performative

contents such as viewing like temaşa. In this respect, Kahraman tries to differentiate

these two different ways of seeing –i.e. traditional systematic of temaşa and scopic

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regime due to modernity– as if the latter is based on the gaze, but the former is not.

The principal aspect of Kahraman’s approach is the phenomenon implied by “the

Ottoman culture of temaşa”. It is obvious that temaşa which has meanings such as

viewing, looking or watching refers to visuality and implies a visual culture or a way

of seeing. Questions such as to what extent or in which context(s) this visual culture

is associated with visuality or how it has been transformed over time aside,

Kahraman makes an interesting move by correlating temaşa and contemplation and

translating temaşa as “contemplation” or vice versa. In other words, he weakens the

relation between temaşa and gaze by taking the act of temaşa as “contemplation”.

Although not in the measure of temaşa, contemplation also indirectly refers to the

acts of looking, seeing and viewing. So in a context related to visuality, it can be

misleading word. In this sense, a more proper counterpart of contemplation in

Turkish can be offered as tefekkür [transliterated in English as tafakkur], meaning

“meditation, reflection, pondering” (Püsküllüoğlu, 2012, p. 1837).

2.2.1 On Definition of Contemplation

In English, contemplation has literal meanings such as “concentration on

spiritual things as a form of private devotion”, “a state of mystical awareness of

God’s being” (“Contemplation Definition & Meaning”, n.d.), “the act of

contemplating; thoughtful observation”, “full or deep consideration; reflection”

(“Definition of contemplation”, n.d.), “the act of regarding steadily” (“Contemplation

Definition & Meaning”, n.d.). Contemplation –which corresponds to “reflect upon,

ponder, study, view mentally, meditate”– comes from Latin contemplatio meaning

“act of looking at” from past participle of contemplari corresponding “to gaze

attentively, observe, consider”, originally meaning “to mark out a space for

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observation” (as an augur does) from assimilated form of com- + templum “space

marked out for the taking of auguries” (“contemplation | Etymology”, n.d.).

As it will be seen in the following pages, both “temaşa” and “tefekkür” are options

for translating contemplation into Turkish. Then, although temaşa and tefekkür have

different meanings which are given above, why are there two different options such

as temaşa and tefekkür for translating contemplation into Turkish? In my opinion, the

answer of this question lies in the history of contemplation –being a complex notion

corresponding to both physical and intellectual acts– extending to the notion of

theōria in Greek. Hence, it will be proper to examine the histories of notions of

theōria, contemplatio and tefekkür prior to giving examples of Turkish translations of

contemplation as “temaşa” or “tefekkür”.

2.2.2 From Theōria to Contemplatio

The ancient Greek word theōria (“theory | Etymology”, n.d.), which means

“contemplation, speculation; a looking at, viewing; a sight, show, spectacle, things

looked at” was derived from theōrein “to consider, speculate, look at” from theōros

“spectator” and originally from the combination of thea “a view” and horan “to see”

(“theory | Etymology”, n.d.). It expresses the state of being a spectator in ancient

Greek. Both Greek theōria and Latin contemplatio primarily meant “looking at

things, whether with the eyes or with the mind” (Cross & Livingstone, 2012, p. 412).

In her book Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its

Cultural Context which is one of the most detailed and comprehensive studies on the

history of the theōria in Ancient Greece Andrea Nightingale (2009) argues that

considering its cultural and social dimensions, theōria corresponds to a common

religious practice in ancient Greece. In this sense, theōria is a cultural event in which

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theōros travels abroad towards oracular centers and religious festivals where s/he

witnesses a spectacle and take part in an event. This journey enables theōros to

encounter different perspectives and practices from his/her own worldview

(Nightingale, 2009, pp. 40-44).

According to Nightingale, the fourth-century philosophers such as Plato and

Aristotle take the cultural practice of theōria at religious festivals –in which theōros

journeys to a religious sanctuary where s/he witnesses various spectacles, participates

in rituals– as a model for explaining their own versions of philosophic theōria. Since

in ancient Greece, traditional theōria has a venerable and authoritative status,

philosophers find a model helping them to explicate the new discipline of

“theoretical” philosophy (Nightingale, 2009, p. 72). In this sense, the term constitutes

an integral part of the philosophy of Plato and appears as a key concept in middleperiod

dialogues of Plato such as Republic (540a-c) and Symposium (210b-212a). For

Plato, it is through theōria that the soul may apprehend the knowledge of the Form of

the Good; in other words what the contemplative (theōros) contemplates (theōrei) are

the Forms, i.e. the realities underlying the individual appearances. Aristotle, on the

other hand, considers exclusively the spectatorial activity of theōria rather than

notion of the journey. Aristotle separates the theōria from practical purposes and

considers it as the highest activity of man. For Aristotle, instead of pursuing theōria

for its own sake, those who would put it to practical ends would be engaging in

theōria in the wrong way (Nightingale, 2009, p. 221). Note that with respect to their

own conceptions of theōria, these philosophers transform their models to illustrate

different aspects of theōria. Thus in the course of being used as a model for

philosophic theōria, the content of the traditional theōria is expanded for referring to

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the act of experiencing or observing, and then comprehending through nous

(Nightingale, 2009, pp. 70-71).

For Nightingale, theōros’ viewing of icons, sacred images in the religious

festivals offers a suitable model for the conception of philosophical vision of

“seeing” divine truths. In philosophic theōria, too, objects being identified as sacred

and divine are “viewed”. Like the theōros at religious festivals, the philosophic

theorist disengages from ordinary life in the course of philosophic theōria. In order

to “see” eternal and divine beings, i.e. Platonic Forms, s/he raises above all earthly

affairs in the course of theōria (Nightingale, 2009, pp. 66-70).

In the Republic, Plato makes full use of the entire journey of theōros including the

departure, the activity of spectating, and the return home. In books V-VII of the

Republic, via Socrates, Plato sets forth for the first time a detailed account of a new

practice that he calls philosophy. An important part of this construction as a

specialized discipline of philosophy is the identification of theōria as the typical

activity of the true philosopher. In this respect the philosopher is characterized as a

new kind of theōros, i.e. a man who travels to the metaphysical realm to see the

sacred views in there (Nightingale, 2009, pp. 77-78). For Plato, the objects of true

knowledge are metaphysical entities called Forms [Gr. eidoi6]. Plato conceptualizes

the Forms as visual objects and identifies them as true “being”. Although the Forms

are metaphysical beings which are non-corporeal, changeless, everlasting and have

substantial character, Plato emphasizes their “visibility” to the mind, partly in order

to confer on them a substantiality and presence akin to the apparent beings in the

6 Gr. “that which is seen; form, shape, aspect, look”.

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physical world. This “visibility” of the Forms to the mind reveals their ontological

presence. Metaphors from the concrete, physical world are utilized for implying this

ontological point (Nightingale, 2009, p. 110). In this respect, it is important to note

that Plato distinguishes the “eye of the soul/mind” from the physical eyes, and tends

to denigrate sensory perception. The philosophic educational system proposed in the

Republic is also for training the “eye of the soul” to apprehend the Forms and attain

knowledge. Through philosophic education humans can also direct the “eye of the

mind” “upwards” towards truth (Nightingale, 2009, pp. 79-80).

Christian contemplation, from Latin contemplatio, refers to several Christian

practices concerning God or the Divine. It includes several practices and theological

concepts, and until the sixth century the practice of what is now called mysticism

was referred to by the term contemplatio (Johnston, 1997, p. 24). But for the Early

Church Fathers, Christian theōria was not contemplation of Platonic Ideas, but

“studying the Scriptures”, with an emphasis on the spiritual sense. Later,

contemplation came to be distinguished from intellectual life, leading to the

identification of theōria or with a form of prayer distinguished from discursive

meditation (Cross & Livingstone, p. 412).

2.2.3 From Contemplatio to Tafakkur

The notion of tafakkur [contemplation/Tr. tefekkür], which is the basis of

many intellectual traditions in Islamic cultural history, is a human activity that is

mentioned in many verses of the Quran, even via different names. In this respect, to

contemplate on [Tr. tefekkür etmek] the relations between Allah and universe,

universe and human, Allah and human is almost a kind of worship or prayer. Arabic

notions such as tafakkur [contemplation], tadabbur [pondering], ta’ammul

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[reflection], nazar [speculation], i’tibār [considering], tadhakkur [remembrance],

ta’aqqul [discernment] correspond to different types of fikr [meditation or thinking].

Derived from Arabic dbr meaning “to chase” or “to dig out the roots of something”,

tadabbur [pondering] corresponds to “searching for, discovering and pondering over

the deep meanings of the haqiqa [truth/reality] and the significance Quran” (Ahmad,

2011, p. 152). Ta’ammul [reflection] refers to the reflection on divine and eternal

truths by being free of the effects of the external world as much as possible.Derived

from the Arabic root nzr [to look], nazar [speculation] literally means “to turn your

eyes in the direction of something in order to see it”, but also “looking through ‘the

eyes of the qalb7 [heart]’ and speculating” or “making inferences, theoretical studies”

(Kutluer, 1988, p. 53). I’tibār [considering] is a way of thinking corresponding to

“rational consideration of the existence of the world by taking its transient and

deceptive nature into account”. The notion tadhakkur [remembrance] corresponds to

recalling or recollection, which is closely related with dhikr [invocation], meaning

“invoking”, “recalling”, “remembering”, is a form of prayer involving rhythmic

repetition of words such as the name of God, i.e. Allah for remembering and

mentioning one’s relationship with God (Renard, 2009, p. 123). Ta’aqqul

[discernment], which can be translated as “prudence”, “understanding”,

“judiciousness”, “thoughtfulness”, corresponds to acting for the good, i.e. displaying

a “deliberation in deducing what should be preferred and what should be avoided”

(McGinnis & Reisman, 2007, p. 69) as a reminiscent of Aristotelian phrónēsis8 in

Fārābī’s lexicon (Netton, 1999, p. 46).

7 In terms of Sufism, the heart [qalb] is not only a physical organ; it is also the center of all spiritual

experience, faith and vision.

8 Phrónēsis is an Ancient Greek word refers to a type of wisdom or intelligence.

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Probably the most elaborate exposition of the doctrines of contemplative

meditation (fikr or tafakkur) in Islam is found in Al-Ghazali’s “Chapter on

Meditation” in the The Revival of Religious Sciences. In the preface of his chapter on

mediation [Ar. fikr], Al-Ghazali presents a sketchy outline of contemplation [Ar.

tafakkur] and reveals how comprehensive and difficult the process is. In this sense,

the process of contemplation includes meditation, reflection and speculation on

issues such as the blessings, creations, divine names and attributes of Allah. In the

second part entitled “The True Nature and the Benefits of Meditation”, Al-Ghazali

says that tafakkur [contemplation], tadabbur [pondering] and ta’ammul [reflection]

almost synonymous, but nazar [speculation], i’tibār [considering], tadhakkur

[remembrance] correspond to a single process –that of passing on from two related

observations to arrive at a third cognition– but with different nuances. True

contemplation brings to the heart a knowledge which transforms it and heightens the

consciousness and spiritualizes the action of the one who contemplates. The fruits of

contemplation consist of varieties of knowledge [Ar. ‘ilm], states and actions. When

knowledge is acquired within the heart, the state of the heart is altered. When the

heart’s state changes, the actions of the bodily members change. Thus action follows

spiritual state, states follow knowledge, and knowledge follows contemplation.

Contemplation is therefore the beginning of and the key to all action (Lewisohn,

1999, n.p.).

Concerning the subjects, which can be contemplated on, Al-Ghazali gives

various examples and makes detailed explanations. The person himself or herself,

animals, vegetables, Earth with its mountains and seas, sky including all atmospheric

events, heavens with its stars, the Moon and the Sun with their both inward [Ar.

bātin] and outward [Ar. zāhir] meanings can be contemplated as long as all of them

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are taken as signs [Ar. ayat] of greatness and power of Allah in terms of His Divine

Names and Attributes. At this point, it is important to note that Al-Ghazali

emphasizes the distinction between the look of the one who contemplates and the

look of the naturalists [Tr. tabiatçiler]. Since the latter does not observe or witness

[Ar. mushāhada] the creative acts of God in the context stated above but rather seeks

for causal explanations concerning what they see, when they look at the nature.

Although the act of witnessing begins with the looking [Ar. nazar] via the bodily eye

[Ar. basar], there are successive stages including witnessing by heart, witnessing of

spirit [Ar. rûh] and witnessing of mystery [Ar. sirr]. Witnessing by heart occurs, not

via the bodily eye, but via the “eye of the heart” [Ar. basiret]. The “eye of the heart”

“sees” the spiritual world in an immediate manner much like the physical eye sees

the sensible world directly. But these two types of seeing are different. Whereas the

former one implies a kind of comprehension or understanding in a direct manner, the

latter corresponds to knowing discursively based on sensation and perception (İmam,

1993, pp. 777-798).

In Sufi understanding, contemplation involves the faculty of intellect [Ar.

‘aql, Gr. nous] rather than the faculty of reason [Ar. nātiq, Gr. logos]. The term

intellect comes from the Latin intellēctus, and originally from Greek nous and

corresponds the faculty of the human mind/soul necessary for understanding what is

true or real. In other words, whereas reason acquires knowledge through perceptions

and sensations brought by the senses; intellect implies the faculties of understanding,

comprehension and knowing concerning with the ultimate nature of things, not

accidental attributes of them. For example for Plato, in order to fully understand

things, nous (intellect) perceives truth directly, i.e. ideas. Somehow similarly, for

Aristotle, the rational part of the soul [Ar. nafs] consists of “reasoning” and

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“knowing” parts. When it is compared to “reasoning” part, the “knowing” part,

which is responsible for contemplating, is higher in status and corresponds the nous.

This hierarchical structure is somehow echoes in the Islamic thought, in which senses

lie at the bottom, reason has a higher status than senses and finally the intellect has

the highest one. So when contemplating the phenomena of nature, the contemplative

seeks to “see” beyond the intermediate realm of reason; i.e. the realm of “Platonic

ideas”. For him/her, nature is not something to be analyzed in accordance with some

conceptual scheme, but is an opportunity to come to knowing himself through the

analogy existing between the microcosm and the macrocosm.

Beginning with the Greek conception of theōria in the fourth century BC,

continuing with the Christian/Latin conception of contemplatio through the Middle

Ages, ending with Islamic understanding of tafakkur in the twelfth century, this

explication concerning the contemplation can be furthered up to the 20th century,

through the works of Descartes, Kant, Schopenhauer and Heidegger. Although, with

its unnecessarily long and detailed flow, it seems secondary to main issue of this

study; it is rather ancillary in the sense that this study builds on the concept of

tafakkur qua being the core notion of the way of seeing transformed in the course of

the Westernization.

In this sense, both the definition and explanation, even translation, of

contemplation/tefekkür are vital in terms of this study. If the concept of

contemplation is explicated in a proper way, what kind of transformation occurred in

the contemplative way of seeing during the course of Westernization can be properly

discussed. The notion tefekkür provides a context in which the whole process of

transformation can be read so that all the changes in other areas are the result of its

transformation in the contemplative worldview. This is the major reason why this

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notion should be discussed. Minor reasons are due to Kahraman’s and Yavuz’s usage

of temaşa as an equivalent of contemplation or vice versa. At first sight, Kahraman’s

preference of temaşa instead of tefekkür seems reasonable in terms of structuring his

argument around the relation between modernity and visuality. But yet, the word

temaşa corresponds to only a small part or stage in the act of contemplation, thus

providing an inadequate explanation of the transformation in question.

At this point, in order to discuss why Kahraman may have made such a choice,

examples of contexts in which the word temaşa is used and translation of

contemplation as either “temaşa” or “tefekkür” should be examined.

2.2.4 Usage Examples of Temaşa, Tefekkür and Contemplation

In the volume concerning his visit to Mecca for the pilgrimage [Hajj] of his

Seyâhatnâme, Evliya Çelebi writes the following lines in 1671:

“Kaldır şu kafiri bu ‘arab kafirleri ile kuleye urun’ deyü dizdarı

mataracıbaşıya teslim edüp kuleye haps edüp kethüdasın dizdar

eyledi. Hakir bu temaşayı edüp haymemden silahım kemerime

kuşanup ziyaretden ziyarete gidüp cümle şehri ve kal’ayı seyr [ü]

temaşa edüp” (Gemici, 2012, p. 32).

Here, Evliya Çelebi uses the word temaşa in the meaning of “watching”, “viewing”

and “promenading”.

Educator and journalist Evangelios Misailidis’ four volume novel which was

written in Turkish but with Greek script in 1872 has the title Temaşa-ı Dünya ve

Cefakâr u Cefâkeş [The Spectacle of the World and the Tormentor and the

Tormented] In the following lines below, it can be seen that Misailidis uses the word

temaşa in the meaning of “viewing” and “watching”, i.e. to perceive through sight or

by the eye:

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“Dünya umuma mahsus bir temaşa-i âlem olup, her şeyin vukuu

muhtemel idüğinden, gûna gûn vukuat hazinesi olmak üzere işbu

kitabın telifi vatandaşlarıma belki son yadigâr olmak için taraf-ı

âcizînden tensip görülmüştür” (Enginün, 2018, p. 173)

Temaşa [Play (theater)] was also the title of two volume book of Hasan Bedreddin

and Manastırlı Mehmet Rifat, in which they collect the translated and copyrighted

plays in 1875 (Enginün, 2018, p. 703).

In his work Three Days in Berlin [Berlin’de Üç Gün] which was serialized in the

newspaper Tercüman-ı Hakikat where he publicized his impressions on the occasion

of his three day visit of Berlin in 1889, Ahmet Mithat Efendi gives place to the word

in the following lines:

“İşbu lokantadan çıktıktan sonra tekrar müzenin temaşasına gittik.

Hem bu defa yalnız Eski Müze’yi ve onun da yalnız resim galerisini

ziyaret ve temaşa ile yetinmedik. Eski ve Yeni Müzelerin her ikisini

gezip gördük ki bu temaşa ve tetkik ikimizi de hem hayret ve hem

istifade ettirdi” (Mithat & Oktay, 2009, p. 49)

Here, it is apparent that Ahmet Mithat Efendi uses the word temaşa in the sense of

looking, viewing or watching to see, learn or have fun. Although this usage very

slightly reminds the activity encompassed in the traditional theōria, it is unrelated

with the notion contemplation discussed above.

Temaşa-yı Hazan [Spectacles of Autumn] and Temaşa-yı Leyâl [Spectacles of

Night] are the titles of two poems which Cenap Şahabettin wrote in the mid-1890s.

These poems are two examples of Şahabettin’s poems in which he emphasizes the

senses such as sight, touch and hearing. In these poems, Şahabettin either beholds the

nature or listens to it. Ahmet Haşim considers these poems among the nature poems

(Enginün, 2018, pp. 556-557). Here again the word temaşa implies to perceiving

through sight or seeing by the eye.

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Türk Temaşası [Turkish Theatre] (1912) was Selim Nüzhet Gerçek’s book in

which he examined the different forms of Turkish folk theater such as meddah [story

teller], Karagöz [shadow play], ortaoyunu. Like the title of Hasan Bedreddin and

Manastırlı Mehmet Rifat, the word temaşa is used in the context of theater. Here the

meaning of “looking, viewing or watching to have fun” is primary.

In his 1941 book The History of Social Doctrines [İçtimai Doktrinler Tarihi],

Hilmi Ziya Ülken uses temaşa for translating the notion of contemplation, which we

have seen as having an important place in Plato's theory of Forms as follows:

“Yunanlılar mümkün olduğu kadar yüksek ve zihni işlerle

uğraşacaklar, devlet idaresinde esas olan iyilik İdeasına ait

düşüncelere, yine Eflatunun tabiri ile temaşaya (contemplation)

ayıracakları bir boş zamanları olacak ve bu suretle cemiyetin tarla

sürmek ve aşağı san’atlar gibi yorucu ve tefekkürden uzak olan işleri

yabancılara ve kölelere bırakacaktır” (Ülken, 1941, p. 21).

Although Ülken translated “contemplation” as temaşa and “meditation” as tefekkür,

in the next pages of his book where he deals with the issue of contemplation in the

context of Plato’s philosophy, he uses the words tefekkür and mütefekkir (meaning

“one who contemplates”) along with temaşa as follows:

“Eflatunun siyaset nazariyesinde netice olarak elde edilen hakim fikir,

temaşa ve boş zamandır. Eflatun cemiyetin içinde mütefekkiri

kurtarmak istiyor. Öyle bir siyasi şekil bulalım ki orada mütefekkir

mahvolmasın, çünkü mütefekkir olmak onun kanaatine göre elişleriyle

uğraşmayarak boş zaman elde etmek ve bütün kuvvetini İdelerin

temaşasına vermekle mümkündür” (Ülken, 1941, p. 21).

As an option, in its traditional sense meaning “looking at, viewing” or “a sight,

spectacle, things looked at”, from theōrein “look at”, from theōros “spectator”, from

thea “a view" + horan “to see” (“theory | Etymology”, n.d.), it is possible to translate

Greek theōria into Turkish as “temaşa”, but as it was stated in detail above, Plato’s

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usage of the term is different from this traditional sense. Nightingale (2009) –as

broadly discussed above– distinguishes these two senses by describing Plato’s usage

as “philosophic theōria” (“theory | Etymology”, n.d.). It is this notion of theōria

meaning “contemplation, speculation, consideration” was in fact translated into Latin

as contemplatio. Eventually, in English or French translations of Plato Latin

contemplatio was translated as “contemplation”. So translating contemplation in

Platonic or philosophic senses into Turkish as “tefekkür” is more proper than as

“temaşa” which in turn may be used for translation of Greek theōria in its traditional

sense.

In Peyami Safa’s 1949 novel titled The Armchair of Mademoiselle Noraliya

[Matmazel Noraliya'nın Koltuğu], the main character of the novel Ferit finds the

journal of Mademoiselle Noraliya in her mansion where Ferit moves in following her

death. In the journal of Mademoiselle Noraliya who died after an ascetic life lasted

for many years, Ferit reads the following sentences dated 1909 (hijri 1328):

“Deli gibi eğlenmektense akıllı gibi bu âlemi temaşa eylemek insanın

şanından değil midir? Fransızların “Contemplation” dedikleri bu

temaşa herkese nasip olsaydı cihanda bu mecnûnâne ihtiraslar ve

bunca felâketler olur muydu? Velâkin benim içime öyle doğar ki bir

gün ve kim bilir beşeriyete mukadder nice âfetlerden sonra bu herkese

nasip olur. ‘İmitation de Jesus-christ’ nam eserde gördüğüm şu cümle

beni böyle düşündürmektedir: “Pek az temaşa ehli vardır, zira ki

ruhların arasında pek azı hakir ve mütevazidir” (Safa, 2016, n.p.)

Although Mademoiselle Noraliya speaks of “viewing” of the world (or the universe

in a wider sense), she means “viewing in an awe-inspiring and exemplary way”. So

the act is not limited to the physical world and looking with eyes only. Through

Mademoiselle Noraliya, Peyami Safa, mentions the contemplation in a religious

sense as a type of meditation derived from the Latin word contemplatio. Again, what

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Safa mentions is closer to the “tefekkür” in a Christianized sense, rather than

“temaşa”.

One year later, in his book House of the People [Halkın Evi] (1950),

instructor and play writer İsmayıl Hakkı Baltacıoğlu uses the word temaşa –just like

Selim Nüzhet Gerçek– in the context of theatre, meaning “spectacle” or “play”:

“Bu tiyatro sanatları şunlardır: Karagöz, ortaoyunu, köy sohbet oyunu,

tulûat, meddah. Bu tarihi temaşa şubelerinde bütün milli tiyatro

cevherleri vardır. Bu Türk temaşa nevileri incelenince temelli

karakterlerle her milletin tiyatro geleneklerinden ayrılır” (Baltacıoğlu,

1950, p. 129).

In the Dictionary of Philosophy which is written by Abdülbaki Güçlü et al. (2003),

the notion contemplation is translated into Turkish as “düşünceye/tefekküre dalma”

and described as follows: “the quiet and profound act of thinking for seeing what is

worth seeing and reaching the reality or mystery behind the visible. In the language

of philosophy, contrary to discursive thinking and logical reasoning, presupposed

mind state that a person will reach when s/he ignores the external world and heads

towards his/her inner world. In theology, it means meditating on spiritual and

transcendent things or arriving at the awareness of the existence and presence of God

via meditation” (p. 445).

In her 2014 book Sehrengiz, Urban Rituals and Deviant Sufi Mysticism in

Ottoman Istanbul, Deniz Calis-Kural points at “seyr [promenade]”, “temaşa”,

“teferrüç [strolling]” as Turkish equivalents of the term contemplation which she

regarded in the context of Sufism:

“Even these Sufi metaphors of contemplation (seyr, temasa, teferrüc)

came to be used in the identification of public promenades enjoyed by

city dwellers, as places (mesire, temaşa-gah, teferrüc-gah) to go

strolling and to enjoy contemplating the beauty of the sight of the city

where the heart is freed from ennui. In an early 17th -century

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document, visiting Kağıthane is acknowledged as going for a

pleasurable visit and sightseeing (seyre giden)” (2018, p. 233)

On the other hand, in her translation of Hans Belting’s 2015 book, Zehra Aksu

Yılmazer translates the word contemplation in the writings of Ibn al-Haytham into

Turkish as “tefekkür”:

“Bizim görmemiz, ‘hızlı bir bakış atma (glancing) ya da ağır bir

tefekkür (contemplation) şeklinde olur’. Hızlı bir bakış attığımızda

cisimleri sadece üstünkörü görürüz” (Belting, 2017, p. 114).

From these chronological examples above, it can be inferred that the word temaşa is

mainly used for implying either “viewing, watching, perceiving through sight for

either for learning or having fun” or “play/theatre”. When the word is used along

with contemplation in parenthesis –as Hilmi Ziya Ülken, Peyami Safa, Hilmi Yavuz

and Hasan Bülent Kahraman do– physical or bodily content of the term as

“perceiving through sight” or “seeing with the physical eye” is often neglected and

the word is loaded with the meanings which in fact belong to the notion tefekkür.

Although they do not use the word tefekkür, they round off the word temaşa into

tefekkür by adding the notion contemplation.

2.2.5 Temaşa or Tefekkür: Seeing and Seeing That

Contemplation-contemplatio-theōria linkage and specifically traditional

meaning of Greek theōria prior to its philosophical usage can give a hint for why

contemplation is translated into Turkish as “temaşa”. Meanings of temaşa such as

“spectacle”, “promenade” or “looking, viewing or watching to see the worth seeing

and learn” are also included in theōria. In this sense, this type of theōria can be

translated into Turkish as “temaşa”. But the point which is interesting and must be

43

emphasized is that none of the authors translating contemplation as “temaşa” or vice

versa does refer to Greek word theōria and seems to be aware of it. Even if temaşa

can be used for translating traditional theōria into Turkish; when it is Platonic or

Aristotelian use of the term is under consideration, from which Latin contemplatio,

and eventually English contemplation is originated, tefekkür is a more proper choice

for translating contemplation into Turkish. As a matter of fact, it is important to note

that it is not the word tamasha which is translated to English as “contemplation”, but

tafakkur in many texts. In his A Grammar of the Persian Language, Duncan Forbes

(1980) translates tafakkur [tefekkür] as “thought” and “contemplation” and tamāsha

[temaşa] as “show” and “spectacle”. In Islam: A Worldwide Encyclopedia –which is

edited by Cenap Çakmak (2017), tafakkur is translated as “reflection”,

“contemplation” (p. 1336). In Malik Badri’s Contemplation: An Islamic

Psychospiritual Study, tafakkur is translated as “contemplation” (2000, n.p.).

In this sense, if Kahraman or Yavuz mean theōria in traditional sense when they

write “temaşa (contemplation)”, then it is not possible to argue that this type of

temaşa is not based on gaze. If they imply the philosophic theōria in Platonic or

Aristotelian senses, which would be origin of the contemplatio(n) in the following

centuries, then they should prefer tefekkür, rather than temaşa. Then, why would

authors such as Ülken and Safa, Yavuz and Kahraman –who probably knew both the

intension and extension of the notion tefekkür as much as of temaşa– have preferred

temaşa instead of tefekkür? Why did Yavuz read the Ottoman culture through the act

of temaşa rather than tefekkür? Why did Kahraman make a distinction between

modern scopic regime based on gaze and traditional systematic of temaşa

complemented into tefekkür instead of distinguishing between the former and

Ottoman tefekkür mentality?

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In his essay “On the Ottoman Culture”, Hilmi Yavuz explicates the argument

concerning the relation between temaşa and Divan poetry. Yavuz had discussed this

previously in his essay “Is the Divan Poetry a Symbolic Poetry?” (published in 1987)

as follows:

“Ottoman culture is not a culture that aims to make this world a

functional world. Making the world functional involves making it an

object of instrumental reason (that is, of natural sciences and

technology). Appropriating nature as a whole, making it useful and

functional for humane purposes is the distinguishing feature of

Western (European) culture, not Ottoman culture. The connection

between the development of science and technology and the

appropriation of nature or making the world a functional world cannot

be established in Ottoman culture. Science and technology in the

Ottoman Empire had a unique direction and it is not about making this

world functional. (For Ottoman people) nature is an object of temaşa

(contemplation)” (Yavuz, 2009, p. 14).9

Here, Yavuz emphasizes the difference between Ottoman and Western cultures in

terms of their attitudes towards nature. Whereas instrumentalizing nature, i.e.

appropriating and using it as a means to a practical end via technical knowledge is

considered distinctive feature of Western culture, Ottoman culture is described in

contrast to it. Prior to the end of the 18th century, such an argument may seem sound

in terms of Ottoman culture. But with the beginning of the 19th century, this

distinctive feature of Western culture is what the Ottoman culture desires to

appropriate. The Ottoman attitude towards nature is one of the aspects of what I call

9 In Tr, “Osmanlı kültürü, bu dünyayı, kullanılabilir bir dünya kılmayı amaçlayan bir kültür değildir.

Dünyayı kullanılabilir kılmak, bu dünyayı enstrümantal aklın (yani, doğa bilimlerinin ve teknolojinin)

bir nesnesi durumuna getirmeyi içeriyor. Doğayı bütünüyle temellük etmek, onu insani amaçlar için

ehli ve kullanılabilir kılmak, Osmanlı kültürünün değil, Batı(Avrupa) kültürünün ayırt edici

özelliğidir. Bilim ve teknolojinin gelişmesi ile doğanın temellük edilmesi veya dünyanın kullanılabilir

bir dünya haline getirilmesi arasındaki bağıntı, Osmanlı kültüründe kurulamaz. Osmanlı’da bilim ve

teknolojinin, kendine özgü bir doğrultusu olmuştur ve bu dünyayı, kullanılabilir kılmakla ilgili

değildir. (Osmanlı insanı için) doğa, bir temaşa (contemplation) nesnesidir” (Yavuz, 2009, p. 14)

45

“contemplative worldview” [tefekkür zihniyeti]. And the change in this attitude

towards nature is what I call “transformation of worldview and the way of seeing

which based on contemplation”. It is possible to follow the idea of appropriating the

nature and using it in the service of instrumental reason to the Cartesian thought in

the West. And this takes us to the 17th century, when the foundations of modernism

are laid. Renaissance in the 15th century, Reform movements in the middle of the 16th

century, Enlightenment in the middle of the 17th century and Industrial Revolution

must also be considered. The brightest names in the history of Western philosophy,

from Descartes to Hegel, were flourished in this process. The Ottoman society was

quite (perhaps completely) out of the process mentioned above. The Treaty of

Karlowitz was signed at the end of the 17th century. The 18th century passed through

awakening efforts; but there was still idleness. The transformation gained its

momentum in the second half of the 19th century. This means at least two centuries

of delay. This feeling of being “late” or the desire to close the gap as fast as possible

explains the rapid and harsh attitude in the course of Ottoman modernization. As a

result, through the process of modernization, the Ottoman could only get the form

from the West, because form allows quick immitation. It would take a long time to

build up the content or essence. Here the content corresponds to historical or cultural

context, and form refers to the manifestations of these contexts. For various reasons,

a cultural climate which would bring fort manifestations in Western sense could not

be created in the Ottoman Empire. The motivation of progression, modernization and

Westernization is for creating such a cultural climate resembling Western one. To

cultivate such a cultural climate, there was a need for a long time and long-term

struggles which Ottomans lacked. So in a quick and pragmatic way, they acquired

the Western manifestations and sought the adaptation of this manifestation to a

46

traditional cultural and intellectual climate. The true expectation was that these

Western forms, in the course of time, would create a novel cultural climate in the

Western sense by changing the traditional one present. So, the Ottoman culture

imitated the Western form and tried to tailor a somehow given content to this form.

The discrepancy between acquired form and traditionally given content manifested

itself by the feelings such as fracture, rupture or crisis.

Departing from Nâilî’s aforementioned couplet10 above, Yavuz also argues

that:

“Here nature is an object of temaşa (contemplation); but it is not

nature itself that is contemplated, but the embroideries on its face.

Nature can only be an object of temaşa when given not directly but

mediated. The object of temaşa is not the object itself, but the signs of

objects. An unspecified difference is envisaged here between viewing

and contemplating. To watch is to recognize nature and things from

outside and from the surface. Things do not present to us the form in

which they appears and their truth as it appears. First we abstract it

from its appearance; we must take out the temporal, the ephemeral and

the accidental” (Yavuz, 2009, p. 15).11

For Yavuz, it is not the nature itself which is represented in the Ottoman culture; but

rather signs [nakış] of it are represented; for only in this sense, nature could be such

an object of temaşa [contemplation]. This is the point where both Hilmi Yavuz and

Hasan Bülent Kahraman write “temaşa”, but mean “tefekkür”; and to distinguish

between acts of temaşa and viewing, they eventually complement the temaşa to

10 Mestâne nükûş-i suver-i âleme baktık / Her birini bir özge temâşâ ile geçtik.

11 In Tr., “Burada doğa, bir temaşa (contemplation) nesnesidir; ama temâşâ edilen, doğanın kendisi

değil, onun yüzündeki nakışlardır. Doğa, doğrudan değil, dolayımlı (mediated) verildiğinde ancak, bir

temaşa nesnesi olabilir. Temaşa nesnesi, nesnenin kendisi değil, nesnelerin işaretleridir. Burada,

seyretmekle temâşâ etmek arasında, belirtilmemiş bir fark öngörülüyor. Seyretmek, doğayı, eşyayı

dışından ve yüzeyden tanımaktır. Eşya, göründüğü biçimi ve göründüğü kadarıyla kendi hakikatini

sunmaz bize. Önce onu görünüşünden soyutlamamız; geçici, fâni ve ilineksel olanı tasfiye etmemiz

gerekir” (Yavuz, 2009, p. 15).

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tefekkür via contemplation in parenthesis. They intend to propose a distinction

through appearance/reality or form/content distinctions. In this sense, for Yavuz, the

nature is immediately an object of viewing [seyretmek]; but it is mediately an object

of temaşa. In my opinion, the nature is immediately an object of temaşa; but it is

mediately an object of tefekkür. So, there is no need for establishing a difference

between viewing and temaşa, since they can be taken as synonymous. But there is a

difference between tefekkür and temaşa [viewing]. It is through tefekkür, not temaşa,

one can abstract the truth of objects from their appearances by clarifying the

transient, temporal and accidental properties of them.

Another claim of Yavuz is as follows:

“Poetry and culture have the same mental inventory. If the poet refers

to nature, external reality, and to some extent describes nature itself;

this is because it uses nature as a means of comprehending abstract,

metaphysical ideas. The use of the concrete to describe the abstract

forms the basis of metaphor in Ottoman poetry. Here nature is

mediated. […] Using nature as an object of temaşa: Stylization in

miniature, metaphor in poetry, in a sense, correspond to each other”

(Yavuz, 2009, p. 15). 12

Although it is not same as instrumentalizing nature, i.e. appropriating and using it as

a means to a practical end via technical knowledge as it was stated in the first

quotation from Yavuz. Here, it can be argued that the nature is artistically

instrumentalized and used as a means for reaching or grasping the truth. Yavuz calls

12 In Tr., “Şiir ve kültür aynı zihinsel envantere sahiptir. Şair doğaya, dış gerçekliğe başvuruyor, bir

ölçüde doğanın kendisini de betimliyorsa; bu, doğayı soyut, metafizik ideaları kavratma aracı olarak

kullanıyor olmasındandır. Somut olanın, soyut olanı anlatmak için kullanılması Osmanlı şiirinde

istiârenin (eğretileme) temelini oluşturur. Burada doğa dolayımlanır. […] Doğayı temaşa objesi olarak

kavrayabilmek için kullanmak: Minyatürde stilizasyon, şiirde istiâre, bir anlamda birbirlerine tekabül

eder” (Yavuz, 2009, p. 16).

48

this mediation [dolayımlama]. To mediate means “occupying a middle position”

[arada bulunma] and “to act as intermediary agent in bringing, effecting,

communicating” [aracı/mutavassıt olmak]. So, it is another form of using as a means

for reaching something different. How is the nature mediated then? Here is the

process: nature → mediated nature (in artworks) → the truth. Here nature, in a

stylized or mediated form, is used as a means of grasping the truth. According to

Yavuz, there is no such thing as the description of nature as mere nature or

describing it for its own sake. So while blinking at abstraction, Yavuz at same time

neglects the naturalist tendencies in the Ottoman culture, which would emerge

towards the end of the 19th century. Via positing an extra ontological realm such as

mediated nature, Yavuz do differentiate viewing [seyretme] and temaşa so that while

the nature is the object of viewing, the mediated nature is taken as the object of

temaşa. In addition, there is an act of grasping the metaphysical ideas through the

mediated nature. Yavuz uses the notion contemplation in referring to this act. Yavuz

associates this situation with the act of temaşa. However, in the context of our study,

the situation that Yavuz mentioned is actually related to the act of tefekkür. But in the

course of transformation of the way of seeing based on tefekkür to the ways of seeing

based on temaşa, this attitude towards nature has changed over time. In this sense,

one of the main subjects of our work is the stages of this transformation; i.e.

religious, metaphysical, naturalist and impressionist stages.

When someone looks at something, what she sees is determined by her way of

seeing which is, in turn, governed by her worldview. This is how, a worldview shape

all human thought and action, being a fundamental perspective from which one can

address every issue of life. Based on this process, it can be said that when someone

49

looks at a Grain of Sand, she may see a World13 in it or she may see the mere hard

sand crystals.

Being somehow similar to the distinction –between looking and seeing–

implied in the example above, Charles Landesman makes a critical distinction

between seeing and seeing that: Belief and judgment are not merely characteristic

products of perception but are constitutive of it, then seeing something is just a case

of seeing that something is so and so. In general, seeing that is a cognitive

achievement. It is a case of knowing that. But plain seeing is not a cognitive

achievement; that one has something in sight does not imply that one knows anything

about it. Even when seeing that is based upon simple seeing, it is a mistake to

suppose that it itself is a type of seeing. It isn’t as if there are two kinds of seeing, the

plain and simple variety and seeing that. They are not species of the same genus. It is

just a linguistic accident rather than a conceptual resemblance that the word ‘see’ is

used in both cases (Landesman, 1993, pp. 35-36).

Building on the distinction made by Landesman, it can be argued that

whereas seeing is an act of seeing; seeing that is a way of seeing. At another level,

this way of seeing is governed by the worldview. In other words, worldviews are

constitutive of the ways of seeing and the ways of seeing are constitutive of the acts

of seeing.

The distinction, I emphasize, between the notions of temaşa and tefekkür is

based on this frame which is sketched above. Accordingly, whereas temaşa is an act

of seeing; tefekkür is a way of seeing (or an act of seeing that). So, tefekkür may be

13 This example had been taken from the line of “To see a world in a grain of sand” from William

Blake’s poem in Auguries of Innonce.

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constitutive of temaşa, although not necessarily. But this does not entail that all acts

of temaşa are necessarily a case of tefekkür, because some acts of temaşa may be

constituted by some other factors apart from tefekkür itself and there is even a

difference between temaşa and tefekkür, which is a reminiscent of the distinction

between seeing and seeing that.

Considering the example concerning the person who looks at/sees(1) a Grain

of Sand, but sees that(2) the whole World encapsulated in it, it can be argued that

whereas “(1)” corresponds to the act of temaşa; “(2)” pertains to the act of tefekkür

as a way of seeing. Although the act of seeing seems to be taking place in both

temaşa and tefekkür, these two acts of seeing are completely different from each

other in the sense that whereas the act of seeing determined by tefekkür is based on

seeing with the eye of the mind; the act of seeing determined by temaşa is based on

seeing with the bodily eye. This distinction, which is roughly outlined here, is one of

the results of numerous debates undergone within the Islamic philosophy and

tradition of kalam in Islamic culture. When you look at [temaşa etme] a grain of sand

and see the whole World encapsulated in it; this case of seeing is determined by

tefekkür. But, when you look at [temaşa etme] a grain of sand and see only the hard

sand crystals; this case of seeing is not determined by tefekkür. In such a situation,

what you see is reduced or converged to what you look at; i.e. when you look at

[temaşa etme] a grain of sand, without tefekkür, you only see a grain of sand quo a

grain of sand. When we talk about a transformation from a way of seeing based on

tefekkür to a way of seeing based on temaşa, what we mean is that in case of looking

at a grain of sand, what you see (the whole World encapsulated in it) is reduced or

converged to what you look at (only a grain of sand).

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At first glance, this transformation may seem insignificant, but it has far

reaching results. Through this transformation, what you see beneath what you look at

is restored to what you look at. In this transformation process, the whole

understanding of existence and reality (ontology), the methods of knowing and

making sense of reality (epistemology), differentiation between proper and improper

actions (morality), conditions of engaging with aesthetic objects also change. In this

sense, through these changes, many aspects of intellectual, political, social, cultural,

technological and economic areas are also altered and this alteration leads to feelings

such as fracture, rupture and crisis.

Based on the difference between two notions and these given definitions both

in English and Turkish, it can be inferred that temaşa etme pertains to an act of

seeing in terms of viewing, watching or sightseeing and tefekkür etme entails an act

of seeing that in terms of thinking, contemplating, reflecting, meditating. But despite

the evident difference between temaşa and tefekkür, in many texts written by Turkish

authors and examining the Ottoman visual culture or ways of seeing, temaşa is

translated as “contemplation” or contemplation is translated as “temaşa.” As a result

of this preference, a use in the form of temaşa (contemplation) is observed.

This critical translation preference both bypasses the distinction between

seeing and seeing that; and further ignores the meanings of temaşa and tefekkür. In

this way, it blurs the demarcation between temaşa as an act of seeing and tefekkür as

an act of seeing that, which is elaborated above. Moreover, by translating temaşa as

“contemplation,” the meaning content of tefekkür is also transferred to temaşa due to

the fact that comtemplation in English is the counterpart of tafakkur in Arabic. In this

way, tefekkür –being a very substantial concept in both Quran and Islamic

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understanding– is dissolved in temaşa which means “spectacle” or “walking about

for amusement” in mundane way.

As a result of this translation preference –in the form of temaşa

(contemplation)– ending up with reducing tefekkür to temaşa, the critical and

substantial importance of tefekkür act in Islam, Sufism and Ottoman culture is

overlooked; the temaşa culture, which has its own history, is evaluated differently

than it actually is; the differences between two ways of seeing based on two different

acts of seeing are eliminated; the true way of seeing of both Islam, Sufism and

Ottomans is situated in a completely improper ground. Therefore, examining the

transformation experienced by the Ottoman Empire during the Westernization

through transformation of ways of seeing cannot be carried out properly.

2.3 Contemplative vs. Spectatorial Worldviews

In the process of transition from absolutism to constitutionalism, from

sultanate to republic, from monarchy to democracy, from theocracy to secularism,

from being a servant to being an individual through the course of Westernization in

the 19th century, a shift between tradition and progression, obedience and inquiry,

subjective truth and objective reality, religious faith based on revelation and rational

knowledge based on causation occurred. In this process, traditional worldview of the

Ottomans, which had a contemplative character– had undergone a transformation.

This transformation –which began in the early 18th century (1830s) in a latent

manner– became official in the middle of the 19th century through Tanzimat (in

1839) and Constitutional Eras; and finally radicalized in the early 20th century with

the declaration the Republic in 1923.

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At this point, in terms of creating a context, it is worth mentioning how the

concept of worldview is understood within the scope of this study. The concept of

worldview [Weltanschauung in German] was coined by German philosopher

Immanuel Kant in his third critique, namely Critique of Judgment which was

published in 1790. In Kant’s lexicon, who wanted to emphasize the power of

perception of the human mind, the word meant simply the sense perception of the

world. Although the concept had a little significance for Kant, it evolved to refer to

“an intellectual conception of the universe from the perspective of a human knower”

(Naugle, 2005, p. 59). Immediately after Kant, German philosopher Johann Gottlieb

Fichte –who was inspired by his reading of Kant– used the term to mean “the

perception of the sensible world” in 1792. It was with F. W. J. von Schelling, the

term came to mean “a self-realized, productive as well as conscious way of

apprehending and interpreting the universe of beings” (p. 60). Interestingly, from

Kant to Schelling, the meaning of the concept “shifted from the sensory to the

intellectual perception of the cosmos” (p. 61). In the Oxford English Dictionary, the

term was defined as “a particular philosophy or view of life; a concept of the world

held by an individual or a group” and “contemplation of the world, view of life” (p.

64). In this respect, the notion of worldview –which has a strong linkage with the

way of seeing– can be taken as the general view of the universe and man’s place in it

with its ontological and epistemological aspects.

Starting from such a conceptual framework, in this study it is argued that two

different ways of seeing which were based on two different worldviews, which were

contemplative and spectatorial respectively, began to confront and contact with each

other more and more after the Tanzimat Charter (1839) and this contact caused a

profound transformation in the traditional way of seeing of the Ottomans. This

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contact was implying the encounter of different –even contrast– ontological,

epistemological, moral and aesthetic concerns. If the concept of worldview is

considered as a whole with its ontological, epistemological, moral and aesthetic

aspects, it can be argued that until almost the end of the 19th century, the framework

of the contemplative worldview dominated the Ottoman mind was determined by

Quran, sunna14, kalam15 and fiqh16. Based on these fundamentals, an ontology

composed of an idealism woven with mystical elements; an absolutist and apriorist

epistemology which was ornamented with Aristotelian formal logic and taking the

truth as universal and unchangeable; an understanding of morality dependent on

sharia17 and fiqh in which good and evil are separated from each other with precise

lines ascend (Parla, 2019, p. 14). This worldview of Ottomans –whose frame can just

be drawn roughly at this point– is called “the absolute text” by art historian Ipek

Duben (2007, p. 36) and literary theorist Jale Parla (2009, p. 28).

On the other hand, spectatorial worldview –which The Ottomans interacted more

closely after the Tanzimat– was dependent on a more non-religious and naturalist

ontology, epistemological realism and experimental positivism. Together with the

Renaissance, the Western world began to move away from its medieval scholastic

worldview. With the Enlightenment, an epistemology having a realistic, rational,

objective and scientific character has gained strength. With the help of scientific and

technological developments, human beings began to look at both nature and itself

14 Arabic word meaning “the sayings and practice of the Prophet Muhammad reported by hadiths”.

15 Arabic word corresponding to the scholastic theology of Islam.

16 The word fiqh in Arabic literally means “understanding”. It is used for implying the Islamic

jurisprudence.

17 The word sharia in Arabic literally means “way”. Here, it corresponds to divine Islamic law or

religious law of Islam.

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with a different eye. While, beginning with the 12th century, the Islamic world was

plunging into scholasticism; along with the Renaissance (circa 14th century), Western

world was stepping away from the Middle Age’s scholastic thought (Stumpf, 1977,

pp. 212-213). The ontological and epistemological debates created by the

Enlightenment were far out of the mental climate of the Ottoman Empire. Just about

in the middle of the 19th century, the Ottoman intellectuals would encounter the

Western worldview framed above.

Through the courses of Westernization and modernization, Ottomans’

contemplative worldview transformed into a more naturalist outlook This naturalist

worldview was no longer based on the act of contemplation [tefekkür], but instead it

began to be shaped by the act of viewing [temaşa]. As previously discussed, in this

study the notion of temaşa is used in a completely different context with respect to

Hilmi Yavuz (2009) and Hasan Bülent Kahraman (2013). What Yavuz (2009) and

Kahraman (2013) implied as temaşa tradition was only one aspect of the

contemplative worldview [tefekkür zihniyeti] which have had profound

transformations. Along the course this worldview which was principally

contemplative mutated into a worldview which became principally non-religious and

naturalist. Temaşa was the fundamental aspect of this novel worldview, i.e.

spectatorial worldview. Whereas the contemplative worldview was based on the eye

of the mind or the heart [basiret (Uludağ, 1992, p. 103)], the spectatorial worldview

would be based on the eye of the head or bodily eye [rüyet (Uludağ, 2008, pp. 310-

311)] so that power relations in which they flourished would be completely different.

In this sense, in the face of nature, feeling of curiosity [merak] and desire to

dominate the nature would begin to take place the feelings of awe, wonder [hayret]

and reverence so that the way of representing the nature in artworks through

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descriptions or depictions had also changed. In this course the nature or sensible

reality [gerçeklik] was no longer a mean for reaching or grasping some

transcendental Truth [hakikat]; but it had become an end-in-itself.

At this point where the contemplative worldview had transformed into the

spectatorial one, there established a reconciliation of what someone looked at and

what s/he saw there, i.e. the act of seeing converged to the act of looking. Therefore,

“traditional hierarchies” (Kahraman, 2013, p. 22) between Truth and reality, intellect

and reason, reality and appearance, inward meaning and outward form, abstract and

concrete, seeing with the eye of the mind and seeing with bodily eye, tefekkür and

temaşa would change in the opposite direction. All these transformations were

reflected in the cultural realm in the form transition from Divan poetry to prose or

from miniature to painting based on Western conventions. While through the

formers, human being and the world around it are handled in an abstract way and

sensed with intuition; through the latter, the concrete reality presented by the

external world is brought to the forefront, and is grasped through observation and

reasoning. Manifestations of this transformation are best seen in cultural and

intellectual environments such artworks produced in these periods, because with this

transformation, methods of both producing and evaluating art have also changed. It

was matter of seeing through a brand new viewpoint and speaking through a novel

parlance.

Since the worldview was projecting a way of seeing, a perspective and

heuristic for people, the change in the worldview had found its echoes in the change

in what people saw and comprehended when they viewed something, say the external

reality, nature or landscape as a definite part of it. In this framework, how one

perceives the landscape and then depicts it is one of the most important

57

manifestations of her/his worldview. Landscape can be considered a kind of interface

of reality in which human beings constantly pursue depiction during their contact

with external reality. Here depictions in paintings and descriptions in poems or

proses reveal how external/sensible reality is perceived, conceptualized and

considered through a particular way of seeing. Nature as a function of reality,

landscape as a function of nature, and depiction/description as a function of

landscape can filter countless examples illustrating the transformation of worldview

in both verbal and visual contexts. In this sense, poetry and paintings are

manifestations of the way of seeing in charge. Via them, the way of seeing is

revealed, made apparent, demonstrated or realized by action. On the other hand,

works of non-fiction prose such as articles, essays or commentaries on paintings and

novels are articulations of the way of seeing in charge. Via them, the way of seeing

is reflected, analyzed and expressed through language.

2.4 Confrontation of Two Worldviews

From the beginning of the 17th century, the corruption, disruption and

deterioration of the Ottoman state system had begun to been visible; but it was the

end of the century when the Ottoman Empire realized that the West was

outperforming them (Sajdi, 2014, p. 17-18). In 1699, the Ottoman Empire, which

was defeated by Holy League states of Austria, Venice and Poland–Lithuania, signed

the Treaty of Karlowitz. This signature was the beginning of the decline of the

empire. By 1718, the Ottoman Empire, which was now defeated by Austria, had to

sign the Treaty of Passarowitz ending the Ottoman-Austrian War (Ülken, 2018, p.

13). The gradual deterioration of the economic and social structure of the Ottoman

Empire caused the state to decline gradually, too. Apart from administrative and

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economic disruptions, defeats and loss of land, especially in the wars against the

West, began to reveal the urgency of the situation. It was a great crisis and a solution

had to be found. To relive the good days of the past; the West must be defeated

again. In order to do so, the deteriorating order had to be re-established somehow.

The Treaty of Passarowitz, which meant a period of peace between the Ottoman

Empire and Austria for 25 years, would be the beginning of a new era that would

enable a different kind of reforming approach to flourish than the traditional one.

This period, the first 12-year of which beginning in 1718 and dating back to 1730

was known as the “Tulip Era”, would provide an environment for the development of

a different understanding of reform based on Western methods. On the other hand,

the alternative approach, which was carried out side by side with it, would continue

to exist and make itself always felt.

Defeats against the Christian West required the Muslim East to keep up with

the West in order to shoot it with its own weapon; however, modernization in the

Western way was the precondition for this. But the centuries-long tension between

these two cultures, which stemmed from the Crusades, was causing every influence

from the West to be met with a negative attitude, because until then, the West meant

“a culture and civilization that was not only considered a foreign and infidel but also

a suspicious enemy” (Parla, 2009, p. 10) This attitude prevented the modernization

based on keeping up with the Christian West from yielding results. As a result, every

westernization movement between the 18th and 19th centuries was faced with a severe

reactionary movement. State authority, which linked their defeats in wars to the

inadequacy of the army and the inadequacy of the military to the lack of technical

superiority of the West, was at the root of the modernization or westernization

movement. From the period of Ahmed III (1703–30) to the period of Selim III

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(1789–1807), these two movements, being in favor of West in terms of

modernization and regarding the West as an enemy, continued to be mutually

exclusive and the latter had mostly defeated the former. As a result, in the course of

150 years, no essential results could be achieved in terms of modernization. The

rulers and some of their viziers were aware of the need for a fundamental renewal,

especially in the military; but the current education system and the economic

situation were far from being the source of such a reform movement. Therefore, the

rulers or governors who would lead this change movement could not know where to

start (Ülken, 2018, p. 13). Although the determination in being more stable in the

modernization movements during the reigns of Mahmud II (1808–39) and

Abdulmecid I (1839–61) brought in a number of results, a proper synthesis could not

be reached and rather the result was a conciliation that remained superficial. The

effects of these superficial results were also quite limited. Even in the ruling class

where these effects had penetrated, there was a duality between supporters of

modernization and their more conservative counterparts. Disagreements between

modernization and Islam persist; but a resultant settlement could not be attempted

(Ülken, 2018, p. 6). The negative image of the West in the Ottoman mind would

make the reform process face with the resistance and this resistance would inevitably

lead to a number of fractures. Even those who believed in the necessity of this reform

movement and those who supported it most were going to experience great

fluctuations.

In his 1943 essay “The Original Source” [Asıl Kaynak], Tanpınar summarizes

the process beginning with 1718 as follows: “After the disaster of 1718 and with

some sort of impression this disaster brought, Occidentalism [garpçılık], which

started as the idea of the only solution of salvation in some of our intellectuals, not

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only changed our state institutions and ways of life in 1839, but also gave us to the

apprenticeship to the European school with the prayer of sheikh-ul-Islam and the

applause of foreign ambassador by holding us by our ears” (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 46).

In the process following this apprenticeship, “the ruined madrasah, the collapsed

economic life, the customs that opened its doors and the frontiers that were difficult

to protect did not leave time to think deeply” (p. 46) According to Tanpınar, two

things could be done at this point: “Either the old would be completely destroyed and

a new one would be established, or, as it was, the era of the new would begin next to

the old one left for self-depletion. A bit of impossibility and a bit of fear of any

reaction made the Tanzimat builders preferred the latter, and suddenly the country's

life took on a strange view of a fortified city. Our lives were divided in two” (p. 46).

Before the problem whether the past or the West should be aimed for correcting the

deteriorating order was not discussed enough; a worldview of a unique ontology,

epistemology, ethics and aesthetics –which were developed with the efforts, work

and accumulation of centuries– began to come into contact with a worldview having

very different characteristics. The impossibilities and fears that Tanpınar emphasized

above did not leave time to think thoroughly and deeply; beside the old one left for

self-depletion, there were rising a new which was considered as foreign; even infidel

and a suspicious enemy by some. This duality taking place in both the lives and

minds of the people living in that period would cause a crisis [buhran] of value

whose consequences would be very serious.

In his 1951 article “Changing Civilization and Inner Man” [Medeniyet

Değiştirmesi ve İç İnsan], Tanpınar states that beneath the discontinuity and disorder

ongoing in the fields of thought and art since the Tanzimat, there has been lying “a

crisis of mentality and inner man” (2019, p. 34). The cause of this crisis was the

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duality due to move away from one civilization, i.e. worldview, to another. This

duality, at first, divided society in terms of mentality [zihniyet] and soon deepened

over time, then eventually settled into the individual. However, what happened had

brought the society to face a value crisis of that prevented it from practicing any

fundamental practice. Tanpınar explained this situation as follows: “We cannot show

any resistance to what will change us, nor can we surrender completely to it. It is as

if we have lost our wealth of assets and history; we are in a crisis of value. We accept

everything without embracing their essential significance and we keep everything

that we accept almost locked in a corner of our minds” (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 39).

During the reform process18 which had become official with the Tanzimat Charter

(1839), two different worldviews confronted each other. As a result of this encounter,

there would be a transformation in the present worldview of the Ottoman Empire,

which was based on contemplation [tefekkür]. In the course of this rapid and

profound transformation, old and new, tradition and innovation confronted with each

other and inevitable frictions and fractures –which sometimes resulted in crises

[buhran]– occurred. In this sense, Ottoman intellectuals of that period had a

considerable difficulty in forming a synthesis.

This ambivalent and hesitant mood experienced by Tanzimat intellectuals

made it difficult to form a synthesis which Tanpınar (2019) qualified as prearranged

[muvazaalı] (p. 39). For literary historian Orhan Okay (2008), too, Tanzimat

intellectuals had a difficulty in leaving the old cultural elements and adopting the

18 The term Westernization can also be used instead of reform. It can be taken as an equivalent of the

term modernization and indicates the adoption of Western ideas, styles, techniques or technologies in

areas such as military, education, law, economics, politics and social life.

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new ones. In order to explain the situation, he preferred the word mülemma19 instead

of synthesis [terkib] (p. 358). Concerning the lack of synthesis, although Turkish

literary theorist and critic Jale Parla agreed with Okay, she also argued that the

overlapping of these two different worldviews was not haphazard enough to be

covered by the concept of mülemma. By making use of this concept, Jale Parla

(2009) explains the encounter of the East and the West in the Tanzimat as even if

characteristics of different cultures met each other beginning with the Tanzimat, they

did not interfere with each other to yield a synthesis, but yet they continued to exist

side by side in an immiscible manner (p. 13). This was what Tanpınar called the

“value crisis”. However, the crisis –or the duality causing it– was not true only for

the practices put forward; it was also true for the people who made those practices.

In the context of art history, particularly of painting, art historian İpek Duben

(2007) echoes interpretation of Jale Parla in the context of literature. Although the

technique and form were originating from the West, the cosmos which was conveyed

in the paintings fully reflected a totally traditional moral conception (p. 13). This was

what Orhan Okay wanted to meet with the concept of mülemma in the sense that

assembling the form which is western-oriented with content nourished from an

eastern mind did not actually create a synthesis. Using the techniques of photography

and oil painting adopted from the West, artists such as Hüseyin Giritli, Hilmi

Kasımpaşalı, Salih Molla Aşki, Ahmet Bedri, Ahmet Şekur –who were called

“primitives” by French writer René Huyghe and as “iptidailer” by some Ottoman

writers of that period– made their paintings depending on the photographs of the

19 The Arabic word meaning “spotted, speckled, variegated”.

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related scenes (Tansuğ, 1999, pp. 84-87). They portrayed the outside world –which

they tried to represent in a realistic style– usually in a fixed, motionless, and figurefree

manner. In these paintings –which were made in a clear style with a calm and

desolate atmosphere– mosques, palaces, gardens, roads, usually depicted in a manner

free from the human figure and other details (p. 87). Nonetheless, although the

technical knowledge and tools taken from the West enabled the Ottoman intellectual

to gradually grasp the objective reality or to look at the reality outside from a

different point of view, this attitude developed naturally in the long run as a result of

a kind of historical and social evolution in the West was aimed to be appropriated

rashly.

In a process in which the old and the new meet, it is expected that either the

old or the new, or both will be transformed to a certain extent for a synthesis between

them to take place. Common sense says that what is supposed to be more

transformed should be old; because the encounter between the old and the new is

actually a result of a quest for change. In other words, a new one is needed because

the old one can no longer respond to the existing conditions. However, in an

environment where the old ways encountered a foreign (even an infidel) new

practices, such as the East and the West having deep cultural differences, it was not

easy to take the new as it is. Therefore, it is reasonable that a proper synthesis could

not be formed. As Tanpınar underlined, the ambivalent and hesitant mood which

could not go beyond the suspicion, prevented a synthesis to be formed, even if it was

“prearranged”.

Tanpınar summarizes how the aforementioned old appeared to the

generations that grew up after the Tanzimat and how they felt in the face of such a

nostalgic view: “If there is one thing that is certain, it is the old, standing right next to

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us, sometimes as an oppressed, sometimes a lost paradise, like a treasure keeping the

integrity of our soul; opening in front of us with glitters of mirage in the slightest jolt,

calling us to itself; when it doesn’t do all these, making us doubt our lives. Doubt and

a sort of remorse… (the fear of wrongdoing as it is reflecting in us.)” (Tanpınar,

2019, p. 43) According to Tanpınar, until the end of the 17th century, people did not

doubt themselves or their predecessors as a kind of remorse. Even though, in older

times, people found the generation differences between them to be natural, they

regarded the thoughts and values that governed them as trusts. For this reason, “they

did not experience a fragmented time” in which the past and the present were torn

apart. Thus, the life carried out with ideas and beliefs spreading from the same roots

continued with human beings in a complete manner (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 40).

Tanpınar argues that what was lost with the Tanzimat was this idea of

continuity and completeness. While arguing in that manner, Tanpınar does not

completely ignore what had been done since the Tanzimat and the developments due

them. However, he adds that there was always a suspicion concerning the new

organizations, that most of what was done was not fully believed, and discussions

were still going on. Tanzimat intellectuals could not consider the issue as a way of

life having no other kind; because for them, “there was always another and

otherwise” (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 41) This duality created by trying to move from one

civilization to another, or by the overlapping of two different civilizations led the

Tanzimat intellectuals to live a divided life in doubts and disagreements. In this

context, Tanpınar implies the fate of Tevfik Fikret and Cenab Şahabettin by saying

that “Actually, in most of the people who have grown up since the Tanzimat, almost

every movement ends with a loud and quiet resignation, a kind of repentance and

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self-denial. Or the person consumes himself in complete resentment or in vicious

suspicion” (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 42).

2.5 On the Differences between “Oriental” and “Occidental” Worldviews

There could be many intertwined reasons being psychological, social,

political, economic, historical and intellectual of why this whole process had

developed in this way and how such a result had been obtained. Tanpınar, who

touched each of these reasons in various pieces in his essays, gave a wide place to the

intellectual or philosophical one which is –in fact– the core of the issue in his 1960

essay entitled “The Fundamental Differences between Orient and Occident20” [Şark

ile Garp Arasında Görülen Esaslı Farklar]. In this essay, Tanpınar read the

differences between these two worldviews or mentalities through their relations with

objects, matter and eventually with reality. In the next step, this reading was linked to

the issue of imagination [muhayyile], as one of the most fundamental differences

between these two worldviews. Although, nowhere in his essay did he say he had

such a purpose, what Tanpınar had done here, albeit in a sketchy way, was to place

the fundamental differences between Oriental and Occidental worldviews on an

onto-epistemological and aesthetic plane through the concept of imagination.

Naturally he was not doing this like a philosopher in a syllogistic way, but rather as a

man of literature or an essayist. In any case, Tanpınar’s approach is vital in here for

understanding the course of the way of seeing in this particular period.

20 Here, Tanpınar’s word choice of Şark and Garp was translated as orient and occident, respectively.

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For Tanpınar, their attitude towards objects [eşya] and materiality is the

fundamental difference between Oriental and Occidental worldviews. Here, Tanpınar

uses the words matter and object in a very broad sense including all the data of

thought and imagination, mental and social life, theory and practice. In this sense, the

Orient either accepts the matter as it is and does not need to make any changes or it

contents with the changes when it makes at the first time when it meets with the

matter. It can be seen that this alteration act or the properties infused into the matter

(or object) may increase to an excellent and inaccessible level. But, at this point,

there is a very rapid formation of tradition, which leads to the fact that perfection

achieved in a short time becomes a convention. Whereas the Occident “always turns

the object in its hands, holds it in front of its mind, seeks a number of other features

and possibilities of perfection in it, tries to have the most comprehensive information

about it, and thanks to these efforts, it finally makes this matter something else”

(Tanpınar, 2019, p. 24) Tanpınar emphasizes that the Occident handles objects with a

speculative attention, which is the result of the knowledge based on observation.

Individual experiences, which are the products of this speculative attention, are

added to each other to form knowledge. In the Orient, on the other hand, “there is a

state of enthusiasm which is the result of a mass of social influences and an absolute

denial of intellect” (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 25) and a craftsmanship based on very strict

rules.

Prior to moving on, it is worth emphasizing that it is not possible to speak of

a monolithic and homogeneous Orient or Occident. In this sense, various and

different orients or occidents can be mentioned. Nevertheless, the diversity or

heterogeneity –which becomes visible in the micro-scale when details are

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considered– does not preclude making speculative generalizations based on a number

of general characteristics. This is in a sense what Tanpınar does.

At this point it is important to note that the notion of attention [dikkat] has a

particular significance for Tanpınar. In an interview which made with him in 1956,

Tanpınar said that he did not know a more magical word than the attention which

was fundamental in terms of both art and science (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 374). For

Tanpınar, attention was the criterion of genius such that human genius became big

and strong by the means of attention; because it was the attention that opens the

doors of objects and himself to man. Although Tanpınar does not go into further

details, the first of the doors he mentions opens to the geography of the object, while

the second opens to the geography of the subject. The relationship that Tanpınar

establishes between attention and the objects is very important; because in the next

stage, the approach towards objects establishes the fundamental difference between

Oriental and Occidental worldviews. In another interview dated 1955, the

relationship Tanpınar established between the concept of attention and a certain way

of seeing is even more evident. Departing from the words he attributed to Rilke,

Tanpınar says that in order to write a poem about a tree, it is necessary to look at the

tree for months and get used to its order so that the order of the tree can be

established in the eyes of the poet, too (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 360). Tanpınar associates

attention with speculation and knowledge based observation. For this reason, he

argues that the Orient lacks such attention. According to Tanpınar, individual

observations and experiments, which are the products of attention, form knowledge

by adding to each other. By emphasizing that the Occident deals with things with a

speculative attention –which is the result of knowledge based on observation–

Tanpınar points out to this situation. On the other hand, “there is a state of

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enthusiasm which is the result of a mass of social influences and an absolute denial

of intellect” in the Orient (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 25). The distinction Tanpınar made in

1955 between Oriental and Occidental worldviews through the concept of attention

echoes in the distinction made between contemplative and spectatorial ways of

seeing in this study.

While pointing to the fundamental difference between Oriental and

Occidental mindsets, it can be said that what Tanpınar implies here is the distinction

between subject and object that can be traced back to Descartes. Descartes is not only

accepted as the founder of modern philosophy with this critical distinction; he also

had changed the course of Western philosophy and the fate of Western culture. With

the cogito argument which can be summarized as “I cannot doubt myself while I

doubt,” Descartes did not only make a distinction between mind and body, subject

and object, ego and the other; he gave a privileged status to the mind, the subject, and

the most fundamentally to ego. In doing so, Descartes separated the inner world of

the subject from the outer world of the object. Starting with Descartes, the knowing

subject became the center and had priority over all other beings. The distinction

between the subject and the object lead to the possibility of the distinction between

the knower and what he knows. So the subject became a thinking thing, which was

not extended, and the object became an extended thing, which did not think (Stumpf,

1977, pp. 250-251).

By saying Occident “always turns the object in its hands, holds it in front of

its mind,” Tanpınar seems to indicate that the Occident, who was highly influenced

by the epistemological attitude of Descartes, considers the matter as an object of

knowledge and evaluates it with “a speculative attention,” i.e. reason. Shaped by

mind-body, subject-object, knower-known distinctions, this disposition of the

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Occidental mind towards the object establishes also the self and the other difference

by deepening the distinction between matter and itself. This other is an object that

the self can change and play it in line with its own wishes, desires and purposes. On

the other hand, the Oriental mind does not want to deepen the apparent distinction

between matter and itself, on the contrary, it wants to overcome or to eliminate this

distinction and to reach wholeness. For this reason, Tanpınar says that the Orient acts

as if it borrows the object from nature; on the other hand, the Occident fully adopts

[benimser] it by understanding its essence and by checking all possibilities

(Tanpınar, 2019, p. 27).

The act of benimseme in Turkish, having close, but with nuanced meanings

such as “possessing, seeing something as someone’s own property, protecting or

seeing something as a part of himself/herself” can be translated into English as

“adopting, appropriating or embracing.” Here, adopting means “to accepting

something created by another or foreign to one's nature, taking up and using,

accepting formally and putting into effect;” appropriating implies to “setting apart for

or assigning to a particular purpose or use, making use of without authority or right;”

and embracing corresponds to “take in or include as a part, item, or element of a

more inclusive whole.” Here embracing implies a ready or happy acceptance. The

use of benimseme having the meaning of embracing can be found in Tanpınar's

novels. But by using this word, i.e. benimsemek, which meaning is intended by

Tanpınar is ambiguous. Is it adopting, appropriating or embracing? What is

interesting is that the different meanings of the word benimseme correspond to two

nuanced acts such as adopting and embracing, which take shape around a different

view of objects and reality. Departing from this nuance, it can be argued that the

Occident adopts the object and the Orient actually embraces it. Here occidental

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adoption takes shape around the acts of possessing, seeing something as someone’s

own property; whereas oriental embracing forms around the acts of protecting or

seeing something as a part of itself. Based on these differences, while the Occident

turns the object in its hands, holds it in front of its mind, examines it with a

speculative attention, tries to gain knowledge concerning it, and eventually, it finally

changes it for its own purposes. But on the other hand, the Orient acts as if it borrows

the object from nature and tries to decorate it instead of modifying it, making it more

beautiful than it is. In this sense, the Occident instrumentalizes the object for its own

purposes and imposes a functional purpose on it; but the Orient imposes an aesthetic

purpose on it, either by embracing it or by trying to overcome it.

After drawing the framework concerning Oriental and Occidental

worldviews, which was outlined above, Tanpınar makes an interesting remark:

“Saying that there is no imagination [muhayyile] in the Orient is not an unwarranted

claim” (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 25). Beneath Tanpınar’s remark that there is no

imagination in the Orient, lies a very broad definition of imagination. Accordingly,

imagination corresponds to “examine all the possibilities of a feeling, an idea or an

image through generations without recurring; deal with it deeply until it changes its

nature and enrich the language by disallowing any convention to form” (p. 25).

According to Tanpınar, an imagination in this sense is rare in the long history of the

Oriental poet. Here, it is not clear whether Tanpınar emphasizes a difference or a

lack. It is obvious that Tanpınar’s definition of imagination here is shaped around his

idea of Occidental attitude in dealing with the object or materiality, which was

discussed above. However, why does Tanpınar, who is essentially an “Oriental” man,

define the imagination which is one of the critical concepts of his own

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literary/aesthetic understanding as well as Divan poetry, Islamic philosophy and

aesthetics in a Western context?

By the means of statements such as “without recurring” or “disallowing any

convention to form” in his definition of the Occidental imagination above, it can be

said that Tanpınar refers to the rapidly emerging traditions and conventions in

Oriental culture. Commitment to the past and the tradition shaped within it are

central to the Oriental mentality. It is possible to see many examples of this situation

in the intellectual and artistic practices of Oriental culture. For this reason, unlike the

Occident, in the Orient, maintaining a repetition, under the domination of tradition,

which increasingly becomes competent, is most likely to be observed rather than

examining all the possibilities of an idea or an image without recurring. With a fine

and patient craft, it is sometimes seen that the results of this repetition have reached

an inaccessible point. Commentaries or annotations [şerh] in Islamic philosophy,

nazire tradition corresponding to write a poem modeled on the same measure and the

same rhyme of a different poem in Divan poetry and strict adherence to conventions

in miniatures are among the examples of this attitude in different cultural fields.

Going beyond the framework of tradition required, at some point, requires to be

original and more critical. Since being original would probably refer to the audacity

of being creative, the artists in particular, were not very willing to change the

patterns, methods, materials, boundaries shaped by the tradition. Since the idea of

tradition was dominant and determinant in the Ottoman culture shaped by the Islamic

worldview, the artists approached the idea of being original and tried to present their

differences with a new interpretation of the traditional and a kind of variation

[tenevvü] rather than creating original or new works (Ayvazoğlu, 2019, pp. 114-115).

Even critical works included an implicit confirmation in terms addressing the

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traditional work, because it was based on it. In such an environment, a new and

different interpretation could be presented again and only within the limits of

tradition. So the tradition was reproduced again and again, albeit indirectly and in a

different way. Although innovation sparks were seen, these attempts could not be the

source of a radical change (Erzen, 2007, p. 70).

Based on the idea that it was not clear whether Tanpınar underlined a

difference or deficiency when he was saying that an imagination in Occidental sense

was rare in the history of the Oriental poet, a question can be asked: why does

Tanpınar, who is essentially an “Oriental” man, define the imagination which is one

of the critical concepts of his own literary/aesthetic understanding as well as Divan

poetry, Islamic philosophy and aesthetics in a Western context? As both an Oriental

poet and a literary man knowing the difference between Occidental and Oriental

imaginations well, Tanpınar’s remark was neither a result of a mistake nor it was

made by chance. The way Tanpınar deals with the imagination has some clues for

discovering how Tanpınar sees himself and his culture, too. Tanpınar’s approach to

both this concept and his own aesthetic understanding by the means of it is not only

important in terms of seeing his own aesthetic development; but also for

understanding what the way of seeing based on contemplation [tefekkür] is and how

it has transformed when it overlaps with a more naturalist one, i.e. spectatorial way

of seeing. Tanpınar’s reading of the imagination –which is central for both his own

aesthetics and an Oriental way of seeing based on contemplation– in a Western

context is a crystallized example of how his way of seeing was affected by this

encounter. But what was at stake here was not an irreversible transformation, but

rather a kind of on-going shift between different ways of seeing.

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In this sense, “Letter to the young girl from Antalya” [Antalyalı Genç Kıza

Mektup] which Tanpınar wrote a year before his death at the age of sixty with a

marvelous language about how his imagination and aesthetic understanding

flourished is a very significant text in terms of showing what can happen when a way

of seeing based on a particular worldview encounters with a different one. In this

text, Tanpınar describes how his imagination was formed by the acts of wandering,

looking, viewing, listening and thinking in detail. Words such as imagination

[muhayyile], dream [rüya], daydream [hülya], secret [sır], fascination [büyülenme],

and discovery [keşif] used by Tanpınar seem to have been taken from the lexicon of

an outlook based on contemplation.

Since his father was a judge [kadı], Tanpınar spent his childhood and youth in

various cities of the Ottoman Empire, especially in Anatolia. Tanpınar met with

wavy seas in Sinop21 and starry nights in Siirt22. However, his contact with the sea in

Antalya would have a completely different effect on his imagination. Tanpınar says

that via wandering the coasts, looking at the sea, watching the waves of southwester

[lodos] particularly between 1916-18 in Antalya, he became a daydreamer [hülya

adamı]. The landscapes offered by the sea at different times of the day, the sounds

of water pouring into the rocky cavities were the things that had “great meanings” for

Tanpınar's imagination. Although he tried to describe this mood with the word

fascination; he said that it was not enough and that it was such a mystery that he

could not solve. In 1921, Tanpınar went to Antalya again. This was the period in

21 “Nothing can be as beautiful as the succession of waves on a large sandy beach,” (Tanpınar, 2019,

p. 395).

22 “The starry night was fascinating me. Eternal wave was filling my body and soul. Like a Sumerian

priest, my imagination was always busy with the stars. I was swimming in the secret,” (Tanpınar,

2019, p. 395).

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which he became more and more interested in poetry. The radiance of the sea cave,

called Güvercinlik, which was increasing and decreasing with the flow of water and

the opening and closing of it constitutes the first core of the dream idea that Tanpınar

calls as “the foundation of his aesthetics.” Stating that starry nights, the mountains

which are the symbols of human loneliness and insolvency, and particularly the sea

establishes the algebraic side of his poetry, Tanpınar underlines that his true

aesthetics formed after he met the ouvre of French poet Paul Valéry in 1928-1930.

Departing from Valéry’s saying “The best way to make your dreams come true is to

wake up,” Tanpınar explains his understanding of poetry as “to establish the dream

state in language by the means of the most watchful effort and work” (Tanpınar,

2019, p. 398). The dream state that Tanpınar mentions here has nothing to do with

the coincidences and quirks of the true dream. It is rather a kind of meditation

[murakabe] concerning the unification of the human and the universe, an example of

which is the poem of Tanpınar, beginning with the line “I am neither in time.”23

Here, in other words, Tanpınar does not speak of dreams corresponding to images or

visions appearing in the mind during sleep; but he points to images which are seen

during being awake, i.e. daydream or reverie. Tanpınar describes this feeling, which

can be triggered also by music and landscape, as going to another time which “has a

different rhythm and fuses with space and things” (Tanpınar, 2019, p. 398).

Beside its other meanings, the Turkish word hayal, corresponding to “image” in

English, has two basic meanings. The first of these meanings implies images or ideas

which are not present to the senses or perceived in reality before, but imagined as if

23 I am neither in time, nor completely out of time; / In the unbreakable flow of a single, vast moment.

/ Every shape as if being benumbed with a color of strange dream, / Even a feather flying in the wind

is not as light as me.

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they are. This meaning of hayal, which is also met with the Turkish word düş,

connects it to the words dream and daydream. Images [hayal] appearing in the mind

during sleep correspond to the word dream [rüya]; images that appear in the mind

during wakefulness correspond to word daydream [hülya]. The second basic

meaning of word hayal implies the image of something that is perceived through the

senses appearing in the mind as a mental picture or impression of something.

Through this definition, hayal connects to imge in Turkish.

By ignoring the subtle distinction between the concepts of dream [rüya] and

daydream [hülya], arising from the difference between sleep and wakefulness,

Tanpınar uses these two words in almost the same sense. But anyway he underlines

that what he means by dream is not the true dream which is seen when sleeping.

Therefore, the situation Tanpınar mentioned in this context is closer to the daydream

[hülya] than a dream [rüya]; but he prefers the word dream. The important point here

is that Tanpınar also adds watchful effort and conscious work to the process which

he calls dream state as the basis of his aesthetics. With these additions, Tanpınar

once again emphasizes that the dream process is watchful and conscious. Although

he does not say it directly, with expressions such as attention, watchful effort and

conscious work, Tanpınar refers to the “reason” and annexes it to the imagination. In

this sense, Tanpınar’s aesthetics is not based solely on the faculty of imagination; but

also on the faculty of reason. The role of reason in this process is the main factor

separating the Occidental imagination from the Oriental one. Considering the relative

ineffectiveness of the reason on the Oriental imagination, Tanpınar said that there

was no imagination in the Orient in an Occidental respect.

Although what Tanpınar pursues here is not to examine the cognitive relation

between the imagination and reason, his descriptions of imagination and dream

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aesthetics are indispensable in terms of showing the results of encounter and

superimposition of two different ways of seeing in the process of modernization of

the Ottoman Empire. Tanpınar’s comparison of Oriental and Occidental

imaginations, his examination of his own aesthetics shows an exemplary model of

how a way of seeing based on a contemplative worldview is affected by the

spectatorial way of seeing. His contact with French poetry on the axis of Baudelaire-

Mallarmé-Valéry played a decisive role in shaping Tanpınar's aesthetic

understanding. Words such as imagination, dream, daydream, secret, fascination,

and discovery used by Tanpınar in describing how his aesthetic was shaped prior to

this contact, seem to have been taken from the lexicon of an outlook based on

contemplation. When we look at the names that Tanpınar was influenced during this

period, we see first of all Ahmet Hâşim and Yahya Kemal, and then Şeyh Galib,

Nedim, Bakî and Nailî through Yahya Kemal. These are the names that shaped

Tanpınar’s dream aesthetics before he met French poetry, and this aesthetics is, if not

entirely or in a somehow different sense, based largely on the way of seeing based

contemplation.24 This aesthetic was an aesthetic in which an Oriental imagination

was more dominant. Together with the French influence of the 1928-1930s,

Occidental imagination in which the reason was more dominant began to penetrate

the dream aesthetics of Tanpınar. At this point, there was forming a different sort of

vision in which the imagination is balanced by reason or shaped by reason itself.

24 Naturally Tanpınar’s way of seeing based contemplation was not identical, say, to the way of seeing

of a Divan poet lived in 17th century. This way of seeing had already transformed over time with the

effects of modernization. Similarly, although Tanpınar used concepts of mystical literature such as

secret [sır] and discovery [keşif] to describe his aesthetic understanding, the processes he mentions were

not exactly the same as their counterparts in Sufism.

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Imagination-reason relation, proposed by Tanpınar, when he considers the difference

between Oriental and Occidental attitudes towards object [eşya] and materiality in

the context of evaluating reality brings to mind the mystical Islamic scholar Ibn

Arabi’s views on imagination. Although it is not possible to examine them in detail,

many Islamic scholars such as Al-Kindi, Al-Razi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes

had discussed the concept of imagination in the context of epistemology and

philosophy of mind. The reason why Ibn Arabi’s views are included at this point is

the emphasis he puts on imagination through the distinction he made between reason

and imagination. This emphasis can provide a starting point for a better

understanding of Tanpınar’s approach to imagination and to discuss how different

ways of seeing encounter with each other.

Image [hayal] and imagination [muhayyile] plays a major role in Ibn Arabi’s

philosophy. He frequently criticizes philosophers and theologians for their failure to

acknowledge its cognitive significance. The rational path of philosophers and

theologians must be complemented with mystical intuition of Sufis. For Ibn Arabi,

reason [‘aql, us] can only delimit, define, and analyze its subject matter. It perceives

difference and distinction, and quickly grasps the divine transcendence and

incomparability. But the properly disciplined imagination perceives how God reveals

himself in the all of creatures He created. So it must complement rational perception.

In Ibn Arabi’s epistemology, the locus of awareness and consciousness is the heart.

The heart has two eyes which are reason and imagination. Since God is One in

Essence and many in His names; with the eye of reason, the heart sees God’s

incomparability, i.e. multitude of knowledge and discernment; with the eye of

imagination, it sees His similarity, i.e. the unifying oneness of Being. While reason

refers to multiplicity and becoming, imagination is related to One or Being.

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Imagination perceives notions as images and considers that they are simultaneously

true and false, or neither true nor false. But for the reason, a notion is either true or

false (Chittick, 2019). The symbolic language of the Quran, the ever-changing and

never-repeating states of the universe and the human soul, cannot be interpreted

solely by reason through analysis and criticism. At this point, imagination comes

forth to complete the rational perception. The domination of one over the other will

disrupt the perception and awareness processes. Imagination and reason continuously

balance, adjust and regulate each other.

Providing a more naturalist content, it can be said that imagination-reason

relation in Tanpınar’s dream aesthetics is the reminiscent of Ibn Arabi’s framework

which was given above. The imagination in Ibn Arabian sense can be taken as to

imply the Oriental imagination and the way of seeing based on contemplation. On

the other hand, the reason as it is in Ibn Arabi’s lexicon can be considered to

correspond to the Occidental imagination and the way of seeing based on the

spectacle.

Long before the “Letter to the young girl from Antalya” (1961), Tanpınar had

given the details of his dream aesthetics in his essays “Poetry and Dream” [Şiir ve

Rüya] written in 1943 and 1944. What Tanpınar says about the dream state in these

texts reveals the outlines of the way of seeing based on contemplation. Although the

starting point of Tanpınar (2016) is the state and order of dreams which he describes

as “a second life,” (p. 32) Tanpınar does not imply the content of true dreams we see

when we are sleeping, which is composed of coincidences, eccentricities or

irregularities. What Tanpınar really wants to emphasize is “the insoluble mood that

revives the content of dreams and the atmosphere it creates around us” (2016, p. 36).

The tranquility and the affinity with the object, participation in the obedient life of

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matter is only possible with the mood created by this enchanting and dense

atmosphere that accompanies dreams. The atmosphere that accompanies the dream is

like “the light given to the item displayed in a showcase” (Tanpınar, 2016, p. 34).

The images seen in the dream are seen in the lens of this light in the way it

illuminates and in the network of relations it constructs. In the mood created by the

dream atmosphere, the man swims in three dimensions of time. For the wo(man) who

is dreaming, the past, the present and the future are only memories. Since s/he has

forgotten everything s/he knows, s/he finds everything present in herself/himself.

S/he can speak with all eternity without the veil, since his/her consciousness and

reasoning faculties are removed. The concept of time no longer applies to her/him;

s/he experiences “the synthesis of the intangible” (Tanpınar, 2016, p. 33). In this

way, s/he realizes the relations between objects, the essence hidden under the

appearances, the original of the originals and s/he is a part of a whole. Tanpınar

likens some of the mind’s impossible moments of clarity or its ecstatic state to the

dream which is seen while being awake and adds: “Many times our mood in front of

a landscape is a dream which is seen awake” (Tanpınar, 2016, p. 34). We have seen

how the landscape had a strong impact on the formation of Tanpınar’s imagination in

his “Letter to the young lady from Antalya”. Music was another factor shaping

Tanpınar’s imagination as much as landscape: “Sensation induced by music is not

the only source of dream seen awake. […] Like music, great landscapes crush us

with a sense of eternity. We become tired and devastated many times due to being in

the open air, but always return rich with great discovery. This is the idea of death

which is equivalent to the universe” (Tanpınar, 2016, p. 38).

In this sense, the views put forward by German painter Max Liebermann (1847-

1935) in 1904 seem to resonate in Tanpınar’s mind exactly forty years later.

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According to Liebermann, it is the imagination that animates the canvas by directing

the painter’s hands. Though the imagination itself is invisible, it makes itself visible

with every brush stroke; but this can be realized by only those who can feel and see

it. Therefore, the art put forward in a painting can only be seen with an inner eye, and

the art put forward with a piece of music can only be heard with an inner ear (p. 33).

It can be said that Tanpınar’s eye that looks at the landscape and the ear that listens

to the music has such an inner quality. In other words, he sees in a poetical fashion,

not a prosaic one. For Tanpınar, what is essential in art is to be able to establish this

dream atmosphere and show the objects under its intensity. Only in this way can the

artist give the reflections and echoes of reality an appearance above reality. This is

exactly what the Oriental imagination, which is shaped by the contemplative

worldview, is trying to do: To be able to see or show objects in a dream atmosphere

in the sense Tanpınar emphasizes. While the way of seeing based on nonreligious/

naturalist worldview is mostly conditioned by reason; the way of seeing

based on contemplative worldview is mostly conditioned by imagination. The

Oriental imagination tries to penetrate beyond the reality and discover the meaning

[mânâ] beneath it; the Occidental imagination deals with the reality itself and its

appearance [sûret]. In this sense, while the question of how is more important for the

Occident, the question of why is more important for the Orient.

Based on the framework of the distinction that Tanpınar foresees between

dream [rüya] and daydream [hülya], and the relationship he establishes between

them and landscape through the concept of imagination, it is possible to argue that

the dream aesthetics dominates –albeit decreasingly– in the religious and

metaphysical stages, which are suggested as the stages of the transformation in the

way of seeing in this study. But starting from the naturalist stage, dream aesthetics

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leaves its place to the aesthetics of daydreams. It is possible to see the differences

between dream and daydream aesthetics in terms of the approaches of Tarhan –

which will be examined in the metaphysical stage– and of Tevfik Fikret –which will

be examined in the naturalist stage–. Similarly different attitudes of Şeker Ahmet

Pasha –who will be examined in the metaphysical stage– and Hoca Ali Rıza –which

will be discussed in the metaphysical stage– to the landscape echoes the distinction

between dream and daydream.

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CHAPTER 3

RELIGIOUS STAGE: THE NATURE OF CONTEMPLATIVE WAY OF SEEING

The first stage of the transformation from contemplative way of seeing to the

spectatorial one –which consists of four stages– is the religious stage. It is possible to

define this stage, which includes a long period before the Tanzimat, as the stage in

which the contemplative way of seeing is absolutely dominant. In other words, at this

stage, the contemplative way of seeing, which is dominant in art forms such as Divan

poetry and miniature, will turn into a spectatorial way of seeing in the following

three stages, namely metaphysical, naturalist, and impressionist. It is the tendency to

stylization that gives this stage its general character. Stylization tendency finds it

roots in the aniconic attitude in Islam, which shaped around the tawhid [unity] idea.

In the religious stage, nature (external reality) is not considered quo itself. It is

regarded through its relationship with Truth which is a transcendent reality that is

thought to be its source. In other words, natural is evaluated through the supernatural.

Ontologically, in addition to a Parmenidean understanding of Being, there is a

relationship between Truth and external reality that can be read through the Platonic

and Neo-Platonic axis. At this stage –where external reality consists of being a

shadow of the Truth and knowledge of Truth is more decisive– the prevailing mental

faculty is intellect. It can be claimed that the understanding of art at this stage has a

classical character.

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3.1 Contemplative Way of Seeing in Divan Poetry

In contrast to the “old” Turkish literature, which was essentially traditional

and whose dominant medium was Divan poetry, one of the main characteristics of

the “new” Turkish literature developing after the Tanzimat is change and

transformation (Kaplan, 2019c, s. 241). Unlike the former literary tradition, literary

forms of this era was not confined to only poetry or verse; but it also included prose

forms such as novels, plays, short stories and opinion pieces or essays. The

difference between the “old” pre-Tanzimat and the “new” post-Tanzimat literature

lies in the dominant way of seeing operating beneath them. Different ways of seeing,

fed by different worldviews, are the main reasons in evaluating the external reality,

human and all other issues shaped around the network of relations between these two

in different perspectives. As a result of this difference, former/“old” literature

became more stagnate in character and the later/“new” one gained a dynamic

structure open to change and transformation.

Due to the difference between the ways of seeing operating beneath the pre-

Tanzimat and post-Tanzimat literature, ontological, epistemological, moral and

aesthetic considerations were also different. Although it manifested in different

forms, the main focus of pre-Tanzimat literature was a realm of existence [varlık

alanı] that does not change in its essence. This intelligible realm which is not given

to the senses and which was basically known through intellect [anlık] is this field of

existence that is indicated by the concept of truth within the scope of this study. On

the other hand, the realm of existence which is considered through the post-Tanzimat

literature was mainly the sensible world, which was in constant change and could be

grasped through the senses and reason [us]. Within the scope of this study, this realm

of existence is indicated by the concept of reality. Thus the differences between on

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the one hand truth and reality, on the other hand intellect and reason are the main

reasons behind the divergent characters of pre- and post-Tanzimat literatures in terms

of ontology and epistemology. In this context, stemming from two different

ontological and epistemological attitudes there are two different conceptions of

literature, namely pre-Tanzimat and post-Tanzimat literature. Since the former deals

with truth, i.e. being in a Parmenidean sense and the latter encompasses reality, i.e.

becoming in a Heraclitean sense, they have inevitably have quite different

characteristics from each other. While the pre-Tanzimat literature implies the being;

the post-Tanzimat one –in a sense– expresses the becoming.

Kaplan (2019c) underlines that the worldview dominating the Divan poetry

does not love the sensible world and the life that goes on there (p. 22). Underlying

this attitude towards reality, which dominates the Divan poetry, lies the idea that

truth cannot be found this sensible reality, but the hereafter. As a result of this

worldview, a sincere relationship with nature and society cannot be established in

Divan poetry. Since the old poetry tradition is not nourished by life and reality, it has

fallen into an understanding of imagination, which is enclosed by the understanding

of the universe consisting of abstract ideas. This is the reason why Divan poetry is

broadly indifferent to both society and nature (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 242). These views

of Kaplan are significant in terms of revealing how the contemplative way of seeing

dominating Divan poetry became the source of a perception of reality. Divan poet

avoids the sensible reality in order to grasp the Truth which is beyond/beneath the

sensible reality. The Divan poet, who seeks a remedy for the grief of living in this

temporary world of multiplicity and change, has found the way to deal with what he

has experienced by turning away from reality, in a kind of imagination based on

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mazmuns25 and metaphors. It is possible to see examples of how art can be used as a

means of escape and consolation in situations where reality is unbearable, and it is

possible to see this attitude in the second generation Tanzimat poets such as

Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan and of the Edebiyat-ı Cedide generation such as Tevfik

Fikret. From another point of view, the effort to express the inexpressible underlies

this imaginative tendency. Kaplan, who sets out from the fact that the traditional

culture, which is the source of Divan poetry and is largely based on madrasah

education, is a culture mostly knitted with abstract concepts, states that the tendency

of allegory in Divan poetry has shown a great development since the expression of

the abstract requires concrete images. According to Kaplan (2019c), while post-

Tanzimat literature, which aims to express the concrete, turned towards a kind of

symbolism, the pre-Tanzimat literature that aimed for expressing the abstract turned

to the allegory (p. 28).

Kaplan (2019c) also states that post-Tanzimat writers were more oriented

towards external reality, including nature and society, and tried to explain their

thoughts and experiences in a much different way than previous writers (p. 242). In

this sense, old literature is “an expression of a civilization heading towards the

hereafter, and new literature is an expression of returning to the world” argues

Kaplan (2019c, p. 33). Approaching reality with a new attitude that differs from the

old one in a certain way and expressing the impressions, experiences and thoughts

gained in this manner in a quite different way from them underlines what kind of a

starting point the Tanzimat literature constitutes in terms of the transformation in the

25 Mazmun, which means “meaning” or “concept”, corresponds to stereotypical idioms or expressions

used to express particular concepts and thoughts in Divan poetry such as rose, nightingale, wine and

vineyard.

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way of seeing. With this new worldview began to flourish after the Tanzimat Reform

Era, subjects such as existence, nature and society were approached with a

completely different and fresh interest. In this sense, while old poetry had a more

otherworldly quality; the sensible world will constitute the main subject of the poems

written after the Tanzimat (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 22). The difference between how the

reality and existence is regarded in pre- and post-Tanzimat poetry shaped by two

different worldviews and ways of seeing, which was determined by what the poets

were oriented towards. If the focus is on the sensible world, the intelligible world

that is thought to be beyond it becomes ambiguous or ignored; if the focus was on

the supersensory realm, this time the sensible world would be obscured or ignored.

The main reason for the sensible world to appear more lifeless and abstract in Divan

poetry was the focus on the invisible world, which was thought to be behind it.

3.1.1 The Palace Metaphor

The palace metaphor [saray istiaresi], put forward by Tanpınar, suggests an

excellent starting point in terms of revealing how the contemplative way of seeing,

shaped by the traditional world view of the Ottomans resonated in the Divan poetry.

With this metaphor, Tanpınar did not only show how the traditional religious and

social structure of the Ottoman Empire was reflected on the literary plane in terms of

both content and form; but at the same time, he revealed what kind of place the

human being had on this plane. The palace metaphor develops around three basic

relationships: the God-servant [Tanrı-kul] relationship, the ruler-subject [hükümdartebaa]

relationship and the beloved-lover [sevgili-aşık] relationship. Underneath

these relations lies the idea of being a servant and the ideal of pure submission which

are rooted in the religion of Islam. While the God-servant relationship corresponds to

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a religious context, the ruler-subject relationship points a social context, and finally

the beloved-lover relationship implies a psychological context. In this sense, the

palace metaphor is a manifestation of both a worldview and a way of seeing with

their religious, social and psychological contexts. Within the scope of this study, this

worldview and way of seeing in question is called contemplative.

As a result of the transformation experienced in the worldview and way of

seeing within the course of Westernization, there would be a transformation both in

these three relations and in the position of human being in them. As a result of this

transformation, wo/man would develop a new understanding of both his/her position

in his/her hierarchical relationship with God and the ruler, and his/her place in the

structure of the universe. As a result of this new understanding, s/he would

comprehend the external reality and nature in a different way, and s/he would reflect

this understanding on his/her works of art in a completely different language. In

other words, wo/man's conception of himself/herself in a different way within all the

network of relations would be the source of the conception of nature in a different

way, and these two conceptions would transform each other in an alternating fashion.

The transformation mentioned here would be from the contemplative way of seeing

to the spectatorial way of seeing.

For Tanpınar, the imagery of Divan poetry, which consists of ready-made

images and unchanging symbols expressed in an abstract but colorful language,

looks like a large and grand palace metaphor. This metaphor is not just a rhetorical

game; it also reveals a kind of system regarding the social order. On the one hand, it

expresses a hierarchical and closed world arranged from top to bottom and on the

other hand, it expresses a certain style of love (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 5). In this sense,

Tanpınar mentions two more intertwined metaphors besides the palace metaphor that

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develops around the relationship between the ruler and his subjects. The first of these

is the metaphor of love [aşk istiaresi], which is formed within the framework of the

relationship between the beloved and the lover. The second metaphor –which can be

called as the mystical metaphor [tasavvufi istiare]– is based on the relationship

between God and the servant and is more religious (mystical). The metaphor of love

–which has a central locus in Divan poetry– in one way feeds the palace metaphor

which is the basis of the external order and on the other way, the metaphor of love

feeds the mystical metaphor which is the basis of the inner order (Tanpınar, 1988, p.

9). So the three metaphors come together. In other words, the God-ruler-beloved

relation is established through the concept of the beloved; servant-subject-lover

relation is established through the concept of lover. Thus, the relations between the

beloved and the lover, the ruler and the subject, God and the servant, each of which

is the source of a separate metaphor, constantly echo each other.

About 35 years after Tanpınar, Walter G. Andrews expresses a similar idea in

his 1985 book Poetry's Voice, Society's Song: Ottoman Lyric Poetry. Accordingly,

the fact that the authority was concentrated in the persona of the central ruler was the

most basic feature of the Ottoman Empire, which was ruled by an absolute

monarchy. Over time, such a centralized power structure gave rise to a peculiar kind

of master-servant relationship. It was inevitable that this hierarchical authority

relationship would also be reflected in Divan poetry (Andrews, 2009, pp. 113-114).

The ruler [padişah], who was the source of light, abundance and fertility, is at

the center of the palace metaphor. Everything depended on his will and

administration. The ruler, who was regarded as the shadow of God, also had the

authority to regulate the earth through his representational relationship with God.

Since man was the caliph of the earth; nature, institutions and objects were arranged

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according to a hierarchy represented by the ruler. Everything else revolved around

his attraction, gravitated towards it, and became happy and peaceful to the extent that

it was close to him. In Tanpınar's words, the ruler is the very benefactor “in terms of

his more or less divine or deified essence” (1988, p. 5). At this point, in terms of

referring to the Platonic and Neoplatonist origins of the contemplative way of seeing

that lies at the core of Divan poetry, concepts such as sun, light, goodness, hierarchy

and happiness that Tanpınar uses while explaining the palace metaphor are also

noteworthy.

In the metaphor of love established through the connections between the god,

the ruler and the beloved, the behavior of the beloved is attributed to the ruler and the

behavior of ruler is attributed to the God. Just like the God being the ruler of both

spiritual and material realms or the sultan being the ruler of the empire, the beloved –

who looks like a ruler– is also the ruler of the realm of the heart. In this sense, the

metaphor of love in Divan poetry manifests itself as servitude contrary to being an

individual life of the social regime (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 6). Andrews underlined such a

manifestation too in the sense that words used in Divan poetry in terms of referring

to the ruler are also used for the beloved, or words used for the servant were also

used for the lover. In such a context, servitude comes to the fore as an emotional

state in which devotion (loyalty) to the ruler takes the most extreme form (Andrews,

2009, p. 115).

Just like the palace metaphor, the mystical metaphor [tasavvufi istiare] is fed

by the metaphor of love; however, in mystical metaphor, the beloved refers to God

by surpassing the ruler. Sufism is one of the most important sources of Divan poetry

in terms of its symbolic language and imagery. In the framework of mystical

metaphor, the above-mentioned negative attitudes of the beloved are interpreted in

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the context of the concept of a higher good [hayır]. If the cruelty or suffering of the

beloved is at stake, this is interpreted as the lover does not behave properly. Sticking

to the world of the senses [âlemü'l-hiss] is an example of these improper behaviors.

The main cause of the lover’s grief [gam] is the indifference or non-response of the

beloved. In the traditional lover-beloved relationship in Divan poetry, there is a kind

of distance that prevents physical love between the lover and the beloved. The

beloved’s acts such as looking, speaking, showing loyalty, pity and kindness are

regarded as more important than the rarely expressed physical acts such as touching,

hugging, caressing and kissing so that actions such as looking and speaking are

considered two of God’s blessings [ihsan]. The beloved’s indifference, which seems

negative at first glance, is regarded as a blessing, as it will be a cause for a higher

good, such as the lover’s turning away from the visible world. In this way, to the

extent of his devotion to the beloved, the lover tends to cut off his interest towards

his self [nafs] and the fruits of the world. Another dimension encountered in the

mystical metaphor is the idea of surrender [teslimiyet] in the sense that the servant

surrenders to God just as the lover surrenders to his beloved. This surrendering act

points to transferring one’s own control along with his/her other possessions to

someone else, and consenting to be under his/her tutelage. This relationship of

surrender is not confined to God; but also includes the real or symbolic submission to

the ruler as an absolute authority. In Divan poetry, there are many contexts that

legitimize such relations of surrender and give it a transcendent meaning (Andrews,

2009, pp. 117-121).

The indifference which was attributed to both the ruler and God through the

attitude of the beloved, was attributed to the nature by the second generation

Tanzimat poets such as Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan and Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem. The

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poet would feel helpless in the face of nature’s indifference and apparent

contradictions in it. In the course of transition to the spectatorial way of seeing that

would gain momentum in the Tanzimat period, being under the tutelage and

patronage of God and the ruler would also be criticized by the first generation

Tanzimat such as Şinasi and Namık Kemal in terms of limiting the arbitrary and

seemingly unlimited powers of the ruler by laws, the liberation of reason [us] from

the yoke of faith [iman] and the increasing trust of the “new” wo/man –who was on

the way from being a servant to being an individual– to his reason.

In this framework, both the God-servant and the ruler-subject relationship can

be considered as a kind of beloved-lover relationship and indicated an extreme

emotional attachment. The identification of these relations with each other would

have important consequences for the spread of the meaning they signified from

poetry to the field of social behavior (Andrews, 2009, pp. 120-121). Tanpınar (1988)

also underlines that Divan poetry, with its language that developed around the

palace, points to the social system in which it developed. In this respect, Divan

poetry being “the mansion of an absolute, arranged in cascades descending from the

divine realm” is the expression of a closed and hierarchical realm in which the

universe, religious/political/social order and eventually individual life are arranged in

a certain sequence, reflecting one another gradually (p. 10). It is noteworthy that

Tanpınar, who refers to Divan poetry as “the mansion of the absolute”, also describes

the Divan poet as a prisoner in this absolute. According to Tanpınar, one of the first

moves to overcome the imprisonment of the Divan poet in the absolute would be

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made by Nedîm26 with his sensual and licentious style in the first half of the 18th

century. Tanpınar explains this situation by the fact that Nedîm was a man of his

senses (1988, p. 10). Tanpınar’s emphasis on the senses is noteworthy in terms of

indicating the core of the spectatorial way of seeing –albeit rather weak– can be

found in Divan poetry which is essentially the product of a contemplative way of

seeing.

Via considering the God as the true ruler of both the spiritual [manevi] and

material [maddi] realms, the sultan as the ruler of the material and social world

although qua being the shadow of the God and finally the beloved as the ruler of the

individual heart, the metaphor of love, the palace metaphor, and the mystical

[tasavvufi] metaphor penetrate all layers of religious (mystical), social (political) and

individual (psychological) fields. In this respect, this system of metaphors, each of

which corresponds to a separate layer related to each other can be considered as a

manifestation of both a certain worldview and a way of seeing. At this point it is

important to note that this worldview and way of seeing, which is called

contemplative in the context of this study, is not manifested only in Divan poetry; but

also in miniatures. For example, the palace metaphor in the Divan poetry, which is

created within the framework of the ruler-subject relationship, echoes in miniatures

as showing the ruler (sultan) larger and positioning everything else with reference to

him (And, 2014, p. 136). Even though the sultan is not visible in a particular scene at

that moment, it is ensured that the presence of the sultan is felt in some way. It is also

possible to consider the use of gilding in the sky in miniatures –which show the

26 Ottoman Divan poet who lived between 1681 – 1730 and produced his most notable works in Tulip

Era during the reign of Ahmed III.

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sultan while he is on a war campaign or hunting and where no otherworldly story is

told– an indication of the divine quality attributed to the ruler.

As stated above, in the course of transition from contemplative to spectatorial

way of seeing there was also another transition, i.e. from being a servant [kul] to

being an individual [birey/fert], which began to be encountered with the Tanzimat

and realized in the Republic. It is this image world being shaped around the palace

metaphor of Divan poetry that would be criticized most in this period. Particularly by

referring to Namık Kemal’s criticism of the Divan poetry by considering the

mazmuns in their literal meanings, Tanpınar too underlines this situation. In this

sense, in terms of its development in parallel with the innovation process that became

official with the proclamation of the Tanzimat, Tanzimat literature –in a sense– was

born as a reaction against Divan poetry (Kaplan, 2019b, p. 17). It can be argued that

Divan poetry was a product of a scholastic mentality that cut off all ties with the

outside world and became a source for a stagnant, closed and artificial world of

imagination. In this respect, it was also closed to social movements and to the life of

the individual as much as possible. Therefore, it was inevitable for the literary

attitude flourished after Tanzimat –which would be the product of a worldview that

aimed at establishing somehow novel and fresher relations with both reality and

society through embracing life in all its aspects– to take a critical stance against

Divan poetry, which was the product of the scholastic worldview. Divan poetry, of

which stagnation had become one of the characteristic features, became unable to

keep up with the new way of seeing focusing on the dynamism of life and collapsed

where it was (Kaplan, 2019b, p. 17). On the other hand and as an echo of this

dynamism, the “new” literary attitude based on spectatorial way of seeing and

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embracing the dynamism of life, would experience many transformations in a

century that had not been experienced in six centuries.

At this point, in terms of revealing from a different perspective how the

contemplative way of seeing is reflected in Divan poetry it is worth mentioning the

views of Agâh Sırrı Levend on Divan literature in 1941. Through the palace

metaphor, Tanpınar revealed the worldview and way of seeing that dominated Divan

poetry with its religious, social and psychological aspects. Unlike Tanpınar, Levend

claimed that Divan literature is neither religious nor social (Levend, 2018, pp. 646-

647). According to Levend, Divan literature did not acquire a social character

because the Divan poet did not think much about dealing with social issues (p. 646).

Levend set out from the fact that the human type presented in the verse stories of

Divan literature was not similar to any living human type. He stated that in this

respect, Divan literature was not a human [beşeri] literature (p. 646). Therefore, the

love in Divan literature was not natural love; but unnatural mystical love (p. 647).

Regarding how nature was regarded. Levend argued that Divan literature did not

carry a life impulse and thus it was not a literature interested in practical life. For the

Divan poet, who was in search of a basis for his art, nature consisted of a randomly

chosen subject; therefore, there was no natural beauty in Divan literature (p. 646).

3.1.2 The Conception of Nature in Divan Poetry

Although Tanpınar did not mention the spatial (physical/natural) dimension

of the palace metaphor, which permeated religious (mystical), social (political) and

individual (psychological) layers, it can be claimed that the palace metaphor gains its

physical and spatial dimension through the concept of garden.

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According to Andrews, in Divan poetry, nature is represented through the

garden, which is a manifestation of ideal beauty with its regular, controlled and

sheltered environment. The garden is a place where carefully selected items are

organized in a certain order so that ideal beauty can be admired. It is seen as the most

perfect state of nature. Just as the city is paired with the monarch, the ideal garden it

contains is paired with the ideal beloved. The untouched nature [sahra], which is

outside of the ideal garden is seen as an unsettling area. Underneath this restlessness

and uneasiness lies the feeling of wonder [hayret] that the accidental and multiple

structure of the sensible world is constantly changing (Andrews, 2009, p. 127). The

feeling of wonder in Divan poetry also echoes in the poems of 19th century poets

such as Akif Paşa, Şinasi, Ziya Paşa, Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan. However, this feeling

arises from the effort to grasp the real nature –which is irregular and indifferent and

outside the orderly and sheltered ideal garden of Divan poetry– with one's own

reason [us] rather than being under any tutelage. Both in Sufism and in Divan poetry,

the effort to grasp life, nature and what is happening in them with reason had never

been the most appropriate way to approach the sensible world.

3.1.2.1 The Concept of Garden in the Ottoman Culture

In Ottoman culture, the garden presents a multi-dimensional structure

inclusive of social, religious and even philosophical aspects. In their book The Social

Structure of Ottoman Istanbul (2010), Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet state that the

garden is regarded as a symbol of heaven in the Islamic world –as heaven is depicted

in many verses of the Quran as a garden in which rivers flow, greenery and

tranquility are dominant. They also state that Ottoman gardens were also shaped

according to an Islamic content. In a similar way, this religious garden image is of

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great importance in the Sufism tradition, which represents "the unity of earth and

water, flowers and trees, and the purity of the soul” (p. 243).

In terms of the place of the garden in Sufi culture, Arab Andalusian

philosopher and mystic Ibn Arabi's (1165-1240) thoughts are particularly

noteworthy. According to Ibn Arabi, both ideally and worldly, the garden(s) have an

important meaning in that they are places where the imagination takes action and the

act of contemplation takes place. Moreover, Ibn Arabi regards garden as the locus of

the imagination and associates it with the concepts such as veil and barzakh which

means “the space between two things” (Çalış-Kural, 2012, pp. 62-63). Özlem Hemiş

(2020) also refers to the concept of barzakh in detail in her book (p. 12).

In addition to the otherworldly religious and mystical aspects of the garden,

there was also less religious and more social aspect of it. Walter Andrews (2009)

emphasizes that the most proper context of the ghazel –which is one of the most

common forms of Divan poetry– is drinking gatherings [işret meclisi] which are

organized to eat and drink, to have pleasant conversations with beloveds, to sing and

listen to songs and poems (p. 178). Garden is the most suitable venue for these

gatherings. According to Andrews (2009), the garden of Divan poetry has become an

interior symbol reflecting a kind of security and order in the sense that lands of the

empire bears the traces of the garden analogy, as well as the security of the home and

the inner self (p. 189). At this point, once again, Tanpınar's palace metaphor seems to

echo in Andrews' thoughts on the garden.

Undoubtedly, the sultan, with his harem and with the people around him, was

among the first to enjoy and the gardens. Boyar and Fleet (2017) also emphasize the

recreational aspect of the garden, by saying “The sultans spent a lot of time here with

archery, […] watching the training of falcons, sitting with the members of the palace,

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listening to music and poetry and eating and drinking” (p. 241) and “The garden was

one of the greatest entertainments of the Ottomans, from the sloping grounds of

Topkapı Palace to the abundant palace gardens in and around the city, to the gardens

surrounding the rich mansions and the flowerpots that the poor put in front of their

windows along with their tiny courtyards. Istanbul was overflowing with these” (p.

231).

Ottoman gardens, in which water resources were an important element, just

like the cypress trees, lacked the traditional order of Islamic gardens, and had a more

natural and wild nature. In this sense, “While the Islamic garden was a place built

and arranged, the Ottoman garden would adapt to the area by using the existing

means and shaping itself according to the qualities of the topography” (Boyar &

Fleet, 2017, p. 245). Boyar and Fleet also emphasize that functionality is another

feature that distinguishes Ottoman gardens from both their Islamic counterparts such

as the Alhambra Palace gardens and French gardens such as Tuileries and Versailles:

“In the Ottoman garden, flowers and vegetables were mixed with fruit trees and

cypress trees. This system of growing plants for both pleasure and food surprised

Europeans who did not like such functionalities to be mixed with the beauties of the

garden” (2017, p. 246).

In his Nineteenth Century Turkish Literature History, Tanpınar (1988) points

out that post-Tanzimat Turkish literature was shaped around two basic discoveries:

the discovery of nature [tabiat] and the discovery of the individual [fert] (p. 274).

Such a statement, at first glance, may suggest that there is no individual or nature in

the pre-Tanzimat Turkish literature, which consists largely of Divan poetry. At this

point, it can be said that there was undoubtedly a certain understanding of nature and

individual in pre-Tanzimat literature too. For example, at the beginning of odes, in

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some ghazals, descriptions of the season or some elements of nature could be found.

However, these depictions were various tools for showing the “poet's skill in using

imagery” rather than referring to a sensible reality (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 310).

Consequently, the way the elements taken from nature are regarded in poetry was

common to almost all Divan poets. Nature was not directly observed, no particular

attention was paid to it; therefore, it was not taken as a whole. Most importantly, the

"idea of perspective, landscape or painting" –that would be seen in Turkish poetry

after the Tanzimat– was not present in Divan poetry (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 310). In this

sense, due to the worldview and the way of seeing formed in connection with it, the

nature and individual understanding of Divan literature was quite different from the

nature and individual understanding of post-Tanzimat literature, which was the

product of a completely different world view and way of seeing.

Tanpınar, who dealt with the issue of landscape through its reflections in

literature, especially in the novel, states that one of the most important differences

between Divan literature, which he calls "old literature", and post-Tanzimat

literature, which he calls "new literature", is the handling of nature. Accordingly, the

discovery of the landscape was the most important discovery of new literature.

Tanpınar (1988) says that the new literature, with its first works, takes us from the

"medieval garden and orchard" to the "vast and vibrant nature". Stating that this is

perhaps the most important discovery of the era of renewal, Tanpınar's distinction

between garden and nature is striking (p. 273). At first sight such a distinction may

seem odd, as the garden appears to be part of nature; but here, what Tanpınar implies

quite indirectly is the view of nature from two different points of view. Due to the

difference in these two perspectives, nature –resonating as a garden in the old

literature– would take on a completely different guise with the new literature.

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3.2 Stylization Tendency in Divan Poetry and Miniature

Tanpınar (1988) argued that the traditional attitude towards nature was not

limited to ghazal, in which sensible things were considered as scattered elements and

a means for mazmuns (p. 248). Here regarding the visible reality only within the

framework of the imagery or mazmuns gave way to a stylization tendency which

transformed everything in nature into an unrecognizable form in accordance to the

abstract way of seeing that it belonged to, i.e. contemplative.

The understanding of absolute form in Islamic art is that what is visible is

actually a veil or curtain [hijab]. This veil implies the need to open or overcome it

and to look behind. The artist tries to pass through the veil by stylization; whose

ultimate aim is the absolute form. Each curtain opens to another separate curtain

behind it. By opening the curtain, the artist tries to render the invisible, which is

behind/beyond the visible and thought to be the source of it, as visible. The aim of

such an attempt is not to describe the visible as it appears to the eye or in a naturalist

way. It is already visible; portraying what is already visible in a naturalistic or

realistic way would be nothing more than a show of dexterity that attempts to

deceive the eye. Moreover, the resulting description will never be identical with what

it depicts. What is done here is basically nothing more than deceiving the eye.

Painting the curtain constantly and trying to make it similar to the already visible

world is to reproduce the curtain again and again; so is it not re-veiling? For this

reason the miniature artist [nakkaş] refrained from depicting something as it appears

to the eye. Here the main purpose was to try to make the curtain as thin as possible,

to make it transparent, and to unveil it at last. This goal was made possible by

stylization. On the act of stylizing (Yavuz, 2009, p. 15; Aksel, 2011, p. 242;

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Ayvazoğlu, 2019, p. 222), nature and its elements are not depicted with a naturalistic

and realistic approach. In another context, this is what the Divan poet wanted to do

with mazmuns. Thus, intelligible Truth behind the sensible reality was tried to be

revealed by scraping or breaking up what is given to the senses.

As stated earlier, in Ottoman culture, garden was the embodiment of Islamic

understanding of nature. In this sense garden had an important place bot in Divan

poetry and miniatures. Here, with its religious, social, cultural and philosophical

dimensions, it can be said that the garden, which is put forward in Divan poetry or

miniature examples, is a "stylized landscape” shaped by a contemplative certain way

of seeing. This particular way of seeing was based on the act of contemplation

[tefekkür].

It is noteworthy that Tanpınar (1988) relates turning towards living nature,

which he calls the most important discovery of the era of Tanzimat, with the “new

and whole perception” of the individual (p. 273). Both forced standards form the

basic character of Divan poetry and miniature art, which developed around Islamic

culture and are closely tied to centuries-old traditions. Some of the basic elements of

this character were strict adherence to tradition, very slow change, stylistic

understanding, abstractionist attitude and ornamental mentality.

3.2.1 Stylization Tendency and Its Roots in Islamic Aniconism

Ottoman art was inevitably shaped according to Islamic aesthetics. Just like

other human activities modified by the adjective Islamic such as Islamic philosophy

or Islamic literature; Islamic aesthetics or Islamic arts, too, were related to the

worldview of Islam which was stemming from the Islamic revelation. There is a

profound difference between Islamic art and Christian Western art in terms of the

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ways in which they treat and represent external reality. The Islamic art focuses on the

inner meaning of things [mana], rather than their outward appearances [suret]. So

imitating the outward forms of nature is not significant as reflecting the truth behind

them. Here, contemplation of the intelligible forms or inner meanings via the

abstracted/stylized versions of the outer or sensible forms has a key role. Western

art, on the other hand, aims at representing both nature and man in a concrete way

based on the observations concerning them. This tendency, which was strengthened

especially in Renaissance, shows itself most prominently in the art of painting. At

the core of this difference between the ways of seeing lied the difference between the

aniconic attitudes in Islam and Christianity. In this sense, beginning with the

aniconic attitudes in Islam will be helpful in understanding the reasons lying beneath

the stylization tendency in both miniatures and Divan poetry. Unlike iconoclasm that

means destructing images due to religious reasons (Brooks, 2009, n.p.), aniconism

entails being against using visual images that describe living beings or religious

figures (“aniconism”, 2016).

In polytheistic religions people sought their gods in nature, therefore the

depictions of the deities were of great importance. In a period, where the distinctions

between concepts such as animate or inanimate, soul and body, abstract and concrete

had not been clear yet; the image, description or portrayal of a deity was considered

to be the deity itself and these images were believed to have a variety of supernatural

powers. In this sense, they were also worshiped.

Faith in tawhid, i.e. the faith in the indivisible oneness and unity of Allah, is

the core of Islam. Along with numerous verses of Quran, testifying the oneness of

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God is emphasized repeatedly in the foremost Islamic creed, Shahada27. In this

sense, God is the single, unique and absolute being (The Truth) transcending the

universe and all creation. Thus, every religious, intellectual, cultural or artistic

practice in Islamic spheres should –directly or indirectly– express this testament in

their own way of expression. In this sense, Islamic art is not an exception and it has

gained its sui generis character in the presence of aniconism established around the

faith in tawhid again. Interestingly, despite its central location in Islam, the essence

of tawhid is acknowledged to be beyond all description, whether it is visual or even

verbal. It is the Quran in fact where the tawhid reveals itself “by sudden and

discontinuous flashes. Striking the plane of the visual imagination, these flashes

congeal into crystalline forms, and it is these forms in their turn that constitute the

essence of Islamic art” (Burckhardt, 1987, p. 230).

The making of images of holy personages, the use of images in religious

contexts, whether there was a prohibition of images, whether it was concerning

pictures or depictions are still controversial issues in Islam (Flaskerud, 2010, p. 192).

The aniconic attitude in Islam is closer to Judaism rather than Christianity and it has

several aspects such as the social and cultural one concerning pre-Islamic

polytheism; religious and political one concerning Christianity; and finally

theological and philosophical one concerning the conception of invisible God. All

these aspects which have their own sub-issues which seem prima facie unrelated

with the issues of image and representation have, anyway, profound effects on the

Muslims’ attitudes towards visuality.

27 “I testify that there is no god but God, (and) I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.”

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Although there is no apparent decree explicitly prohibiting the images or

representations in Quran, verses concerning the practices of pagan tribes in the “Age

of Ignorance” such as making and worshipping idols in different chapters were also

accepted as valid for making images and representations themselves in course of

time (Aksel, 2011, p. 235). This leads us the social and cultural aspect of aniconism

in Islam, concerning pre-Islamic polytheism.

When he conquered Mecca in 630, the Prophet Muhammad wanted to

establish a significant distinction between old paganism which he considered as

falsehood that had to be vanished and new religion Islam which was the Truth

itself.28 So, his first action was to cleanse the Kaaba from statues and images of

pagan gods (Ellenbohen & Tugendhaft, 2011, p. 47). It was the most striking

manifestation of the victory of the new religion formed around a monotheism

endorsing the indivisible oneness [tawhid] of God against the old polytheism. The

destruction of idols was a concrete manifestation of the fundamental testimony of

Islam, Shahada (Burckhardt, 1987, p. 231). In this respect, the Prophet did not only

cleanse a holy place from the idols, but also eradicated the pagan gods which were

the most vital and concrete expression of idolatry, thus broke with tradition in all

senses. In such an environment, any attempt of representation which was somehow

reminiscent of pagans could be considered to be an appropriation the elements of a

culture on which a war was declared (Belting, 2017, p. 65).

The God of Islam, Allah, is an invisible being which cannot be depicted in

any visible form. In this respect, gods which were depicted in any visual form, or

28 “And say, ‘The truth has come, and falsehood has passed away: falsehood is bound to pass away.’”

(Quran 17:81).

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representation of God in any means considered as blasphemy and associated with

idolatry in the fashion of obscuring the differences between the absolute and the

relative or uncreated and created. So the visual depictions of the Divinity were

forbidden (Burckhardt, 1987, p. 231). At that time, it was believed that the pre-

Islamic Arab tribes considered their idols which they made by their hands as being

identical with the gods which they believe in. In this sense, they saw a supernatural

aspect in people’s ability to shape (İpşiroğlu, 2005, p. 10). In the 59th chapter of

Quran, the Shaper [al-Musawwir] is given among the divine names of God related

with His creative power: “He is God: the Creator [al-Khaliq], the Originator [al-

Bari]29, the Shaper [Ar. al-Musawwir]30. The best names belong to Him.” (Quran

59:24) In his commentary on the divine names of God, Al-Ghazali (1058–1111)

clarifies the distinctions between al-Khaliq, al-Bari and al-Musawwir: God is the

creator [al-Khaliq], because he creates out of nothing; He is al-Bari, because He

forges and gives existence to things; He is al-Musawwir, because He orders the

created forms in best arrangement. Therefore, God is the enabler, the forger and the

decorator simultaneously (Puerta-Vilchez, 2017, pp. 57-58). So God is the creator of

living things; He gives life to the forms by breathing into them. Besides

corresponding to meanings such as shaping, forming, fashioning, modeling and

giving form to something, the Arabic word musawwir also means “painter”.

Departing from this connotation, some religious scholars implied that creative acts of

a painter could be considered to be forgeries of God (Flaskerud, 2010, p. 192).

29 The Initiator, Evolver, Eternal Spirit Worshipped By All – (Quran 59:24)

30 The Fashioner, Shaper, Designer, Artist – (Quran 59:24)

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In the Islamic understanding, the creation of living beings, specifically human

being, is the apex of the creative power of God. So human beings can be neither

imitated nor usurped in an image. Even though they can be imitated in an allusive

manner, then there arises the risk of considering them as an idol which “may

interpose itself between man and the invisible presence of God” (Burckhardt, 1987,

p. 235). Thus, people making depictions of living beings such as animals and human

beings were thought to compete with God. The “breath of life” [ruh] is what

distinguishes living beings from the non-living ones. Pictures and statues could only

imitate nature, but they could not be the nature itself. Representations of living

creatures offend God in the sense that they are in fact forgeries lacking breathe of

life. By counterfeiting the creation, both these representations and their makers even

compromised it. Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (c. 1126–1198)

disagrees with this approach via departing from the difference between Divine

Creation and human attempts at creation. Ibn Rushd argues that whereas Divine

Creation is unconstrained, His creatures can create only in a limited manner; because

they need something to create out of and their ideas about creation are restricted

(Sajoo, 2012, pp. 94-95).

Perhaps another distinction, between the idol maker and the Muslim artist,

should be made at this point. Even though they were aware of the difference between

living beings and inanimate entities such as idols, and furthermore they did not have

the intention of competing with the creation of God, idol makers or idolatrous people

might still look to their “breathless” statues which they had made with their own

hands for help and intercession. Despite the obvious differences between images and

living beings, the belief that they could act as if they were living beings can be traced

back to ancient Egypt. In such a cultural atmosphere, Muslim artists [musawwirs]

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might refrain from such representations which might deceive people or be associated

with divinity. It is clear that in this situation, the main issue was not to mimic the

creation of God or even to deride it. Neither the artist himself believed that he could

breathe life into his images, nor people looking at his images believed that he had a

creative power resembling the God’s. Despite all this, there was still a risk of

confusing the image of specifically living beings with the living beings themselves

and making them proper of objects of veneration. In this sense, the vital point was

not the creative act of the artist, but how it would be appreciated by the public.

Therefore, they might have wanted to solve the problem at the very beginning by

refraining from such suspicious portrayals.

Here, a distinction between two types of mimesis (imitation) is considered:

the imitation of God and the imitation of nature. The imitation which is condemned

is the imitation of God as the utmost Creator rather than the imitation of nature which

was created by Him (Belting, 2017, p. 72). This understanding of imitation inevitably

reminds Plato’s mimesis theory which he clarified in the Republic. The imitators of

nature, whether poet or painter, were the direct target of Plato in 10th book Republic.

Plato’s ideas concerning mimesis in 10th book Republic can be briefly summarized as

follows:

For every group of individuals gathering under a common name, there is a

corresponding idea or form. For example, there are beds and beyond them there is

also a form or idea of the bed. When a maker, say carpenter, makes a bed; he makes

it in accordance with the idea/form of the bed. But he cannot make the idea of the

bed itself. Beside the maker, there is another type of artificer, namely artist, who is

the maker of all the works of all other workmen. He can make plants, animals and all

other things including the earth and heaven, and the things which are in heaven or

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under the earth; he makes also the gods. But what he makes are mere appearances

like the images reflected in the mirror. So the artist is the creator of appearances,

what he creates is untrue. Though the maker of the bed also makes bed, he can make

only a particular bed, not the essence of the bed itself. What he does is only a

semblance of the true bed, an indistinct expression of truth. In this framework there

are three types of bed: The idea of bed which is created by God, the particular bed

which is made by the maker and the imitation of bed which is made by the

artist/imitator. Moreover, when the issue is whether the artist imitates the ideas or

only the creations of other artificers; Plato points to the latter. When someone looks

at a bed from different points of view, the bed will appear different. But there is no

difference in reality; the difference is only apparent. So when the issue is whether the

artist imitates things as they are or they appear; Plato points again to the latter. So the

artist imitates the creations of other artificers not as they are but only as they appear.

In this sense, the imitator is a long way off the truth.

The aniconic attitude against idols, idolatry and the danger of idolization of

God was considered as confining for painters too in the course of time. In this

process, a hadith had played a more important role than the Quran. Thus, for both

preventing the use of such images in possible idolatrous purposes and the reverence

for their inimitable nature as being the vicegerents of God on earth, depicting divine

human beings such as envoys, prophets and saints in visual manner was avoided.

Furthermore, due to the respect for the divine secret [sırr] contained in creation, there

was a reluctance to represent even animals (Burckhardt, 1987, p. 231). But, since

there was no explicit prohibitive provision prior to the 9th century, in the early

centuries of Islam there is no apparent negative attitude to the images. The different

attitudes of the different sects of Islam in relation to image and representation in

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different periods exacerbate the aforementioned discussion. For example, in the

mosques built during the Umayyad period, there were depictions of human figures on

wall decorations in pavilions and bath-houses, inspired by Late-Hellenistic and

Sassanid traditions, reflecting in a sense a naturalist approach (Belting, 2017, p. 68).

From the perspective of Shiites, there was no strict picture ban, though the

anthropomorphic or three-dimensional images in religious context were considered

as taboo (Aksel, 2016, pp. 27-28). Later on, in the artworks produced by Persian and

Indian artists holding the view that an image did not imitate the real being, but it was

only an allusion to it, a non-illusive style being devoid of shadows and perspective

was embraced, but anthropomorphic images were not used in decorations of mosques

(Burckhardt, 1987, p. 221).

When Islam is compared to Christianity, there are differences in theological

considerations, and these differences, inevitably, pass through to the visual realm.

While the iconography of Christ was dominating the visual culture of Christianity;

calligraphy would be placed at the core of Islamic art. Unlike the depictions of Christ

or other holy figures, calligraphy as a writing system was not for representing, but

rather for expressing; i.e. for principally conveying the verses from Quran. In this

sense, whereas the iconography for to be looked at; the calligraphy is for to be read.

While former invites the gaze of the viewer, the latter does not contain such a

possibility (Department of Islamic Art, 2001, n. p.).

Depictions of subjects presuming to look at a viewer or inviting his gaze were

banned in Islamic texts. Accordingly, images should not entice an observer to

exchange glances, as one could do only with a living person. So panel paintings

which were hung on walls so that a viewer might confuse their content with living

beings were forbidden, but embroidered images on carpets which were laid on the

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floor could be tolerated. Beneath such a prohibition, there were two interrelated

risks: entities depicted in the image could be confused with living creatures and

imitating nature or creatures in it could be considered as imitating the Creator

(Belting, 2017, p. 72). As it was examined above, these risks extended to serious

matters such idolatry, blasphemy and shirk. The representation of inanimate objects

or plants was not covered by the prohibition; but the prohibition of the portrayal of

living beings, which were considered to have soul such as human beings and

animals, blocked the way of naturalist tendencies in depiction (İpşiroğlu, 2005, p. 9).

This was why Muslim artists [musawwir] had avoided the realistic or naturalistic

depiction of what they saw. This was not solely a matter of skill or education; but

rather a matter of choice and belief stemming from the theological and philosophical

aspect of aniconism, concerning the conception of invisible God as the inner Truth.

Just like other human activities modified by the adjective Islamic such as

Islamic philosophy or Islamic literature, Islamic aesthetics or Islamic arts, too, were

related to the worldview of Islam which was stemming from the Islamic revelation.

Based on the Islamic revelation, the contemplation of God and therefore

remembrance of Him are both the keystones and ultimate aims of all worshipping

practices in Islam. The contemplative nature of Islamic art which is originated in the

Islamic revelation also serves for this purpose of worshiping God (Nasr, 1987, pp. 3-

5).

The Quran, Islamic revelation and all other aspects of Islamic tradition

originated from them have both an outward [zahir] and an inward [batin] dimension.

When the origin of the Islamic art in the Islamic revelation is pursued, the inner,

inward, symbolic, esoteric or spiritual dimension of Islam is encountered. The Truth

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[Haqiqah31] is the nucleus of this inner dimension, which is hidden. Thus, accessing

this nucleus requires the difficult process of “hermeneutic unveiling of the two grand

books of revelation, the Qur’an and the cosmos” (Nasr, 2001, p. 29). This act of

unveiling is not limited to the Truth; it also pertains to the truth concerning the nature

of existence. The Islamic art focuses on the inner reality of things, rather than their

outward appearances. So imitating the outward forms of nature is not significant as

reflecting their principles. This attitude echoes in the distinction between surat and

ma’na. Whereas the word surat implies the external, sensible aspect of an entity;

ma’na corresponds to its inner meaning (Nasr, 1987, pp. 3-5). Here, contemplation of

the intelligible forms or inner meanings through the outer or sensible ones has a key

role in both unveiling or understanding the Truth. Aniconism in Islam in a sense

intensifies the contemplative nature of Islamic art by excluding every

anthropomorphic image that could stand in between man and the invisible presence

of God, thus invite him to fix his mind on something outside himself. So, everything

that could be an “idol”, even in a relative and provisional manner, can be avoided,

too (Burckhardt, 1987, p. 223). In this sense, the Truth [Haqiqah] secures the relation

between Islamic art and Islamic revelation.

In this context, Muslim artists tended to depict not what they see in the

sensible world, but rather to represent the truth behind or the significance of what

they saw in a stylized manner. In other words, they were depicting what they were

contemplating [tefekkür], not what they were seeing or viewing [temaşa]. This

stylization tendency inevitably required the abstraction and symbolism, so the

31 Al-haqiqah means both truth and reality.

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difference between what they saw and what they depicted began to be more

noticeable. Their aim was to refrain from deceiving the eye or to prevent the eye

from being deceived. For this purpose, it can even be argued that, they were trying to

bypass the eyes by directing them elsewhere apart from what they were looking at,

though it wasn't possible in principle, but they seemed to be pushing the limits of it.

Since what they were chasing was to depict what cannot be depicted, they were

trying to address the mind/intellect rather than the eye and reason. To represent what

can be depicted in a naturalist/realistic fashion was considered to imitate the God and

therefore associated with shirk. In this sense, they refrained from portraying what is

ready to be depicted and aimed to represent what cannot be depicted. The latter was

considered as the main principle or the truth residing behind the sensible reality.

There was no claim of divine creativity here. It was a manner of glorifying the divine

creativity at best.

As a result of this tendency of stylization which can be linked back to

aniconism in Islam, everything in nature, animate and inanimate, was depicted with a

view that doesn’t seek resemblance to its appearance in nature. As a result of this

preference, volume which is expressed through the transitions between light and

shadow was disregarded especially in miniatures. As a result, both figures and

objects were depicted in a sense being separated from each other by areas of color

delimited by distinct contour lines. These contour lines enabled the return from the

outer world to the inner world and to present the problem as a mystery rather than

solving it (Aksel, 2011, pp. 241-242).

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3.3 Contemplative Way of Seeing in Miniatures

3.3.1 Use of perspective

There are two basic perspective techniques that give Renaissance painting its

naturalist character by creating a kind of illusion of depth on the surface of the

painting,: linear and aerial perspective. Linear perspective allows the objects in threedimensional

space to be transferred to a two-dimensional surface in a way that

preserves their real appearance, according to a certain point of view (Özön, 2008, p.

47). Aerial perspective, on the other hand, provides a sense of depth on the painting

surface, which is manifested in the form of fading and blurring of the image or

changing colors (shifting to blue or purple) at far distances in terms of its variable

physical properties (p. 50). Ottoman miniature is unfamiliar with optical illusion

factors such as linear and aerial perspective which give the depiction a threedimensional

appearance. Moreover, reverse perspective which is discursively

different from linear perspective, is frequently used in miniatures in which objects

appear to expand backwards while narrowing from the front (And, 2014, p. 135).

Point of view which is one of the basic elements of linear perspective such as

the horizon line, orthogonals and the vanishing point, determines where the horizon

line and therefore where the vanishing point will be (Özön, 2008, p. 48). What is

lacking in miniatures is this specific and fixed point of view. Underneath this lack

lays a hierarchical style of view which is thought to dominate the universe and also

determines interpersonal relations. Just like in Persian miniatures, objects and people

in Ottoman miniatures are depicted to reflect their most characteristic appearance or

in a way that they can be seen most easily. In this respect, the simultaneous depiction

of both the interior and exterior of a space is typically seen in miniatures and it is

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common in miniatures to present the results of different perspectives that allow

objects to be viewed from the front, from the side or from the top. For example, in

Matrakçı Nasuh's city descriptions, it is possible to see the facades of buildings that

are actually drawn from a bird's eye view. Simultaneous display of the exterior and

interior of buildings or simultaneous display of two distant places, apart from

physical or measurable time, refer to a kind of atemporality that is not in a state of

becoming and has a permanent character (See Figure 1).

Figure 1: Matrakçı Nasuh, Istanbul, 1537, miniature

Such attitude in depicting a physical space reveals that the miniaturist

depicted what he knew rather than what he saw. For such an understanding of

description, imagination plays a fundamental role instead of senses. Even though

miniatures can be considered realistic in terms of content, the fact that they have an

ideal characteristic rather than being naturalist stems from the same attitude. It is as if

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the miniaturist wants to point out the difference between the visible/physical world

and the spiritual/metaphysical world he refers to in every move he makes. In this

sense, the choice to depict the space as two-dimensional or three-dimensional

depends on whether that space is a spiritual space or a physical one (Bakker, 2017, p.

42).

The placement of figures and objects on the surface of the miniature,

according to their hierarchical position or their narrative importance, stems from a

similar idea. The sizes of the figures in the miniature are not determined according to

their positions on the orthogonals, as in the paintings made with the perspective

technique. But they are determined according to an understanding of hierarchy that

can be traced back to Plato. In addition, the contrapposto technique, which gives the

illusion of both volume and movement, is not used in the depiction of human and

animal figures. Another remarkable feature of the figures in the miniatures is that the

faces of the figures are largely similar to each other and lack expressions that show

the mood of the people in the miniatures (And, 2014, p. 135).

3.3.2 Uses of Light, Shadow and Color

In addition to not using linear and aerial perspective which are the techniques

that gave Renaissance painting its naturalist character, the use of light and shadow

(chiaroscuro) to create a sense of volume, the application of tones in different values

from light to dark (cangiante), the blurring of the border lines to allow smooth

transitions between color tones (sfumato) are not encountered in miniatures. Just like

in Persian miniatures, in Ottoman miniatures, instead of coming from a specific

source or direction, the light is distributed evenly over the entire miniature surface

and there are no shadows or atmospheric effects due to this distribution of light.

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Thus, a shadowless and depthless attitude of depiction emerges which uses color

spots that do not mix with each other and consists of distinct outlines. Abstracting

people and objects from their three-dimensional appearances in the visible world and

reducing them to two-dimensional drawings without shadows non-naturalistic uses of

color, such as gilded skies, purple cliffs, and pink horses, are meant to emphasize the

discontinuity and the eccentric between the visible world and the supersensible realm

which is reflected in the miniature (Renda & Erol, 1980, p. 24). Thus, “the

manuscripts prepared for the palace shine with gold inside and out, and the world

gains a heavenly beauty in this glow, just like in poetry” (İpşiroğlu, 2005, p. 62).

3.3.3 Representation of Nature in Miniatures

Departing from the non-naturalistic depictions of nature in miniatures, it can

be argued that nature is removed from the visible world and placed in an abstract

space. The miniaturist's concern is not to depict the visible world or nature as it

appears to the eye. On the contrary, the miniaturist wants to reveal a completely

different realm beyond the visible world. The miniaturist constructs an “abstract

space” (Ergüven, 2007, p. 153) to underline the distinction between the space of the

miniature and the visible space, and the discontinuity between the two. Although the

space in miniatures seems to be composed of objects, events or people in daily life, it

is not the physical/material space experienced in daily life. The realism of some

miniatures—in terms of taking their subjects from real-life historical events and

featuring real people—can create the illusion that they are also naturalists. Even

though miniatures are realistic in content, at times, they are almost never naturalist in

form. However, this non-naturalist attitude would begin to change starting from the

18th century.

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Before examining the idea of space in Persian miniatures, Iranian scholar of

Islamic studies Seyyed Hossein Nasr begins his analysis by expressing what is

overlooked when miniatures are viewed from a Western point of view. According to

Nasr, the Western worldview, which is basically shaped by Cartesian dualism and

identifies space or extension with the material/physical world, has difficulty grasping

an understanding of space that is not included in spatio-temporal reality and is not

physical/material. This non-physical/immaterial space is not a product of human

imagination; on the contrary, it is a space with its own ontological reality. Religious

Persian art is also concerned with this type of space. In order to express such an

understanding of space with a transcendent dimension, the distinction/discontinuity

between this space and the physical space where human beings live their daily lives

must be emphasized. If this distinction/discontinuity is not emphasized, it will not be

possible to experience that transcendent dimension that goes beyond the physical

world/space. This distinctive space, which is presented with different techniques and

a kind of symbolism, is not only different from the three-dimensional space of the

physical world; it also corresponds to another level of consciousness (Nasr, 1987, pp.

177-178).

On the one hand, the natural perspective [perspectiva naturalis], which is

based on geometrical laws, the foundations of which were laid by Euclid and later

developed by Ibn al-Haytham, is used in Persian miniature; on the other hand,

artificial perspective rules [perspectiva artificialis], which betray the nature of the

two-dimensional surface by making the two-dimensional surface appear as threedimensional,

are avoided in accordance with the "realism" understanding of Islam. In

this way, the surface of the miniature separates the human being from the horizon of

physical existence and earthly consciousness and carries him/her to higher states of

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being and consciousness; namely to an imaginal world. According to Nasr, the vast

majority of Persian miniatures, whether taking their subject matter from the epic war

stories in the Shahnameh or moral parables of poets like Nizami and Sa'di, are a

gateway beyond the physical and into higher states of being. They depict an inbetween/

intermediary a realm (Nasr, 1987, pp. 179-180).

The sensible/material world and the intelligible/imaginal world in the context

of Islamic arts can be comparable with the "intermediary world" established between

human and nature by Western abstract art movements. In this context, the Islamic

artist acts upon an ontological difference between the physical world and the

invisible world, rather than a distinction between the appearance and essence of

objects. Why the Islamic artist wants to create an "intermediary world" is another

matter of discussion. While the artist may be trying to make the invisible but

intelligible realm visible through this intermediary world; at the same time, he may

be creating a fictional world where he can find peace and escape from this finite

world of multiplicity (kesret), becoming (kevn) and corruption (fesat). Whatever the

purpose, the basic idea of the artist is to create an experience for both himself and the

audience through the basic relationship of Islamic arts with spirituality. Islamic arts’

direct relationship with revelation, and therefore with the worldview of Islam, both in

terms of form and content, has enabled Islamic arts to assume a spiritual function that

led people to contemplate and remember Allah (zikir), and to reach the esoteric limits

of divine revelation (Nasr, 2019, p. 16). The experience that the Islamic artist wants

to create was an experience based on contemplation, as stated above, rather than just

spectacle or watching.

In this respect, it has been aimed to create a world within the framework of

works of art to not to be an imitation of the physical/sensible world or reality. A

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further aim was to emphasize the discontinuity between the two worlds. Reminiscent

of Plato's views, both the Divan poet and the miniaturist knew that the imitation of

reality on the art plane –even though it has a unique ontology– was far from the truth

compared to the reality, and they did not make such an attempt. As a matter of fact,

the world they try to reveal through art is not this world either; it was the invisible

realm. This fictional world revealed through art was like an isthmus [berzah]

between the visible world and the imaginal world.

This intermediary world that Nasr (1987) speaks of is the point where the

conception of space in Persian miniature connects with Islamic ontology, especially

with the idea of the Divine Presences (hazarât-ı hams) in Sufism (p. 181). According

to the idea of hazarât-ı hams, which corresponds to the five stages of the emergence

of existence, the physical world in which humanity and creation take place is the last

stage of existence. In a higher stage of the physical world lies the angelic realm. At a

higher level of the angelic realm, lies the realm of jabarut, where an existence

beyond form takes place. Above this realm, comes the realm of Divine Names and

Attributes, in which the divine nature manifests itself. The Last stage which –is

above the Divine Names and Attributes– is the Divine Essence (Schimmel, 2001, p.

267).

In the world of jabarut, there is a state of existence beyond form. In the

angelic realm, which is at a lower stage of it, there are forms that do not have matter,

i.e. matterless forms. In the physical world below it, form and matter are together.

Here, the space, which is depicted as the in-between world or the imaginary world in

Persian miniatures, refers to the angels or the angelic realm, which consists of

immaterial forms. According to Nasr, the realm of angels is, on the one hand, a state

of paradise in which the original forms (like Plato's ideas), colors and fragrances

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bring joy to people; on the other hand, it is a labyrinth woven with cosmic curtains

that separates the human being from the Divine. In this sense, the understanding of

space in Persian miniatures is not concerned about this world; it tries to reflect the

forms and colors in the angelic realm. The miniaturist’s preference for two

dimensions rather than three is also shaped at this point. If the miniaturist had

depicted a three-dimensional space containing voluminous objects and figures with

shadows, the artist would have made a depiction of the visible world; not the angelic

realm. Therefore, such a choice would have prevented the miniature's characteristic

of being directed towards the existence of another realm that transcends the visible

world (Nasr, 1987, pp.181-182). For this purpose, the miniaturist tries to depict

immaterial forms [Platonic Idea] on the surface of the miniature, which is why

objects, plants, animals and even people appear similar to each other. The purpose of

the miniaturist is not to depict a certain (specific) object or animal; it is to be able to

depict the immaterial form that shapes it. The miniaturist’s attitude that persistently

ignores an object that would appear alive with its three-dimensional representation

also stems from a certain ontological understanding (Ergüven, 2007, p. 153). The

reason why the space is depicted as in miniatures is not the exclusion of the threedimensional

figure; but the desire to describe immaterial forms that exist in another

realm.

According to Beşir Ayvazoğlu (2013), who focuses on the issue of variation

(tenevvü), which he thinks is a principle that should be carefully studied in the

aesthetics of Islamic arts, the tree in miniature is not just a particular tree, but a tree

in general. In other words, the artist does not paint in front of a particular tree to

make a similar depiction of it. But he draws the tree in his mind. In this way, to

reflect the universal, the objects of the sensible world become schematic patterns in

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the mind of the miniature artist. Therefore, the form changes from the specific to the

general and acquires a representative character (p. 114).

By stating the artist's purpose as not to depict a particular tree that his eyes

can see; but to depict the universal tree in his mind, Ayvazoğlu points out how the

depicted objects become schematic or stylized. While examining Nasr's discussion of

space in miniature, it was stated that the space depicted in miniatures was

deliberately separated from the three-dimensional space of the physical world by the

means of different techniques and a kind of symbolism. Schematization or stylization

is among these techniques. Nasr (1987) said that space in miniatures corresponds to a

realm of forms without matter (p. 181). This realm, like Plato's ideas, was a realm in

which everything had its original forms. In the physical world, matter and form

coexist. At this point, it is worth mentioning briefly that Plato thinks that forms

[idea/form] exist independently of matter in another layer of reality. However, this

approach poses many problems in describing how matter and form come together in

the visible world. Being aware of this problem, Aristotle, on the other hand, agrees

with Plato that the substance is the form that makes an object that object, but he

differs from Plato by stating that there is no such thing as immaterial form or

formless matter, and that forms do not have an existence separate from matter.

However, Aristotle does not deny that forms can exist as universals, in a way

"separate from matter". These are the universals that Ayvazoğlu mentioned above.

The artist, whose aim is to reflect these universals – be it a poet or a miniaturist –

makes use of some ready-made patterns. But the artist tries to break away from the

limitation of using these patterns. Ayvazoğlu (2013) likens the artist's effort to be

original in such a system to wrestling with giants: "At hand, there are ready-made

cliches, but with these clichés, it is possible to create thousands of different forms

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and compositions" (p. 116). This is where variation (tenevvü) comes into play. The

artist pushes the limits of tradition with variation with the purpose of reflecting the

essence of objects.

As I tried to argue about the understanding of space in miniatures above,

Ergüven makes the mistake of mixing up the space of miniatures with the physical

space and objects of this world. Not only in Islam; but also in Christianity and

Taoism, there is an overlapping belief that the universe, nature and the visible world

are in a state of constant change, transformation and becoming is indisputable. While

this belief is associated with the creative acts of God in monotheistic religions; in

Taoism it is associated with life energy [chi]. Objects that seem to be surrounded by

the gayb (unseen) in miniatures are, in a sense, already in the realm of the gayb. The

static state also stems from the unique qualities of that realm. If the miniaturist’s

concern was to depict the visible world, there would definitely be a way to overcome

the static state mentioned by Ergüven; however, the miniaturist’s aim was to show

exactly this stability. It was not a lack of knowledge. Miniature artists were

conscious about their choices the foundations of which were laid maybe centuries

ago. The echoes of “forma mentalis” shaped by these centuries-old choices were also

echoed in the works of some Soldier Painters.

As stated before, parallel with the understanding of absolute form, in Islamic

art what is visible is actually a curtain or veil. This veil should be opened or

surpassed so that you can look behind it. The artist aims to lift up this veil by

stylization, the final point of which is an absolute form. The aim of the tendencies

such as reducing contours to basic lines and getting rid of the details in styling are

not to simplify the visible, but to ensure that the invisible behind it –which can be

called “the truth of the visible” or “the truth behind the visible”– is revealed by

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scratching or tearing it apart. In other words, the aim here is more than just

simplification. It is to push the visible towards a different purpose by saving it from

its visible state. As long as the visible remains/depicted as it appears, this

different/other purpose will always remain veiled. The story/content that is aimed to

be told through the visible or on the visible is one of these purposes. For this reason,

a narrative is sought in pictures that only show the visible. What's the point of

appearance if there's no narrative behind it?

3.3.4 Narrative in Miniatures

For many years, history paintings –which were large-scale narrative paintings

based on ancient Greek classics, mythological stories, and the Bible– occupied a

privileged position in the Academic tradition, especially in the French Academy. Due

to the content, narrative and the story [istoria] they had, history paintings were

considered hierarchically superior to portraits which lacked a narrative content

[istoria] even though they were representations of important figures, as well as the

landscapes and still-lifes which took their subject from everyday life (Leppert, 2009,

p. 68).

The origin of the word history used in the expression ‘history paintings’

[history, Lat. historia] goes back to the Greek word istoria which means “inquiry,

knowledge acquired through inquiry”. This word has been transferred into Latin as

historia to express many different and interrelated meanings such as “investigation,

inquiry, search, explanation, written explanation of past events, historiography, story,

narrative”.

Taking the concept in this sense, Italian Renaissance humanist Leon Battista

Alberti, in his 1435 study on painting [De pictura], says that istoria, which he

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evaluates through its relationship with composition, is the main issue of the art of

painting. According to Alberti, the istoria’s ability to activate the spirit gives

painting a moral authority. The main purpose of the composition in the painting is to

reveal the content of the painting, that is, the istoria. In this sense, the composition –

which corresponds to the visual organization of the content– is one of the most

important criteria of the artist's originality. As a matter of fact, if we describe the

perspectival space in the painting as a pictorial space formed by the juxtaposition of

the parts that make up the content of the painting, even perspective as a composition

tool comes into play for this purpose, that is, in order to present the narrative in a

rational way (Wilde, 2002, p. 13). Nevertheless, the perspective theory was

developed as a response to the needs of narrative art. In this sense, art historian Ernst

Gombrich (2015) claimed that people who were no longer satisfied with the

depictions of the cross made of stylized symbols enthusiastically welcomed the

perspective paintings in which the scenes were depicted as if the artist were actually

watching them (p. 189).

In his conference at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1669,

historian André Félibien distinguishes historical painting which is narrative from

genre painting such as portraits and landscapes which are representational. While the

historical painting is the product of an intellectual process; genre painting models the

appearance of objects in nature. Therefore, historical painting has a function beyond

being mimetic (Duro, 2002, p. 94). Similar to Félibien, in his work titled Reflections

on the Current Situation of Painting in France (1774) La Font de Saint Yenne also

emphasized that historical painting is the most important painting genre and argued

that the painters make historical paintings for the soul and others make paintings for

the eye (Wilde, 2002, p. 15). In this sense, genre painting, which is non-historical

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and non-narrative, is thought to be without any intervention of the mind and the

artist's main purpose is to be mere mimetic or imitative. Historical painters, on the

other hand, seek plausible representations of heroic acts of the past rather than

illusory depictions of the here and now. Joshua Reynolds states that a text should

accompany historical paintings in order for them to achieve this purpose and to be

able to fully open itself to the mind of the audience (Duro, 2002, p. 95).

The reason why the subject of historical painting has been examined in such

detail is to reveal some common points between this type of painting and miniatures

that also deal with historical stories. The first similarity between these two genres is

that they both put the story, the narrative, the content or the subject to the fore. The

miniatures are book illustrations which were made to support the narratives that

already exist as text in the books. In this respect, compared to the text or narrative

which they illuminate, they were secondary. In this sense, one can talk about the kind

of relationship between the text and the miniatures that is similar to what Reynolds

mentioned above. Just as historical paintings in the West take their subjects from

ancient Greek classics, mythological stories and the Bible, Ottoman miniatures also

focus on historical narratives and heroic stories. In addition, being able to depict the

story in the text in a proper and intelligible way required a competent knowledge of

composition. Stacking [istifleme], which is a frequently encountered concept related

to miniatures, constitutes another common point between historical paintings and

miniatures as a concept related to this issue.

Moreover, some similarities can be found between historical paintings and

miniatures in the process of transformation from landscape as a composition element

to landscape as an independent painting genre. Before landscape became a standalone

painting genre in the early 19th century, it served as a background for narratives

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in historical paintings. As a result of many transformations in different fields, which

started with the Renaissance and lasted for many years, landscape began to come to

the fore and became a painting genre in its own right. If they can be called

"landscapes", it can be said that the use of certain landforms in miniatures that

narrate historical stories actually served compositional purposes. In parallel with the

gradual decline of historical paintings towards the middle of the 19th century in the

West, landscape started to become a painting genre in its own right and gained

popularity in the Ottoman Empire, too. In the process of transferring the landscape,

which was used as a background in miniatures and later in portraits of sultans, to

book covers, then to arches, then to walls, and finally to canvases, the miniature

genre, whose main issue was historical stories, disappeared. In other words, while the

story/narrative, which was the main component for both the history of Western

painting and miniature, lost its importance and the landscape that had been the

backdrop for them gradually gained its own autonomy.

Despite all these similar aspects, one of the main differences between

historical paintings and miniatures dealing with historical stories is the use of

perspective as an element of a composition. In historical paintings, perspective is

used as an auxiliary element thatenhances the narrative by endowing it with reality.

But such an approach is out of concern in miniatures. All kinds of tools such as

perspective, depth, shading that can relate the story with the visible reality were

avoided in miniatures as the miniature artist carefully refrained from imitating the

nature. Perhaps it was thought that the truth of the story told was better emphasized

with such a manner. As a matter of fact, the use of elements such as perspective,

depth and shading in miniatures would follow a parallel path with the landscape as

landscape gained importance in miniature. As Western artists start working in the

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nakkaşhane, elements such as perspective, depth and shading would begin to

infiltrate miniature art letting the landscape element in the miniatures would

gradually come to the fore.

3.3.5 From Narrative to Landscape in Miniatures

In the West, it is in the 17th century that the landscape began to be considered

as a subject in its own right instead of being a kind of decor/background to portray

mythological, historical or religious stories. It was only at the beginning of the 19th

century that the landscape genre gained a more respectable position against historical

paintings. Especially with the influence of the Romantic Movement, the landscape

would cease to act as a backdrop and begin to outshine figure painting (İnankur,

1997, p. 34). The developments in different fields from the 16th century to the

beginning of the 20th century enabled the landscape to become a painting genre and

to become autonomous from the narrative. It can be said that this process, which can

be described as the autonomy of the landscape from the narrative and in a sense from

the figure painting, was experienced in Ottoman miniature art, also to elaborate on

the issue, it is possible to take the topographical miniatures made by Matrakçı Nasuh

in the middle of the 16th century as a starting point –albeit somewhat controversially.

It is controversial; because it is open to debate to what extent Matrakçı

Nasuh's topographic views are landscape paintings. Turkish painter Turan Erol, for

example, points out a fundamental difference between the miniatures of Matrakçı

Nasuh, which he calls "pictorial map" or "paintings turned into maps", and the first

examples of landscape paintings tha can be seen from walls and ceilings to books

and book covers from the second half of the 18th century onwards. For Erol, the

fundamental difference is the concept of space. He claims, while the sense of space

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was more conceptual in Matrakçı's miniatures; the sense of space which appeared

first in wall paintings and then in canvas paintings in the mid-19th century was more

spatial (Renda & Erol, 1980, p. 102).

In this context, although it is controversial to accept Matrakçı Nasuh's

miniatures as a starting point in the development of the landscape, the book cover

paintings by Abdullah Buhari and Rakkamehu Mehmet which were made towards

the middle of the 18th century, can be considered a more appropriate starting point. In

this respect Erol argues that two landscapes (1728-1729) by Abdullah Buhari on the

front and back covers of the book titled Tercüman eddüstur fi Havadis el-ezmen

Ve'd-dühü, is like the prototype of the Yıldız Palace landscapes made in the second

half of the 19th century (Renda & Erol, 1980, p. 105) (See Figure 2). The landscape

paintings made in the second half of the 19th century were not only the outcome of

the art education given in the military schools; but also the point reached in the

process where landscape gained its autonomy.

Figure 2: Abdullah Buhari, Book covers, On the left, “Bahçeli Köşk” (Villa with a garden); on the

right, “Dere Kenarında Evler” (Houses by the creek) (Renda & Erol, 1980, p. 38)

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However, it should be noted that the autonomy of the landscape in the Ottoman

Empire was made possible through sidestepping the figurative content in the process.

Emphasizing that the figure is a necessity in traditional Turkish painting

(miniatures), the rules of which are passed down from master to apprentice, from

generation to generation, Erol claims that since the end of the 18th century, the

paintings gradually moved outside the books towards murals or as pictures framed

and hung on walls. There was a tendency to stay away from figure painting (Renda

& Erol, 1980, p. 102). In this process, in which both figures and the narrative were

avoided for various reasons, not only the landscape but also still life genre gained

popularity.

Westernization, the transference of images from books to canvases, and the

transition of focus from figure to landscape as a autonomous subject were parallel

processes. The interesting thing is that this process also entails the transition process

of the subject from being a servant to being an individual figure painting will be

favored much later. Due to the conjuncture that the artists are in, this situation is not

surprising. For example, when the portrait tradition as figure painting is examined, it

is seen that the portraits made in the Ottoman Empire consist of portraits of sultans.

The figures in miniatures are there as they are part of a narrative. It will take a little

more time for the figure paintings that show the individual's emotions, personality,

mood, etc. Until then, painters would try to express such issues –on the scale

possible– through landscape. What is important here is not avoiding the portrait and

turning to the landscape in the context of the expression of the individual. It is also

important, of course; but the main issue is to break away from the narrative painting,

turn to the landscape and express the mood through the landscape. This is basically a

parallel process to the one in the West. In this sense, it is possible to read the general

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trend of this period as moving away from the figure and the narrative, as it manifests

itself with a focus on landscape painting and still life.

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CHAPTER 4

METAPHYSICAL STAGE: THE CONFLICT BETWEEN TWO WAYS OF

SEEING

The metaphysical stage is a transitional stage between the religious stage and

the naturalist stage. During the transition from contemplative to spectatorial way of

seeing, the greatest hesitations, questionings and uneasiness are seen in this period.

Hence this stage is accompanied by a kind of indecision or uncertainty between two

ways of seeing. It is possible to see the traces of these feelings in the works of Namık

Kemal, Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan and Şeker Ahmet Pasha. In the face of nature, the

author seems to be caught in between two ways of seeing. On the one hand, the

effects of contemplative way of seeing at the religious stage are still in effect; on the

other hand, the effects of the spectatorial way of seeing, which will become more and

more visible in the naturalist stage, begin to be noticed. Although the dichotomy

between truth and reality had not changed in favor of reality, in terms of considering

nature as itself some inquiries have begun. Even if ontologically the Parmenidean

understanding of Being was dominant at this stage, it gradually faded to leave its

place to the Heraclitean understanding of becoming.

From an epistemological point of view, it is at this stage that the tension

between intellect and reason began to deteriorate in favor of the latter. Transition

from the religious to the metaphysical one takes place around three spheres of

discoveries. These are respectively the discovery of reason, discovery of nature and

the discovery of the individual. The discovery of nature and the individual is

especially emphasized by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar in his legendary The Nineteenth

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Century History of Turkish Literature. But the discovery of reason, which is thought

to be prior to these two discoveries, will be proposed within the scope of this study.

In this stage, the discovery of reason is carried out by the first generation of

Tanzimat writers such as Şinasi and Ziya Pasha. The discovery of nature takes place

in the works of Namık Kemal and the second generation Tanzimat writers such as

Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem and Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan. The issue of the discovery

of the individual, on the other hand, will not be examined as a separate title since it is

basically the subject of the novel as a literary form. Still, it will be briefly mentioned

here. In this framework, on the literary plane, this stage was shaped by the first

generation of Tanzimat writers such as Şinasi (b. 1826) and Ziya Pasha (b. 1829), as

well as the second generation Tanzimat writers such as Namık Kemal (1840-1888),

Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem (1847-1914) and Abdulhak Hamit Tarhan (1852-1937).

Namık Kemal, born in 1840, is considered by literary historians to be among

the first generation Tanzimat writers, but he is like a bridge connecting the first and

second generation writers of the Tanzimat. In terms of visual plane, Şeker Ahmet

Pasha (b. 1841), from the second generation of Soldier Painters, was one of the most

important artists who took place in this stage. Although the works of first generation

Soldier Painters such as Ferik İbrahim Pasha (b. 1815), Hüsnü Yusuf Pasha (b. 1817)

and Ferik Tevfik Pasha (b. 1819) can be interpreted as a kind of transition from the

religious stage to the metaphysical stage on the visual plane, we do not have enough

information about the works of these artists. In parallel with the transition from the

religious stage to the metaphysical stage, it can be also argued that there is a

transition from classical art to romanticism.

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4.1 Three Discoveries: Reason, Nature and the Individual

The discovery of nature (tabiat) and the individual (fert) that Tanpınar

pointed out as the fundamental discoveries around which the Turkish literature was

shaped after the Tanzimat did not happen all at once. Nature and its description did

not appear in Turkish poetry out of the blue. In this sense, a third preceding

discovery, which Tanpınar did not mention, can be added to the discovery of nature

and the individual. It was the discovery of reason [us]. The discoveries of nature and

the individual did not happen all at once; it would not be wrong to say that the

discovery of reason preceded them. First, the individual's idea of himself/herself,

his/her place in the universe, and his/her status in the hierarchy in the universe would

need to be reconsidered. Resembling the Renaissance experience of nearly five

centuries ago, Ottoman intellectuals dared to look at reality first with their own

reason and judgment, and then with their senses.

With the Renaissance, philosophy's release from the hegemony of religion as

it wriggled itself out of being a kind of theology, led to tremendous transformations

in the understanding of the universe, life and the human. Although these

transformations were not against religion or religious authority at every stage; it

would be increasingly emphasized that religion (revelation) would not be the only

authority in the comprehension of the human and external reality. Not only universe,

nature, life and the place of the human in all these; even the human body, which was

mostly despised until that time, began to be looked at with a different eye, with

special attention. Thanks to this new view and attention, nature and the individual

whose sensible realities succumbed to the symbolist tendencies of the Middle Ages,

would almost be reborn in their pure realities. In this sense, the Renaissance was a

period of curiosity, discovery and liberation. Underneath this transformation was the

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struggle of a middle class which was getting richer through trade. Its struggle was

against the aristocracy and the church for its rights (Arslan, 2007, p. 11). It was

knowledge that formed the driving force of the struggle of this middle class, which

would later be called the bourgeoisie. In that respect, people's curiosity about the

world they lived in and their desire to know and transform it were increasing rapidly.

The printing press, geographical discoveries and scientific discoveries were the result

of this wish that turned into a desire. Seeing that the belief system represented by the

church was ineffective in the context of recognizing and dominating nature, the

individual had chosen to trust his reason –which found its source in ancient Greece.

The scientific discoveries that came one after the other showed that this was the right

choice to be made. Finding out that approaching nature with reason supported by

scientific knowledge (instead of approaching it through religious belief) was more

effective in gaining dominance over it, they also began to approach issues such as the

existence of God, faith and revelation through reason and a kind of skepticism.

Although this doubt did not mean the denial of God's existence, over time it would

cause God to lose its central position in understanding the universe and wo/man

would begin to fill the void that had emerged. Parallel to this process, the novel

would emerge as a literary genre in which the individual who attached more

importance to the sensible world revealed his/her own adventure as a whole with

his/her inner and outer reality (Arslan, 2007, p. 12).

For the Ottoman intellectual, who until that time saw God and the whole

existence through the mediation of the absolute text, it would not be an easy

experience to try to grasp reality with his/her own possibilities and experiences (and

not through the experiences of those before him or those above him) via lifting his

head from the absolute text and turn towards reality. The encounter of a society that

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had a certain worldview and therefore a way of seeing based on a certain civilization

and cultural accumulation with a different worldview/way of seeing based on a

different cultural accumulation created complex feelings such as confusion,

admiration, hesitation, adoption and even crisis (Okay, 2010, p. 23). Starting from

Akif Pasha, in Ziya Pasha, Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan, Beşir Fuat and Tevfik Fikret, the

shocking effects of this difficulty could be seen. The first generation of Tanzimat

intellectuals, who tried to grasp God and reality with their own means, especially

with a brand new tool such as reason, made a critical move for future generations and

made a breach in the scholastic structure around the absolute text. Every new move

to be made from then on would be aimed at widening that breach and ultimately be

overthrowing the scholastic framework. The issue of nature and its description began

to enter the agenda of Turkish literature with the second generation such as

Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem and Abdulhak Hamit Tarhan, who followed the first

generation Tanzimat intellectuals who dared to comprehend God and existence

through their own reason. At this point, although some historians find it insufficient,

the descriptions written by Namık Kemal in his letter of Gelibolu, his article titled

Rüya (Dream) and İntibah (Impression) were the first steps of putting nature on the

literary agenda.

However, together with Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem and Abdülhak Hamit

Tarhan, there were examples of a new perspective on nature, even though it was still

fresh and primitive. Yet, due to the absence of such a view in tradition, the lack of

maturity with respect to the Western literature, and the lack of painting and prose in

their artistic life, Ekrem and Tarhan would have difficulty expressing their

experiences of nature or expressing their feelings through nature, which would be

reflected both in the content and form of their poems. Ekrem and Tarhan were

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struggling alone in the context of looking at nature and reflecting it, due to the lack

of competent examples from which to take inspiration. Therefore, they had

difficulties in the framing process in front of a landscape. They greatly lacked the

aesthetic attitude that would help them to put the individual elements in nature as a

whole –in relation to each other– in the process of description, and what Simmel

(2007) called an ideational formation (p. 28). It is thanks to these qualities that the

landscape or description emerges from the impressions formed by the discrete

objects in nature, as a result of a cleansing and purification process. By selecting and

describing a piece from the chaotic flow of nature and the infinity of the directly

given world, the artist shapes it as an indivisible whole (p. 23).

These qualities would become visible with the Edebiyat-ı Cedide generation

in which the view of nature had matured significantly following the second

generation Tanzimat writers. The view of nature by the writers of Edebiyat-ı Cedide,

who were in a more conscious relationship with the products of Western literature

and other fields of art such as painting and music, had undergone a very different

education compared to previous generations. In this respect, Cenap Şahabettin, who

created a genre theory of descriptive poetry with the examples he obtained from

Western poets during his stay in France, would have a special place in Turkish

literature (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 386). Showing great mastery in the descriptions of

nature in his poems, in an article published in Peyam-ı Sabah in 1928 Şahabettin

emphasized that previous generations could not see that poetry is a painting depicted

with words. For this reason, they could not limit the poems they wrote by framing

them like a painting (p. 386). Here, it is seen that Şahabettin treated poetry as a

painting made of words and whose frame (boundaries) are clear. Of course, he also

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underlined that the source of inspiration in this process is Western, especially French

poets.

In this way, nature turned into an individualized landscape and became a tool

to express one's emotional state. Through his/her unique point of view, the artist first

separates the elements –which exist as a kind of unity in flux– in nature; then

reformats them into definite wholes. Creating a landscape, by first breaking it into

parts and then juxtaposing these parts as a certain whole, albeit by force, as

something that does not actually exist in nature, enables nature to individuate, and in

this way, the individual's feelings are expressed (Simmel, 2007, p. 22). The use of

nature descriptions in the poem in order to reflect a certain mood would also be

encountered in the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide. Here the landscape –which appeals to

the ability of perception on the one hand and imagination on the other (Milani, 2009,

p. 114)– has a privileged position in terms of a simultaneous object of both

contemplation and spectacle.

The exploratory processes of reason, nature, and human being as an

individual, the outline of which has been roughly given above, correspond to the

different phases of the transition from contemplative to spectatorial way of seeing,

which open into each other. The process, which started with a brand new emphasis

on reason by the first generation of the Tanzimat, opened to the discovery of nature

with the second generation of the Tanzimat, and to the understanding of nature and

the discovery of the individual with the Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Servet-i Fünun)

generation that followed them.

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4.1.1 The Discovery of Reason

4.1.1.1 Şinasi

Unlike the worldview and way of seeing before the Tanzimat in terms of

approaching the external reality through heart/love, Şinasi –who is among the first

generation of the Tanzimat writers– had different attitude. In the process of

Westernization, the confrontation of two worldviews, two conceptions of existence

and two ways of seeing led to some conflicts between different dualities such as

religion and science, reason and faith, the visible world and the invisible world, and a

search for solutions to these conflicts was sought after. The focus of the

visible/sensible world with the new way of seeing that was gradually acquired led to

a search for a new relationship between the human and God that went beyond the

framework of religion-faith. Şinasi's Münacat was one of the first examples of this

search. It is unknown to what extent Şinasi's meeting –during his stay in France–

with Ernest Renan, who dealt with Christianity in a more rational context,

contributed to such an attitude; but there were signs in Şinasi that the truth and God

can be known through reason [us] (Okay, 2010, p. 24). In Divan literature, the poems

whose subject was plea and supplication to God are called münacat. In these poems,

in which the power, majesty and greatness of God are underlined and how helpless

the servant is before God, the poets support their thoughts with quotes from verses

form Quran and hadiths of the Prophet (Pala, 2017, p. 108). Şinasi, on the other hand,

sought to support his thoughts with his reason rather than with verses and hadiths.

Şinasi began his Münacat by affirming the greatness of God and His being

not bound by time and space. The existence of heaven and earth was the result of

God's incomprehensible creative power and knowledge. Everything that existed,

from the smallest speck to the largest celestial bodies, was proof of God's existence.

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However, Şinasi stated that people could not see the existence of God through the

ordinary gaze32, and he said that only the eye of the heart could sense His light.33

Despite this, he underlined the necessity of witnessing the singularity of God's

existence via reason34, and that this was only possible with supplication and worship

towards God.35 Şinasi wanted to worship the verses of God with a sincere desire.36

Realizing that what he did was a kind of rebellion, no matter what his intentions

were37, Şinasi, filled with fear38 and regret, expressed that he repented.39 Indicating

that his mistakes were due to his natural weakness40, Şinasi sought refuge in God's

endless mercifulness41 and glory42 to be forgiven.

In Şinasi's Münacat, in which he expressed his admiration for the universe,

which he thought had a wonderful order as a manifestation of God's creative power,

first stirrings of the change in the view of God, religion and life was seen. Although

Şinasi does not openly reject the afterlife beyond the sensible world, he also

emphasized the beauty of the sensible world. Beneath this beauty was order, which

was a kind of manifestation of God's presence (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 35).

Approaching God and the universe which was God’s manifestation not

through love and heart’s eye but through reason and evidence emerged as an idea in

poetry with the first generation of the Tanzimat, especially with Şinasi. In Divan

32 Göremez zâtını mahlûkunun âdî nazarı (His creature cannot see His [God’s] being with a common

gaze)

33 Hisseder nûrunu amma ki basiret basarı (He feels His light, but he senses with prudence)

34 Vahdet-i zâtına aklımca şehâdet lâzım (His unity needs to be understood with my mind)

35 Cân ü gönlümle münâcât ü ibâdet lâzım (I need to pray with my soul and my heart)

36 Neş'e-i şevk ile âyâtına tapmak dilerim (I wish to worship your verse with joy)

37 Eder isyânıma gönlümde nedâmet galebe (Regret prevails in my heart for my rebellion)

38 Ey Şinâsî içimi havf-ı İlâhî dağlar (O Şinasi, the fear of Allah burns me)

39 Ne dedim tövbeler olsun bu da fi'l-i şerdir (What did I say, I seek repentance, this is an act of evil)

40 Sehvine oldu sebeb acz-i tabiî kulunun (The reason for his fault is his incapable nature)

41 Bî-nihâye keremi âleme şâmil mi değil (Is my sin greater than God's forgiveness?)

42 Beni afveylemeye fazl-ı İlâhisi yeter (His divine virtue is enough to forgive me)

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poetry, the existence of God was not taken as an object of knowledge and was not

questioned by reason. God was reached through love via the heart, and this belief

was expressed through language (Parlatır, 2006, p. 168). Since the existence of God

was not an epistemological issue in pre-Tanzimat poetry, it was not the subject of an

inquiry through reason. God, who was unconditionally believed in, was praised over

all his creations. The rational attitude of knowing God's existence rather than merely

praising him distinguished Şinasi from the previous tradition. Şinasi considered God

and nature together and bowed in a kind of awe before God, the creative force behind

nature (p. 336). In this sense, Şinasi was a turning point and with his emphasis on

reason, he opened the doors of the transition from the religious stage to the

metaphysical one.

For Şinasi, the point to be emphasized was not the belief in God; it was his

search for the idea of God to testify to him by reason rather than by faith. Şinasi

wanted to witness the existence and unity of God through his reason. By pointing out

the existence of the universe and the order in its functioning as an objective evidence

to be the source of this testimony, he already exceeded the limits of reason in Divan

poetry. The existence of God could not be proved by a discursive method within the

framework of the worldview of which Divan poetry was a product. In this process,

the heart had more importance than reason and the heart's eye had more importance

compared to the eye of the body/head. As a matter of fact, despite all his insistence

on his search, Şinasi claimed that the evil eye, that is, the eye of the body, is

insufficient when it came to the essence of God, and that only prudence can be useful

for feeling the presence of God's light. Thus the content of his poem included the

struggle and hesitations between the above-mentioned dualities. It finally revealed a

kind of remorse. While in the first part of Münacat, Şinasi was looking for rational

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proofs for the existence of God by taking the visible world as an evidence, in the

second part of the poem, he seemed to be out of breath and his gaze turn from

outside to inside; from the outer world to his inner world. It is possible to read the

reflections of Şinasi's ambivalent mood in the couplets woven with regrets, fears and

despair. It is this state of mind that is referred to as indecision or uncertainty within

the scope of this study. Unable to fight any longer against the regret of being a sinner

and the fear of God, Şinasi finally found peace in repentance with his belief that God

is forgiving. The difference of this process from the framework of rebellion and

remorse in Divan poetry was that it showed an internal type of dialogue. In this

sense, the first/baby steps for discovering the individual were also taken with Şinasi.

Comparing Münacat with Divan poems in terms of style, literary historian

Mehmet Kaplan (2019c) finds Münacat similar to a drawing that expresses the whole

with a few characteristic lines. He likens the detailed content of Divan poetry, tired

of similes, metaphors, and mazmuns, to an elaborated miniature in which the main

idea is lost within abundance of details (p. 37). Even this comparison is sufficient to

show what is changing with Şinasi. Şinasi challenged a six-hundred-year-old way of

seeing by rejecting the existing image system of Divan poetry based on mazmuns and

seeking a new image system and a simple language towards the concrete and the

sensible (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 168).

In the odes that Şinasi wrote to Mustafa Reşit Pasha, who wrote the Gülhane

Hatt-ı Hümayunu known as the Tanzimat Fermanı [Edict of Reformation], the

starting point was again the view of human being dominated by a rationalist attitude

(Tanpınar, 1988, p. 165). In his ode for Mustafa Reşit Pasha, it is quite remarkable

that Şinasi used expressions such as prophet (resul), time of happiness (vakt-i

saadet), clear verse (âyet-i beyyine), which are traditionally used for the prophet of

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Islam, to praise Reşid Pasha (Okay, 2010, p. 27). Şinasi stated that Reşid Pasha was

sent by God43 to revive the state; therefore, he likened the period of Reşit Pasha, who

had a miraculous existence44, to the period of happiness45 when the Prophet

Muhammad was reigning, and his words to verses46 that leave no room for doubt. So

much so that Newton falls short in measuring his benevolence, and even Plato lacks

in comprehending his reason and wisdom. Şinasi's comparison of the mind of

Mustafa Reşit Pasha with that of Newton, and the metaphors he made based on

physical phenomena such as light and color, are remarkable in terms of showing his

contact with scientific subjects (Okay, 2010, p. 22).

The importance of the odes that Şinasi wrote for Reşit Pasha was that he tried

to explain everything that happens with reason, and that he based the idea of law,

which he argued as providing equality between people, on reason. In these odes, a

new destiny; therefore, a new understanding of human was also seen. In addition to

the significance that Şinasi attached to the intelligence, it was groundbreaking for

him to see civilization as a religion and to describe Mustafa Reşit Pasha as the

prophet of civilization (Enginün & Kerman, 2011, p. 27). According to Tanpınar

(1988), Şinasi, who constituted the starting point of a new worldview (p. 161), a new

human, a new prose, a new poetry, and a new language, had opened "the genuine

window to the light of the West" (p. 188).

43 Söz mü var devleti ihyaya olan meb'asine (Is there any doubt that he was sent by God to revive the

state?)

44 Sadr-ı millette vücûdun ulu bir mûcizedir (your existence is a great miracle in the nation's chest)

45 Ahdini vakt-i saâdet bilir ebnâ-yı zaman (Those who live in your time know your time as the age of

bliss.)

46 Âyet-i beyyinedir âleme her bir sühanın (Your word is a clear verse to the whole world)

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4.1.1.2 Ziya Pasha

It is possible to see the reflections of the shaky, indecisive and painful mood

created by the transformation from one worldview/way of seeing to another in Ziya

Pasha's works. On the one hand, the desire to realize a new human ideal, and on the

other hand, the uneasiness of not being able to stay as before, went headlong in Ziya

Pasha's inner world. Therefore, Ziya Pasha took his place on the stage of history as

the poet of contradictions and dualities. This was reflected in both his theoretical and

literary works.

Among the writers of the first generation of the Tanzimat period, Ziya Pasha

was the one who seems to be the most uneasy in terms of faith. Ziya Pasha, who

seemed more loyal to the principles of Islam when compared to Şinasi, was more

skeptical of reason and reasoning than Şinasi. Partly with the effect of his pessimistic

temperament, the understanding of comparison and questioning brought about by

knowing the Western world caused a kind of internal conflict in Ziya Pasha (Okay,

2010, p. 29). Ziya Pasha was inspired by Enlightenment philosophers such as

Montesquieu and Voltaire in his approach that prioritized reason and questioning

about the functioning of nature and society. However, this inspiration did not mean

that Ziya Pasha was completely under the influence of Western philosophy and that

he completely adopted the thoughts of these names. Ziya Pasha tried to put forward a

synthesis by taking inspiration from the science of kalam and Sufism as well as the

sources he contacted from Western philosophy (Parlatır, 2006, p. 165). It is possible

to follow the tension between the wisdom of the East and the philosophy of the West,

the curiosity of reason and the surrender to the faith in Ziya Pasha's couplets in

Terkib-i Bend and Terci-i Bend (p. 196). Ziya Pasha stated that the duty of a wise

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person who knows the helplessness of reason in the face of all the happenings in the

universe consists of watching all this with amazement (Okay, 2010, p. 25).

In Ziya Pasha's Terci-i Bend, –which was written in 1859 and had touched

upon philosophical, especially metaphysical issues– a more questioning approach

was seen in his approach to natural events, as well as the creation and functioning of

the universe, unlike the poetry of the previous periods. The poet, who wanted to

grasp the workings of the universe and life through reason, was astonished by what

he saw and realized that he was helpless. He found solace in seeking refuge in Allah,

that He was the creative power behind all this. This sense of wonder was an

expression of the inability of reason to comprehend God's creations (Parlatır, 2016,

p. 141). A feeling similar to the sense of amazement and helplessness felt by

Tanzimat poets, who tried to understand the continuous emergence/disappearance of

the sensible world with their particularizing reason, was also seen in Divan poets;

however, this feeling arose from mysterious forces such as nature, fate, and destiny

which were not under their control due to the absence of empirical knowledge, rather

than trying to grasp the world through reason (Andrews, 2009, p. 150).

The difference of Ziya Pasha's attitude here from that of Divan poetry was

that he was questioning and taking into account the scientific thoughts of his period.

This questioning attitude was not seen in the Divan poet who believed without

hesitation that what he saw was a product and indicator of God's creative power

(Parlatır, 2006, p. 141). Even though Ziya Pasha related the issue to the creative

power of Allah, his attitude was remarkable. What amazed Ziya Pasha was the

enigma of life, human inconsistencies and the evil that seemed to permeate

everywhere. Ziya Pasha, whose wonder triggered a kind of questioning, asked the

questions but his reason was insufficient to provide the answers he desired. This

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made what was going on to seem absurd to him. The interesting point is that Ziya

Pasha attributed this absurdity to the finitude of the understanding power of the

reason, rather than attributing it to what was happening and accepting it as it is. In

this sense, Ziya Pasha's state of amazement was a kind of echo of his inadequacy in

the face of what he saw. In his Terci-i Bend, Ziya Pasha draws a portrait of a person

who realizes his helplessness because of the limits of his reason in the face of the

contrasting and painful absurdity of life on the one hand, and on the other hand the

God whose wisdom is unquestionable and incomprehensible (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 59).

Ziya Pasha, who was watching both the universe and man for a long time, in a sense,

realized that there was a kind of disorder in the universe and a kind of helplessness in

man. What he felt in the face of what he saw is a deep and strong sense of wonder.

Feeling helpless with this sense of wonder, Ziya Pasha found consolation in kneeling

before God (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 58). In this sense, the indecision or uncertainty

experienced by Ziya Pasha seems more intense than that of Şinasi. All these feelings

were the pains of gradually moving from one worldview to another.

Ziya Pasha, who was trying to understand the external reality through his

reason, was astonished by what he saw and felt helpless because he considered what

was happening as contradictory and paradoxical (Parlatır, 2006, p. 169). In Sufism,

something that seems contradictory from the point of view of reason; may not seem

so from the point of view of the heart or imagination [muhayyile]. In the thirteenth

century, Arab Andalusian scholar and mystic Ibn Arabi elaborated on this difference.

According to Arabi, reason [‘aql, us] defines, limits and resolves the issue it deals

with; it perceives the difference and the gap. The properly trained imagination on the

other hand, perceives how God reveals himself. In this framework, reason evaluates

concepts as one way or another (either right or wrong). The imagination, on the other

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hand, assumes that concepts have an imaginary existence and can evaluate them as

both true and false, neither true nor false (Chittick, 2019, n.p.). The symbolic

language of the Quran, the ever-changing and non-repetitive states of the universe

and the human spirit, cannot be interpreted solely by the analysis and criticism of

reason. At this point, imagination comes into play to complete the reason or rational

perception process. In Ibn Arabi's epistemology, the center of awareness and

consciousness is the heart. Reason and imagination are considered as the two eyes of

the heart. Domination of one over the other will disrupt the processes of perception

and awareness. Unifying unity of being is grasped through imagination, the multiple

and fragmented knowledge of what is happening is perceived with reason. According

to Ibn Arabi, Truth (Hakikat, Hak, Allah) is both One and Many: Allah, who is one

in His essence; are many in terms of His names and adjectives, which constitute the

basic principle of all multiplicity, limitations and definitions. At this point, while

imagination is about the One; reason is about the multiplicity. With the eye of the

imagination, the heart sees the One in all things, namely Being; on the other hand it

realizes the transcendence of Being and the diversity becoming through the eyes of

reason (Chittick, 2019, n.p.). Reason and imagination constantly balance, adjust and

regulate each other. In this context, Ziya Pasha, who wanted to understand the events

within the framework of cause and effect relations, sees the contradictions and

paradox –he calls them injustices– in both natural and social life, and these drag him

into a kind of metaphysical anxiety.

Ziya Pasha, who tried to look at the universe and human beings with a

different eye and through reason, was quite different from Şinasi, who was his

contemporary and made a similar attempt. The optimistic attitude in Şinasi became

more pessimistic in Ziya Pasha. In this sense, the first sparks of curiosity [merak]

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were seen in Şinasi. In Ziya Pasha, however, it was appropriate to say that the last

embers of wonder [hayret] were seen. The experiences of Ziya Pasha, in a different

form, would echo in Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan and Tevfik Fikret, as well. Just like in

Şinasi, the first steps of a new view towards the universe were seen in Ziya Pasha.

The human being, who tried to grasp the universe with his/her reason, realized

his/her own limits and suffered because of this. A new universe; therefore, a new

understanding of human being was in question (Enginün & Kerman, 2011, p. 28).

Ziya Pasha's approach to reason was different from that of Şinasi, too. According to

Ziya Pasha, reason –which is wondering and astonished at comprehending the

universe that God has created in an extraordinarily beautiful and complete manner–

was not only inadequate but also unreliable.

There was a kind of restlessness in Ziya Pasha, which can be observed later in

other Tanzimat intellectuals such as Tarhan, Fikret and Mehmet Akif Ersoy. The

reason behind this restlessness lied in the fact that Ziya Pasha could not be a person

of pure reason or pure faith simultaneously. At first glance, this can be interpreted as

a personal inconsistency; but the main reason was that Ziya Pasha lived in a violent

transition period in which the metaphysical stage slowly took over the place of the

religious stage. On the one hand, Ziya Pasha desired a powerful, strong-willed

human type; on the other hand, he saw that he had not succeeded in being such a

person, and he was disappointed. And on another level, he felt restless because he

could not remain in a state of complete surrender to Allah. On the one hand, Ziya

Pasha wanted to be the person inspired by the West; but he was not as successful in

this as he wished; on the other hand, he could not remain as Ziya Pasha, who was in

a state of complete surrender.

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Although it would be inappropriate to claim that Şinasi and Ziya Pasha were

philosophers, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the views they put

forward in some of their poems echo the views of the 17th century rationalists. The

fact that Şinasi (in his odes written in Münacat and to Mustafa Reşit Pasha) and Ziya

Pasha (in his poems such as Terkib-i Bend and Terci-i Bend) emphasized the

inadequacy of reason, which was used in the sense of understanding, thinking and

comprehension, in the face of the existence of God and truths based on revelation

reminds of Descartes' thoughts on theology and revelation-based knowledge.

Although his main philosophical goal was to build a system of knowledge based

entirely on the power of human reason, Descartes, as a devout Catholic, was wary of

theology and revelation; but his approach remained respectful. The reason Descartes

was cautious about these issues was that theology did not have a systematic method

that would help Descartes' search for certainty, which was the starting point of his

entire philosophical program. Revealed knowledge was above reasoning capacity of

human. It was only possible for a person to think about such matters with a

supernatural support from above. Therefore, a person who wanted to approach these

issues only with the power of his/her reason would not be able to find a satisfactory

answer and certainty could not be reached. Descartes, with his intense desire to

achieve some kind of certainty at the mathematical level, would not only be

suspicious about the authority of the church (theology) but also be suspicious about

the authority of Aristotelian scholastic philosophy, which determined the

philosophical climate of his time. In the face of tutelage, Descartes would only take

refuge in the possibilities of his reason and the method he developed (Stumpf, 1977,

p. 245).

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Although both Şinasi and Ziya Pasha did not doubt the existence of God and

that He was the creative power behind the universe, they also did not hesitate to try

to grasp such matters through their reason – regardless of revelation. Although they

would eventually come to the point of admitting how incapable reason was in the

face of such matters and begging God's forgiveness for their attempt, they realized

how critical their undertaking was and how unique it was compared to tradition.

Although the 17th-century rationalists did not reject the religious beliefs based on

revelation, especially like Descartes, and underlined the limited capacity of reason in

the face of these issues, Şinasi and Ziya Pasha put forward a commentary on the

limits of revelation, albeit indirectly, as well as the limits of reason. Even if not in

terms of comprehending God, in the context of comprehending the external reality

and wo/man’s place in it, this was a critical step in terms of liberating the reason

from the yoke of faith in revelation and secularization of the mind. This new sphere,

dedicated to reason whose frame was very narrow in Divan poetry, reminds of

"Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" which Immanuel Kant wrote in

1784. Kant recalled the idea that he used to quote from Horace, "Dare to know!"

[Lat. Sapere aude!] which would become the motto of the Enlightenment. In the

verses Şinasi and Ziya Pasha wrote about reason, the daring attitude they took

against religious, political and traditional tutelage and authority and prioritizing

reason also had a role in their begging for God's forgiveness.

4.1.2 Discovery of Nature

Since the first generation of the Tanzimat, Ottoman literary circles had

contact with the Western novels through translations. Depictions of nature made

appearance in the Ottoman literary world first with translations from foreign

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languages, especially from French. One of them was the novel Telemak from

Fenelon, translated by Yusuf Kamil Pasha in 1859 and published in 1862. In spite of

its origin in a foreign language, the novel translated into Ottoman Turkish with

decorated and waxed metaphors based on the traditional literary language. Texts to

be translated or adapted after 1872 would include less metaphor and a less decorated

style. As a matter of fact, the Atala translation by Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem from

Chateaubriand in 1872 was one of such examples. What was essential for these

translations is that depiction of physical scenes though insufficient and yet immature,

began to seep into the prose culture as a theme. This meant that a new experience of

external reality seeped into prose and therefore into the world of thought (Dino,

1978, p. 136).

4.1.2.1 Namık Kemal

The transfer of the new experience of external reality to Ottoman literary

culture was to be achieved through prose texts such as novels and theater plays. The

emergence of this new understanding of prose began with the initiatives of Şinasi

(b.1826-1871), who devoted prose to thought and reason. However, neither in the

opinion pieces of Şinasi nor in the early columns written to convey certain political

thoughts to the society by Namık Kemal (b.1840-1888), there was no view towards

nature. Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem (b.1847-1914) made the first attempts of viewing

nature in his book Nağme-i Seher (1871), which consisted of prose and poems.

According to Tanpınar (1988), here Ekrem was testing the vocal experience he had

gained through translations from French in Turkish. In this sense, Ekrem was looking

for some kind of fusion with nature, albeit through descriptions in a clumsy language

(p. 273). Although many of them have an embellished characteristic reminiscent of

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the traditional style, Ekrem's attempts were an indication that he tried to look at

external reality from a different perspective and to make it a part of prose through

descriptions. Ekrem tried to express what he saw as if it were a painting even though

his descriptions consisted of quite long sentences. The fact that he tried to elaborate

his descriptions by way of giving directions and even distances between places, it

showed another aspect of Ekrem's effort. He dealt with the appearance of his

everyday reality with a different meticulousness and presented a picture of it by

giving its coordinates (Dino, 1978, p. 139).

Turkish linguist and literary historian Güzin Dino who made a distinction

between descriptive and narrative texts argued that before the Tanzimat literature, no

matter what other features it might have been, prose was narrative rather than

descriptive (1978, p. 133). In such examples, the purpose was to appeal to the

emotions and events were told in a narrative manner one after the other. These events

or situations were also told as abstract as possible and independent of a certain image

setup. Whatever was intended to be explained or told, there was no concern for

visualizing in the language used, in a visual and concrete manner. In this context,

Dino (1978) argued that there were no nature, person or place descriptions in prose

examples before the Tanzimat literature (p. 134).

The attempt of Ekrem in expressing what he saw like a painting was followed

by the descriptions made by Namık Kemal in the Dream (Rüya) and Gallipoli Letter

written in 1872. Based on the friendship between Ekrem and Kemal, Güzin Dino

(1978) said that Ekrem might have guided Namık Kemal towards an awareness of

nature. Namık Kemal wrote the Gallipoli Letter, which included a long description

of the sunset and the moonlight, in the year when Ekrem was working on translations

(1872). While evaluating this parallelism, Dino stated that the two friends acted as if

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cooperating in order to give literature a more concrete and eye-pleasing quality (p.

140).

These two texts were important in terms of presenting a reflection of nature as

a framework for different moods in literature and for the fact that the first examples

of the relationship between nature, atmosphere and mood began to materialize in this

period. For Tanpınar, even if it was still clumsy, a western palette was being tried out

in Turkish around the same years when the painting entered the scene. Although

language used included traditional elements more and was more like defining –rather

than describing– nature became a framework for the mood of the author. Old poetry

consumed everything it took from nature in its abstract framework and altered it

beyond recognition. In the new prose, nature and the human being were trying to

walk side by side (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 274).

The significance of Namık Kemal from Tanpınar's perspective and the

difference that distinguished him from his contemporaries was mainly due to the

definite attitude he took towards the East's understanding of story and his failure to

make use of the elements of this genre as much as possible. Kemal's novels titled

İntibah (1876) and Cezmi (1880) were examples of this attitude. However, Tanpınar

still claimed that both Ahmet Midhat Efendi and Namık Kemal lacked the

imagination of a novelist in the Western sense. Just like technique, Tanpınar uses the

concept of imagination in a unique way. Accordingly, imagination was not "to make

something up, but maybe to transfer the warmth of life on something, to make a lie

live" (Tanpınar, 2016, p. 58).

Similarly, Güzin Dino (1978) stated that Namık Kemal, in pursuit of a new

prose style, tried to develop a language based on a new point of view for the

descriptions of events, situations, people and places in the prose (p. 131). According

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to Dino, descriptions of nature, place (garden, house, room, etc.) and people came

into view in literature with the efforts of Namık Kemal. Although Namık Kemal was

not the only writer who made such depictions at that time, the point that

distinguished him from others was his desire to create genuine images from

traditional metaphors as Tanpınar stated above. In this process, a different

transitional style emerged that aimed to get out of the yoke of the old, but could not

easily get rid of its influence. This effort was the result of a new way of seeing. This

new way of seeing required that the sensible reality be seen in a different way and

what was seen should be described in a new style. Despite all his efforts, even Namık

Kemal was a few centuries behind in terms of his awareness about comprehending

the sensible world (Dino, 1978, p. 131).

4.1.2.2 Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem

In the second period of Tanzimat literature, covering the period between

1876-1896, Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem played a very important role in the

transformation experienced in literature in general and poetry in particular, with his

unprecedented critical and theoretical works. Ekrem, who was seven years younger

than Namık Kemal and four years older than Tarhan, would turn the fire of

innovation lit by Şinasi and Namık Kemal into a school, together with Tarhan. He

became a bridge between the youth of Edebiyat-ı Cedide gathered around him, his

generation and his predecessors (Enginün, 2018, p. 490). According to Tanpınar

(1988), many aspects of Edebiyat-ı Cedide would begin with him. Ekrem ensured the

transformation of Servet-i Fünun magazine into a literature school, mostly through

his students. Moreover, Tanpınar stated that Ekrem had a share behind the priority

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given to photography and painting in Servet-i Fünun magazine, which had a great

impact on the transformation of the poetry of the period (p. 477).

Unlike Şinasi and Namık Kemal, who were members of the previous

generation, Ekrem's literary background consisted of French literature rather than

Divan literature. The education he received at the schools opened during the renewal

process, the duties he took in various offices, his career that started with journalism

and the translations he made differentiated Ekrem's style from those of his

predecessors. Tanpınar (1988) stated that the sentimental attitude that appeared out

of nowhere in literature which was woven with romance-inspired sadness and

nostalgia can be largely attributed to Ekrem (p. 471).

According to Tanpınar, who underlines the Lamartinean roots of Ekrem's

attitude towards nature, Ekrem took his attitude of emotional and religious

observance attitude towards nature from Lamartine. Tanpınar (1988) added that this

attitude, which he likened to a sad dream rather than a philosophical torment in the

face of nature, was what Tarhan called istiğrak (meditation) based on Victor Hugo's

book Les Contemplations (1856) (p. 481). In this period, which coincides with the

process of transition from contemplation to spectacle, spectacle of nature and

contemplation in the face of nature come side by side, partly with the influence of

French romanticism. But what was contemplated and mentioned was no longer God;

it was the mood a person was in and what s/he had lost. Between 1875 and 1887,

Ekrem's poems –together with Tarhan's– were the "most enjoyed" poems and that

they instilled many things into the literature of the period (p. 499). In this respect, the

poems of both Ekrem and Tarhan played an important role in determining the

approach of the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide and Fecr-i Ati, who followed them.

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In addition to his poems, Ekrem's critical and theoretical works such as

Ta'lîm-i Edebiyat (1879) and Takdîr-i Elhân (1886) had a great share in the

transformative influence of Ekrem both in his own period and after. Ekrem, who also

taught literature at the Mekteb-i Mülkiye (School of Political Studies), prepared a

book titled Ta'lîm-i Edebiyat (1879) in order to publicize the unconventional

teaching approach for the period he attended there (Parlatır, 2006, p. 292). The

significance of Ta'lîm-i Edebiyat lied in being the first attempt to settle accounts with

the unique aesthetic and rhetorical structure of the traditional literature. Until this

work, those who dealt with literature had always evaluated it within the traditional

framework – what Tanpınar called as Arabic literature. Ekrem, on the other hand,

had broken this framework with Ta'lîm-i Edebiyat. Unlike previous periods, some of

the qualities that made Ta'lîm-i Edebiyat significant were that literature was taken as

a psychological phenomenon, style was considered as the highest point of

individuality, and prose was put on the agenda of literature (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 496).

One of the most prominent features of Ekrem in terms of post-Tanzimat

literature was that he was the first person of literature to deal with and theorize the

relationship between literature and fine arts, especially poetry (Parlatır, 2006, p.

292). Emphasizing that imitation of nature improved the poet, Ekrem also

established a relationship between poetry and painting in Takdir-i Elhân (Enginün,

2018, p. 491). The echoes of Ekrem's initiative would be seen in the poems of

Edebiyat-ı Cedide, which was highly influenced by arts such as painting and music.

According to Ekrem, the purpose of art was beauty that found its origin in

nature and appealed to the human spirit. The beauty in poetry, which he stated as one

of the two types of literature along with prose, consists of the combination of natural

beauty and abstract beauty that is formed by the combination of emotion, image and

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thought (Parlatır, 2006, p. 304). The beauty of nature –as one of the founding

elements of beauty in poetry– was a subject that Ekrem emphasized persistently. The

inclusion of nature in poetry in the context of beauty as an essential requirement that

endows art its artness was important in the sense that it was different from the

previous conception of poetry. Stressing that every beautiful thing in the universe,

from the smallest speck to the celestial bodies, could be the subject of poetry and that

it was unnecessary to take other things as an example while the true teacher was

nature, Ekrem asked in Takdir-i Elhan (1886) “Why should poets forget the world in

order to write poetry?” (Parlatır, 2006, p. 308). This question underlines what the

new poetry should consider. In the poetry before the Tanzimat, it was not possible to

talk about the teaching of nature, as external reality could never take part in the poem

by just itself.

In this respect, it is clear that Ekrem followed a different attitude from the

poets of previous generations who took the Divan poems as their guides rather than

nature, and whose aim was not to reflect the beauty in nature, but to use the literary

language better compared to their masters. They saw nature only as a means of

dexterity, and aimed to express the invisible rather than the visible world, and used

the visible as a metaphor for the invisible. They were the poets who tended to forget

the sensible world.

In Takdir-i Elhân, Ekrem stated that although literature has consequences

such as educating thoughts, clearing the conscience, embellishing morality,

enlightening the mind, its main purpose was to make new and unprecedented, rare

beauties that appeal to the eye visible. Ekrem said that the poem was not written to

teach a moral lesson, and he made a move that would make the poem change tracks

(Tanpınar, 1988, p. 498). The poem, which was envisaged to be written for the

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expression of political and social issues with Şinasi and Namık Kemal –who were

from the first generation of the Tanzimat– would begin to be evaluated within the

framework of the art for art’s sake with Ekrem (Enginün, 2018, p. 490). This attitude

would have its peak with the Edebiyat-ı Cedide generation, followed by Fecr-i Ati,

and was severely criticized by the authors of the National Literature movement,

another literary movement of the same period. In this sense, after the first generation

of the Tanzimat, the evaluation of poetry and literature in general which is identified

with the art for society’s sake approach would take place with the National Literature

movement after the Second Constitutional Monarchy.

This beauty and nature based art, which was sparked by Ekrem –partly as a

result of the oppressive structure of the political climate of the period, partly inspired

by the romanticism movement–was worth dwelling on the reflection of the artistic

attitude on the transformation process from contemplation to spectacle. With this

approach, the poet/author/artist, who turned his/her eyes to the individual, especially

himself/herself, rather than the problems of the society experienced a kind of

introversion/closure. The echoes of this experience were often heard in the poems.

The interesting point was that while the artist was closing in on himself/herself; there

was also an opening up towards the nature. However, this opening to nature was

mostly overshadowed by a kind of sadness (Enginün, 2018, p. 492).

Establishing a relationship between poetry and painting and emphasizing that

poetry should imitate nature, Ekrem claimed that when it comes to the language of

poetry, it should be separated from everyday language (Enginün, 2018, p. 498). In

this framework, the language of the poem did not have to be clear in terms of

meaning and expression. These ideas of Ekrem –which would be the source of a kind

of poetic language– are also remarkable in terms calling Divan poetry to mind.

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Ekrem, who recommended pursuing a content quite different from Divan poetry –

such as the beauty of nature and the feelings of the individual– seemed to be turning

back to tradition when it came to the language of poetry. As a matter of fact,

Tanpınar stated that Ekrem never left the old ways literally, and most of his poems

were old literature in blurred form. Ekrem, according to Tanpınar (1988), was a poet

who searched for the new in the old and was lost because he had changed his

trajectory (p. 479).

This might be due to the fact that a different poetic language has not yet been

formed in expressing what people see and experience as they are trying to look at

nature with their own eyes. It is possible to evaluate this dual structure as a kind of

anomaly in the transformation from contemplation to spectacle. In this sense, the

general picture of the post-Tanzimat period was not uniform. Although the

spectatorial way of seeing would dominate literature and art over time, the effects of

the contemplative way of seeing were not erased and continued to exist. Therefore, in

some writers and their works, it can be observed that these two ways of seeing came

side by side or overlapped. In this sense, some poets such as Recaizade Mahmut

Ekrem, Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan and Ahmet Haşim –at least formally- took refuge in

the narrative possibilities of the contemplative way of seeing that they were

accustomed to. Such examples did not prove that there was not any transformation

from contemplation to spectacle; but they showed that the transformation was not

linear and continuous. It is possible to liken the transformation observed in this

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process, with a concept taken from astronomy, to the retrograde motion47 of some

planets.

Ekrem published a selection of his poems that reminded of the past and

adhered to the tradition of Divan literature in his book Nağme-i Seher in 1871. In

these poems, in which his belief in God and the prophet was obvious, similar to Ziya

Pasha, the inadequacy of the reason in comprehending God and the incapacity of the

human being were underlined poems within this book display a kind of confusion

between individual emotions and mystical issues. Ekrem had also added prose

examples at the end of this book in which he talked about the promenades and the

feelings he felt in the face of nature (Parlatır, 2006, p. 323).

Influenced by Tarhan's pastoral poems, Ekrem also wrote poems in which he

included the details of nature and described rural life such as "Shepherd" (Çoban)

and "Description" (Tasvir) in Zemzeme I (1883). From the same book, poems such

as "Spring" (Bahar) and "Flower" (Çiçek), and another poem titled "Spring" (Bahar)

in Zemzeme II (1884), although nature was dealt with in some way, but it is clear that

nature cannot be handled properly in these works in the sense that Ekrem's

immersion in nature appeares to be shallow (Enginün, 2018, p. 492). Again, in the

poem "I Love So Much" (Pek Severim) in Zemzeme II, the admiration for the beauty

of nature, which owed its existence to the creative power of God, was expressed

(Parlatır, 2006, p. 332). Expressing his admiration for God's greatness and creative

power in "Tawhid" (Tevhid) in Zemzeme II, Ekrem stated that God’s greatness was a

47 Some planets may appear to move in the opposite direction from the perspective of an observer

looking from Earth, unlike other celestial bodies in the background. In contrast to this apparent situation,

which arises from the observer's position, the planet continues in its usual motion in its orbit. Therefore,

there is no real backward or reverse motion of the planet.

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mystery that the reason could not solve. The inadequacy of reason in this context, in

a sense, indicated the inability of the human being before God. Thus Ekrem, who

accepted the unknowingness of God through reason, was filled with God's love and

bowed before him (p. 337).

4.1.2.3 Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan

Abdulhak Hamit Tarhan (b.1852-1937) made similar attempts both in poetry

and in theatre as Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem did in poetry and Namık Kemal did in

prose. In Duhter-i Hindû, Tarhan’s attempts to establish a relationship between the

human being and nature through more concrete images and an exotic view of nature

are remarkable in this sense (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 274). However, Tarhan would show

the real transformative effect in the medium of poetry. According to literary historian

Mehmet Kaplan (2019a), the biggest revolution Tarhan made in Turkish literature

was “bringing the Western view of nature to Turkish poetry” (p. 310). Tarhan

developed a “universal view about nature”, especially in his first published poetry

book titled Sahra (1878). By making “nature a philosophical subject of thought,”

Tarhan turned it into a space where emotions were born and developed; so he

depicted “wide-horizon landscapes” (p. 311).

In Belde, which was published in 1885 but was written in Paris before the

Sahra, Tarhan had turned his eyes to the daily life and the city. He wrote about the

natural landscapes of Paris and the impressions of those landscapes left on himself

via the light of the moon, the chirping of the birds and the breeze. Poetry of Tarhan

had a great difference compared to Divan poetry in that it combined the outside

world and moods, expressed the effect of nature on people, and treats nature as a

subject of emotion rather than a means of decoration. Moreover Tarhan, who

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recorded the impressions created on him by nature, took a step towards

impressionism, albeit a simpler version of it. The main steps towards impressionism

would be taken by Ahmet Haşim two generations after Tarhan. In the poems in

Belde, the unadorned expression of the elements of nature through sensory data

corresponded to an important stage compared to Divan poetry (Kaplan, 2019a, p.

312).

Even though it is quite different from Divan poetry, what Tarhan saw when

he looked at nature was what is assumed to be beneath it rather than its external

appearance. In this regard, Tarhan was trying to pass into a metaphysical world, in a

manner, by transcending the physical one (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 103). The meaning that

Tarhan ascribed to the poet was almost like an oracle who turned to the invisible

rather than the visible. In this sense, Tarhan, whose mind scanned beyond the visible,

could hardly see the visible. Even in the Sahra, where nature was the main theme,

Tarhan kept the thought, which was not based on sense data, ahead of the object

(Kaplan, 2014, p. 39). However, Tarhan's metaphysical world was not identical with

the metaphysical world of Divan poetry. Being completely different from Divan

poetry, in Sahra, nature would cease to be a decoration and would become both a

philosophical and emotional entity. Rather than depictions of landscapes, dealing

with nature through the opposition between nature and civilization in a Rousseauian

manner was the most important aspect of the Sahra (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 316). There

was no such contrast in Divan poetry. It was partly a result of the spirit of the time.

For Tanpınar the genre of prose poem aims to capture the life and nature as

the product of a new view of nature in which people walk side by side with nature. A

genuine discovery had been made with the examples of prose poetry written by the

poets who jumped on every landscape with the joy of discovery (1988, p. 274).

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However, the relationship between mood and landscape, eye and imagination in the

Western sense was not fully formed. In Tanpınar's (1988) words, “this spectator

position in the face of nature”, which is a kind of admiration, would lead to a new

pantheism in which religious inspiration was felt intensely, especially in Ekrem's and

Hamit's poems. However, this new pantheism would be shaped around "the changing

quirks of the world", unlike a pantheism that "abolished the world in God" in Divan

poetry, which was fed by mysticism (p. 275).

The nature reflected in the poems of Tarhan and Ekrem was a part of the

sensible world that they "watched and viewed with religious admiration" (Kaplan,

2019a, p. 385). However, for them, the description was more than an end in itself; it

was a kind of a tool for expressing religious and philosophical feelings and thoughts.

This was what is meant by Tarhan's transition from physics to metaphysics. Ekrem,

on the other hand, had difficulty seeing the external reality as it is due to his

sentimentality. In this regard, both Tarhan and Ekrem looked at external reality

through a certain filter and could not see it as it is. The process of seeing nature quo

nature would actually began a generation later with Edebiyat-ı Cedide writers such as

Cenap Şahabettin and Tevfik Fikret who took place in the naturalist stage. Tarhan

and Ekrem, who were under the influence of the romantic understanding of poetry –

which was subjective, enthusiastic, and relatively careless– also prioritized the

expression of feelings and thoughts before language and form. In this sense, the

poems of Tarhan and Ekrem were intellectual and emotional; but also weak in form

(Kaplan, 2019a, pp. 385-388).

Contrary to the tradition of Divan poetry, which transformed poetry into a

riddle, a game, a show of dexterity through some secret relations (mazmuns)

established between words, the first generation of Tanzimat poets tried to make it an

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instructive and enlightening tool by saving it from this situation. The formalist

structure of Divan poetry based on mazmuns prevented it from communicating life

with all its reality. Moreover, this formalism was emphasized, sometimes at the

expense of content. This was the reason why the first generation of the Tanzimat

such as Şinasi and Namık Kemal made efforts to eliminate the mazmuns, which were

the most important elements of Divan poetry and to replace them with ideas. What

they wanted to do was to highlight the content against this strict formalism. Şinasi,

Namık Kemal and Ziya Pasha tried to put abstract and plain ideas on the agenda of

poetry. With the second generation of the Tanzimat, in Tarhan and Ekrem’s poems,

the importance of form was going to be further removed in order to express feelings

and thoughts (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 385).

Both the Divan poets, Tanzimat generation and Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets took

the sensible reality as the starting point in their works. However, the purpose of each

generation to deal with external reality was completely different. In Divan poetry,

thoughts were expressed with mazmuns. But in v poetry, the images created with

similes and metaphors took the place of mazmuns. Divan poets, who transformed the

visible world into a fairy tale through mazmuns, did not establish a relationship

between images and moods like the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Kaplan, 2019c, p.

216). For the Divan poet, external reality existed as it pointed to a pale reflection of a

truth beyond, a truth that the poet believed in. For the Tanzimat poet, external reality

was a means of educating and enlightening the society. Together with the poets of

the second generation and Edebiyat-ı Cedide, external reality became a means of

expressing oneself. Thus, this is how external reality as the expression of God

transformed into external reality as the expression of the human being.

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In this context, in the process from the religious stage to the metaphysical

stage and from there to the naturalist one, the way artists treated the external reality

of which nature was a part had completely changed. External reality, which was seen

as a manifestation of the existence and creative power of God at the religious stage,

would be the means of expression for the observing individual especially in the

naturalist stage. The process, which started with the discovery of the reason, would

open up to the discovery of the individual, through the discovery of nature. In this

process, landscape, which is a particular form of representing the nature, would play

a central role through its depictions in poems.

4.2 The Metaphysical Stage on the Visual Plane

4.2.1 Landscape in Murals

Referring to the nature scenes in the miniatures, Tansuğ (1999) stated that

there was a tradition of landscape painting in Turkish art before, but added that even

if they were made in a realistic style, these depictions could not go beyond the limits

of the abstract schematism that dominated the miniatures (p. 25). The extension of

the landscape depictions to the walls would pave the way for much more specific

searches. As a result of the social and cultural climate that started to emerge from the

beginning of the 18th century, the art of miniature would become more and more

influenced by Western painting techniques. With the establishment of the printing

press, which was one of the results of this new climate, the need for manuscripts

tended to decrease. The decline in interest in manuscript books would resonate with

the decline of interest in miniature art, leading to the prominence of different

painting genres.

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One of these genres was wall painting or murals. Another factor that played a

role in the emergence of the mural was the transformation experienced in both

architecture and interior architecture. The 18th and 19th centuries included the first

stage of the Westernization process in terms of architecture. In the second half of the

18th century, examples of Baroque and Rococo styles, which became widespread in

Europe from the 17th century, would begin to be seen in Istanbul, especially in

interior architecture. In this process, just like the transformation experienced in

miniatures, the decorations in the Baroque and Rococo styles would replace the

mostly floral motifs in the interiors. It was in such a context that the mural would

come to the fore, and among these ornaments, figureless landscapes, still life

compositions of flowers and fruits would be placed (Renda, 1980, pp. 50-51).

Although most of them are imaginary, since new techniques, subjects and styles

would be tried, these landscape compositions in wall paintings –which are thought to

reveal a new spirit of observation– correspond to a new stage in the development of

Turkish painting (Tansuğ, 1999, p. 93).

The first examples of wall paintings made in the 18th century, during Selim

III’s reign can be seen embedded within the Baroque and Rococo ornamentations on

the ceiling skirts of the harem room of the Topkapı Palace, the niches on the walls

and the upper part of the walls. Starting with the beginning of the 19th century, wall

paintings would be found outside the palace, in various mansions and seaside

residences. In the landscape compositions of these paintings, mansions, pavilions,

towered structures, gardens with fountains and other fountains would come to the

fore. More attention would be paid to the color tints, architectural details, and lightshadow

changes. A more scientific approach would take place towards the depth of

field and perspective. With the second half of the 19th century, landscape

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compositions with more complex perspective attempts would be seen in some wall

paintings (Renda, 1980, pp. 54-56).

4.2.2 Landscape in Canvas Painting

In the examples of landscape painting seen in the second half of the 19th

century, there is a different sensitivity similar to its counterparts in the West. In these

paintings, "the longing for a direct approach to nature for centuries" (Tansuğ, 1999,

p. 93) can be observed. In the Ottoman Empire, Ferik İbrahim Pasha (b. 1815) and

Ferik Tevfik Pasha (b. 1819) were the members of the First Generation of Soldier

Painters, who were one of the oldest representatives of landscape painting in the

Western sense and were born around 1820. Unfortunately their paintings did not

survive to our day (Erol, 1980, p. 106). The Second Generation of Soldier Painters

such as Eyüplü Cemal (b. 1836), Osman Nuri (b. 1839), Cihangirli Mustafa (b.

1840), Şeker Ahmet Pasha (b. 1841) and Süleyman Seyit (b. 1842), who were born

around 1840, were the first representatives of landscape painters in the Ottoman

Empire (Kılıç, 2010, p. 129). Turan Erol (1980) considered the painting Yıldız Sarayı

Bahçesinden [From Yıldız Palace Garden], the painter of which is unknown, and

Eyüplü Cemal's Çinili Köşk [Tiled Mansion] painting to be the first examples of the

19th century Ottoman landscape genre (p.111) (See Figure 3). Eyüplü Cemal's

painting titled Çinili Köşk is especially worth mentioning. In this work, it is possible

to see an example of the use of the landscape to strengthen the effect of depth, albeit

to a very limited extent. Erol (1980) stated that this painting, which reflected a

purified, sorted and even polished earth image, was not painted by direct observation

in the face of nature (p. 110).

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Figure 3: Eyüplü Cemal, “Çinili Köşk”, n.d.

Although the education they received played a great role in the orientation of

the first Turkish painters of military origin towards landscape painting, this was

undoubtedly not the only reason. Besides art education given in the military schools

and in some civilian institutions; the belief structure of the society, the artistic

activities of foreign painters in Istanbul and the state programs that provided art

education in Europe to talented students also contributed to the early Turkish

painters' preference towards landscape painting. Renda and Erol (1980) also

emphasized that the main purpose of the painting classes given in military schools

such as Mühendishane-i Berri-i Hümayun was military: “The young officers who

wanted to be trained according to European methods were to gain the ability to make

technical drawings, terrain sketches and 'Landscape sketches' related to military

service” (p. 86). According to Renda and Erol (1980), within the framework of

topographical and technical painting teaching, which gives great importance to

perspective and whose main subject is views of nature and pieces of land, and an

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interest in nature towards the open air and the land were integrated with each other

(p. 102).

4.2.3 The Effect of Photography on Painting

It is not inaccurate to say that photography, which came to Istanbul shortly

after its invention, had an impact on the first landscape painters, just as the writers of

the Edebiyat-ı Cedide period were influenced by the rapidly increasing number of

illustrated magazines. In the paintings made in the second half of the 19th century,

especially by the painters called Primitives [İptidai], the fact that Yıldız Palace,

Yıldız Mosque, fountains in the palace garden, pools and roads were often the

subject of the paintings because of the significance of the garden in Ottoman culture,

as well as the effects of photography that was felt in Istanbul at the time. In their

landscape paintings, with mansions, artificial lakes, ponds, lanterns, shady trees, and

lush gardens, painters such as Hasköylü Ahmet İhsan, Hilmi Kasımpaşalı, Ahmet

Bedri, Ahmet Ziya, displayed various items from the Yıldız Palace in a style

“sometimes a bit more dull, sometimes more lively and shivering” than the actual

scenery (Erol, 1980, p. 112). In particular, during the first years of canvas painting,

the painters frequently benefited from Yıldız Albums prepared by the order of

Abdülhamit II who was interested in photography (Demirsar Arlı, 2000, p. 121). As a

matter of fact, these painters made their paintings by making use of the photographs

taken by the Abdullah Brothers (Tansuğ, 1999, p. 85) (See Figure 4 and 5).

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Figure 4: Ahmet Ragıp, “Yıldız Sarayı Bahçesinden”, n.d., from (Sayın, 2015, p. 132)

Figure 5: Photograph by Abdullah Brothers, Yıldız Palace, from (Sayın, 2015, p. 132)

These painters, who achieved a "dimension of clear, calm and desolate

interpretation that would make the modern hyperrealists envious", benefited from

photography as Tansuğ (1999) stated: “It is seen that these artists do not use

photography to compose separate photographs together like Osman Hamdi, but they

use the composition in the photograph, mostly by stripping it from human figures

and other details, giving it a clear, calm, almost an imaginary interpretation of

atmosphere” (p. 87). So much so that “in these paintings, the sky is always blue as it

approaches the horizon, or is illuminated by thin white clouds, and the waters are a

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mirror reflecting this blueness […] Nothing moves, everything gets its fair share of

the same light source forever” (Erol, 1980, p. 112). According to Erol (1980), these

paintings were depictions of such an earth that there were neither different times of

the day nor different seasons. "Everything there seems to have fallen into an eternal

sleep in an indirect spring light" (p. 113). According to Tansuğ (1999), although it

cannot be said that these painters "forced their personalities towards stylistic

research", "continuing the old schematic tradition of Ottoman painting with readymade

photographic layouts" created "a duality of humor that was both very

innovative and very conventional" in terms of technical application (p. 88).

Pointing out the idea of contradiction between a sublime admiration for

nature and the image of an orderly garden fitted into the same picture frame, Mehmet

Ergüven (2007) talks about the indecision of 19th century Ottoman painters between

nature and landscape (p. 157). If there is indecision, this indecision should be

between the landscape and the photograph of the landscape, rather than between

nature and landscape. In this sense, these painters –contrary to what Ergüven

thought– did not believe that they were painting nature. What they actually painted

was a landscape previously packed into a photographic frame. There must be other

reasons for choosing the photograph as a model for such pictures, which should be

considered separately. The point that Ergüven wants to underline is that these

painters do not paint nature; their paintings were garden landscapes that were

disconnected from nature. In other words, since revealing the landscape of nature is

already an act of framing/limiting; Ergüven interprets creating a painting of the

garden, which is a part of nature that is already framed/limited and arranged by

human hands, as creating a second level of separation of nature from its essence.

There is no doubt a difference exists between the untouched nature and the man170

made garden in terms of man's regulative and transformative interventions. However,

it is open to debate whether such a separation between nature and garden was

assumed at that time. During that period, the Ottomans might have seen a continuity

between nature and the garden, just as they saw a continuity between a landscape and

its photograph. The difference between the human intervention between nature and

the garden was more evident in the Western understanding of nature and garden.

Zeynep Sayın (2015), probably departing from Tansuğ’s claims, also made an

interesting observation about the use of photography by some Ottoman painters of

the period. She stated that these painters benefited not from the outside world itself

but the photographs of the outside world as a model: “The Ottomans, who did not

hesitate to process matter as matter, adds an intermediary reality when they want to

evolve matter into form” (p. 128). “The paintings that take the photography as a

model are far from a naturalist illusionist technique and sometimes are not content

with a single focal point, they add small perspective shifts to the photographic image;

shift the border lines, play with the distance and proximity of the objects in the

picture space, change their smallness and size” (Sayın, 2015, p. 129). Moreover, the

light of these paintings was not “a light that penetrated the space from the outside

and settled in the painting space; it was a light that radiated outward from the

painting and illuminated the painting surface equally” (p. 129). In the final analysis,

Sayın says that the Ottomans designed nature and nature photography “as a

continuity that needs to be distanced” (p. 130).

At this point, Gombrich's distinction between the physical world and the

optical world is also noteworthy in that it offers a different perspective on the issue

of Ottoman painters taking photographs as models for their landscape paintings.

According to Gombrich (2015), the optical world is light reflected from the contents

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of the physical world, and although part of the physical world is a kind of extension,

it is subject to more rapid changes than the solid elements that compose it (p. 176).

Paintings and photographs, like mirrors, convey the appearance of the world's

changing side with light conditions. In this sense, paintings and photographs give

information about the optical world. But inevitably, the space of painting and

photography would be a more limited and a chosen space compared to the optical

world (pp. 176-177). It would not be wrong, in my opinion, to apply Gombrich's

distinction between the physical world and the optical world to the distinction

between nature and landscape (painting) which is a restricted view of nature. Here,

nature corresponds to the physical world; the landscape (painting) corresponds to the

optical world, constrained by the act of seeing. In this sense, Ottoman painters, who

made landscape paintings by taking photographs as models, were not painting the

physical world. They were painting an optical world as the photographer had

shot/framed it. The state of being still, calm, motionless and even lifeless, which

were said about the atmosphere in the paintings of these painters, might have been

the result of them being a description of the optical world.

4.2.4. Şeker Ahmet Pasha

It has been mentioned above that the Second Generation of Soldier Painters

born around 1840 had a similar experience to the writers belonging to the First

Generation of the Tanzimat, born in the same period. This experience was due to the

pressure created as a result of the confrontation of two different ways of seeing. The

situation Namık Kemal was in was summarized above, albeit roughly. His

contemporary, Şeker Ahmet Pasha's (b.1841–1907) painting titled Orman-Ormancı

[Forest-Forester] is very significant as it is a unique example of how two different

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ways of seeing come together on a visual plane –as John Berger (1991) emphasized

(See Figure 6). Based on Berger, Enis Batur (2015) states that this painting refers to

the ontological condition of the Westernization movement (p. 427).

Figure 6: Şeker Ahmet Pasha, “Orman-Ormancı”, n.d.

Within the scope of this study, the opposing ways of seeing that Berger

compares corresponds to the ways of seeing based on contemplation and spectacle.

However, these two ways of seeing were not the only characteristics in Şeker Ahmet

Pasha's painting. Two different conceptions of reality, two different perceptions of

time, two different conceptions of space, and –with the concepts of the German art

historian Wilhelm Worringer (1999, p. 69)– the acts of empathy and abstraction also

came across and merge into each other in Şeker Ahmet Pasha’s works.

John Berger claimed that at a first glance at Şeker Ahmet Pasha's painting,

one sees a Western-style landscape painting, an image of a forest from the preimpressionist

period. However, there is such a strange gravity in the painting that one

should not be hasty in making such a judgment. Berger (1991) argued that the reason

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for this strangeness had to do with perspective, specifically the relationship between

the forester with his mule in the lower left corner of the painting and the tree in the

upper right corner of the painting. According to Berger (1991), this tree that is

supposed to be at a faraway distance appears closer than any other element in the

painting, so that as it moves away, it also gets closer (p. 86). Comparing the size of

the trunk of the distant tree with the trunk of the forester, the size of its leaves with

the size of the leaves of the two trees in the foreground, Berger said that the light

hitting the distant tree brought it closer to us, but the two dark colored trees in the

foreground seem to lean away. The diagonal line that extends to the upper left corner

of the painting overlaps with the space that gives the painting the third dimension

creates a kind of an uncertain space by remaining on the surface of the painting.

Berger stated that all these elements were academically incorrect and would –under

normal circumstances– reduce the credibility of the painting (p. 87). Berger asked

two critical questions: Why is the painting so convincing? How did Şeker Ahmet

Pasha make this painting in this way? (Kahraman, 2013a, p. 100)

It is hard to think that Şeker Ahmet Pasha’s peculiar use of perspective was

originated from a “mistake” due to his lack of knowledge in the perspective

technique. Since the Pasha –with the support of Sultan Abdülaziz– was one of the

first students to be sent to Paris in 1862 to study art. In Paris, he also worked with

Gustave Boulanger who was also the teacher of Osman Hamdi Bey at that time. Then

he joined to the workshop of Jean-Léon Gérôme. Şeker Ahmet Pasha, who would

return to Istanbul in 1871, would introduce the French academic style of painting to

Istanbul and organize the first group exhibitions for Turkish artists in 1873 and 1875

in the city (Kahraman, 2013a, p. 101).

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About Berger’s question above, there was more to this painting besides the

issue of perspective. The answer lied in the feeling of attraction and fear created by

the forest, which caused one to see oneself in the forest: While you were walking

through the forest, you also saw the forest surrounding you as if you were looking at

yourself from the outside. What gives the painting its credibility is that it accurately

reflects the life of the forester (Kahraman, 2013, p.100).

About the question how Şeker Ahmet Pasha made this painting, Berger

(1991) said that Şeker Ahmet Pasha's imagination aimed to reconcile two opposing

ways of seeing. Accordingly, Şeker Ahmet Pasha was changing ontology, not a

technique; while telling the forester's story, he looked at the forest through the eyes

of the forester and saw the forest as an entity in its own right. According to Berger,

the presence of the forest was so overwhelming that Şeker Ahmet Pasha could not

maintain the distance that should have been between him and the forest (p. 90).

Şeker Ahmet Pasha must have had the opportunity to observe the forest from

inside on several occasions. Tansuğ (1999) mentioned that the artists who were sent

to France for art education not only worked from models in workshops, but also

made landscape works in the forests of Fontainebleau (p. 93). However, it would be

naive to think that this painting was done outdoors, directly in front of a forest

landscape, like some impressionist artists did. On the other hand, if Şeker Ahmet

Pasha participated in the landscape painting in the Fontainebleau forests or had other

opportunities to observe the forest, it was likely that he made some sketches and built

his painting later on these sketches. As a matter of fact, this attitude was an attitude

adopted by many painters before the tradition of painting outdoors. Tansuğ stated

that there was no indication that Şeker Ahmet Pasha might have used photographs in

his paintings, unlike the Primitives who painted using photographs (p. 90).

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Although Şeker Ahmet Pasha studied medicine and Western art in France, he

came from a tradition that "saw" nature or external reality as a manifestation of God.

Even if he used Western techniques to convey what he saw, the view he had was an

Eastern one. What he actually saw was different than what he looked at; what he saw

was what made him think and imagine. Similar to many intellectuals and artists of

his time, Şeker Ahmet Pasha seemed to be caught between two worldviews and two

ways of seeing based on these worldviews. On the one hand, there was a view

coming from the past; he tried to see the truth behind reality. On the other hand, there

was a view that should have been embraced due to the education he received and the

spirit of the era; it encouraged him to see things as they were. It was an unsettling

situation for an artist who had not established his relationship with reality on such a

plane; he had not dealt with external reality as such until then. This uneasiness

underlies the sense of attraction and fear that Berger (1991) speaks of stemming from

the forest. Şeker Ahmet Pasha was not inept in the face of nature or objects; he felt a

kind of uncanny uneasiness. This is an uncanniness created by what the new way of

seeing he was trying to appropriate showed him.

Under this sense of uncanny also lies Şeker Ahmet Pasha's adoption of nature

with an Eastern attitude. In this attitude, a completely different sensitivity, a sublime

idea is hidden. Ahmet Pasha was not trying to confine the forest onto the canvas and

to present it to the viewer’s sovereignty; he tried to be a part of nature, and moreover,

he tried to disappear in it. What is expected from the viewer is not a sense of

dominance and victory; but a kind of feeling of reverence and awe for what a forest

represents. This feeling, which stems from the magnificence and sublimity of the

forest, is not given with a naturalist understanding of representation. As a matter of

fact, the forester and the mule, which are the smallest elements of the painting even

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though they are closest to the audience, seem to have been deliberately added to the

composition with their current dimensions in order to confirm this grandeur and

sublimity. It is interesting that a similar attitude can be observed in traditional

Chinese landscape paintings. In the Chinese paintings the mountains are considered

sacred in accordance with the Taoist teaching and they are the largest and most

magnificent elements within the paintings. Other elements such as trees, horses and

humans are depicted in a way that they get smaller and smaller according to the

importance given to them. Underlying this attitude of both Chinese painters and

Şeker Ahmet Pasha lies the idea of hierarchical existence of the contemplative way

of seeing. It is possible to see the visual manifestation of this idea also in the

depictions of the miniature art, where the sultan is shown larger than other figures

and all the elements are arranged accordingly. In the Ottoman traditional miniatures,

objects or figures are represented in accordance to their social, political or

hierarchical positions. Here, what is conveyed through a subjective viewpoint is the

meaning [mâna], importance and values which these figures or objects have or are

thought to possess. The meaning or the value possessed by the figure/object is more

important than the physical beings of them in space (Kahraman, 2013a, p. 104).

Şeker Ahmet Pasha too wanted the convey the meaning behind the

appearance, i.e. the grandness of the forest and the feeling of awe it created in man,

though he realized this intention by the means of a western technique. The forester

and his donkey seem to affirm the magnitude and sublimity of the forest. Thus, the

proportions of the forester and trees were determined in consideration of this

intention, not by their relative positions in space. While telling the story of the

forester, Berger misses two points regarding Pasha's painting, at the point where he

said that Şeker Ahmet Pasha looked at the forest through the eyes of a forester and

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saw the forest as an entity on its own. First of all, Şeker Ahmet Pasha was not

looking at the forest just from the forester's eye; he was looking at the forest with the

eyes of a forester also. One of the different perspectives/points in the painting was

the forester's perspective. Another missed point that could be detected was the gaze

of the viewer that Berger spoke of. However, there were other aspects as well, and

each element of the painting seemed to have been drawn at different times and from

different angles; but they were brought together in a single composition. Therefore,

there was a gaze scattered over the entire surface of the painting, not determined by

the fixed position of the forester or the viewer. The gaze was as if disembodied, freed

from the spatiality and temporality of the body, and merged into the forest. In this

sense, the main subject of the story or the painting was not the forester, but the forest

itself with the emotions it created in people. Şeker Ahmet Pasha was trying to show

how the forest felt rather than how the forest looked from the eyes of the forester.

There is no distance problem as Berger stated, since Şeker Ahmet Pasha

paints an ideal forest, which he thinks/contemplates, from an idea (imagination),

rather than the forest he sees/spectates. Such a distance problem requires a fixed

spectator gaze, which the spectatorial way of seeing (temaşa) assumes. In the

contemplative way of seeing (tefekkür), such a view is not sought. Since the gaze is

disembodied, it is not in a certain position. The process experienced by the forest as

an object of contemplation almost converges to the self-view of the forest. As a

matter of fact, the existence of the diagonal line extending towards the upper left

corner of the painting, overlapping with the space that gives the painting its third

dimension, and creating a kind of spatial uncertainty by remaining on the surface of

the painting gives the impression that the painting is curling up on itself. The one

who contemplates seems to have disappeared into the forest; therefore, there is no

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such thing as distance anymore. In other words, Şeker Ahmet Pasha could not have

maintained his distance from the forest; because such a distance did not exist.

Between these two border states is the forester's gaze. It was this state that

manifested as "coming near the distance," as Berger (1991, p. 90) puts it in reference

to Heidegger.

In this sense, it is not the fixed gaze assumed by the single-point linear

perspective that forms the backbone of the contemplative way of seeing in Şeker

Ahmet Pasha's painting; there was a gaze on the surface that spread over the surface

of the painting by being at many points at the same time. This prevented a single

perspective from dominating the painting, creating an ambiguous situation.

This constantly moving view in Şeker Ahmet Pasha's painting brings to mind

the use of space in the Chinese landscape painting tradition. While discussing the

horizon issue in Şeker Ahmet Pasha's painting, Berger did not associate the multiple

gaze in Şeker Ahmet Pasha's painting with the multiple gaze in Chinese landscape

paintings, although he referred to an exhibition Şeker Ahmet Pasha visited in

London, which consists of examples of Chinese landscape painting. Despite the

fundamental differences between them, these two landscape-painting approaches,

both of which were the product of a contemplative way of seeing, have common

points in that they include multiple perspectives and a floating perspective

understanding.

Chinese landscape paintings, the earliest examples of which can be traced

back to the Tang Dynasty (618–907), are called shan shui, meaning "mountains and

water." Unlike the landscape paintings of the court painters of the period, who tried

to portray the visible world as realistically as possible, shan shui corresponded to the

landscape paintings made by scholar painters, who were heavily influenced by Taoist

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teachings. The aim of these paintings was not what the painter saw, for the sake of

the landscape (or nature); it was the painting of what he thought or felt in the face of

what he saw. Therefore, a realistic or naturalistic depiction of the visible was not

intended. (Siren, 1956, p. 62) As a matter of fact, what is seen in these pictures was

not the fragments of nature that actually exist in the visible world. It was a kind of

expression of the conceptual perception data accumulated in the imagination of

painters who watched nature throughout their lives. These landscape paintings

appealed to the mind rather than the eye of the beholder. What is in question was not

a window to nature; but it was an object for the mind (Maeda, 1970, p. 16).

In traditional shan shui paintings, unlike landscape paintings in the West,

instead of a perspective based on a specific and fixed point of view; three-distance

perspective, consisting of three different distance elements, high, deep and flat, has

been adopted. In this understanding, the distance (far/close) and size (big/small)

relations of objects are determined by fixing the point of view on the mountain,

which has a sacred place in Taoist teaching. Thus, while what is far is drawn at top

and what is near is drawn down; in the painting, where the biggest and most

magnificent element is the mountain, elements such as trees, horses and humans are

depicted in a way that gets smaller and smaller (Karatani, 2007, p. 32).

For this reason, it is seen that Guo Xi's painting Early Spring (1072) (See

Figure 7) which is an example of an understanding explained above, did not have a

consistent understanding of space, just like in the painting of Şeker Ahmet Pasha.

This is because a combination of perspectives are used based on different

viewpoints: One looking from the bottom up (the huge mountain in the central upper

part), another looking into the distance from a high point (the distant mountains in

the upper right), and another looking from the front to the back (the road in the

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middle left). The purpose of the painting's arrangement of the space in this way is to

create a dynamic viewing experience by encouraging the viewer's gaze to wander

through the painting. Since the ancient shan shui masters believed that all the

elements of nature were interconnected, they tried to present all the elements in their

paintings in a continuous flow. This has only been achieved by the constant change

of perspective. Thus, while the gaze is directed from the bottom up, it is also directed

from the foreground to the background. The main aim is to take the mind on a kind

of tour through the eyes (Law, 2011).

Figure 7. Guo Xi, Early Spring, 1072

On the visual plane, the metaphysical stage is where the landscape moves

from murals to canvas painting. In other words, this stage is where “the exit from the

garden and orchard of the Middle Ages to the wide and lively nature” (Tanpınar,

1988, p. 273) is experienced. In his Landscape into Art, Kenneth Clark (1984) argues

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that when the disturbing, vast and fearful nature creates dangerous thought in the

mind, “man may enclose a garden” (p. 8). But “outside the garden wall were

mountain and forest” (p. 10). These were the forest and mountain that Şeker Ahmet

Pasha would paint, emerging from the garden of the religious stage to the nature of

the metaphysical stage. This was the source of Şeker Ahmet Pasha's uneasiness and

uncertainty in the face of the landscape: Moving from the orderly garden bounded by

walls of the religious stage to the vast nature of the metaphysical stage. Pointing to

Şeker Ahmet Pasha's –probably– “Still Life with Quinces” painting, Tansuğ

interprets this situation as a strange hesitation between the studio and the plein air.

Şeker Ahmet Paşa's painting in question is remarkable in that it is a hybrid of

landscape and still life genres. Richard Leppert (2009) says that the still life genre is

about the relationship between the object world and the subject. In this respect, still

life reminds the subject of its own embodied existence in terms of its relationship

with the material world (pp. 67-68) (See Figure 8). In this context, it can be argued

that it was this new type of relationship with the material world that made Şeker

Ahmet Pasha hesitate between the studio and the plein air or between the still life

and the landscape.

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Figure 8: Şeker Ahmet Pasha, “Still Life with Quinces” n.d.

Hüseyin Zekai Pasha (b. 1860) can be considered among the painters who

heralded the naturalist stage following the metaphysical one. The difference between

the paths of Şeker Ahmet Pasha and the path in Zekai Pasha's “Yıldız Parkı” (1897)

is striking (See Figure 9 and 10). The path in Hüseyin Zeka Pasha's painting is not

seen through the forest; but it is viewed from an angle that commands the forest. Nor

does the light rise through the forest; but from the outside, it falls over the forest. The

light hitting the paths, especially the shadows of trees falling on it, is remarkable.

The light that would fall on the streets of Hoca Ali Rıza and Ahmet Ziya seems to be

born in this painting of Hüseyin Zeka Pasha. In these respects, Hüseyin Zeka Pasha's

painting seems more equipped than Şeker Ahmet Pasha's in terms of both linear and

atmospheric perspective. Presenting the sky with the clouds is like a harbinger of a

brand new relationship with nature in the naturalist stage.

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Figure 9: Hüseyin Zeka Pasha, “Yıldız Parkı”, 1897

Figure 10: Şeker Ahmet Pasha, “Forest”, 1894

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CHAPTER 5

NATURALIST STAGE: ADVENT OF THE SPECTATORIAL WAY OF SEEING

In the naturalist stage, which is the third stage, it is seen that the spectatorial

way of seeing comes to the fore. This stage is shaped around the picturesque attitude.

In the naturalist stage following the metaphysical one, the understanding of reality

(nature) which was seen as a pale shadow of the Truth, was gradually abandoned and

nature began to be regarded quo nature. The tension between the intellect and reason,

Truth and reality has shifted in favor of the latter. From an ontological point of view,

the Heraclitean understanding of becoming began to dominate from this stage on.

Nature would be grasped by the faculty of reason. This stage, in which subjectivity

slowly began to step in, has been shaped by writers and artists born roughly between

1860 and 1880. On the literary plane, the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Servet-i Fünun)

such as Tevfik Fikret (1867-1915) and Cenap Şahabettin (1870-1934); on the visual

plane, Third Generation Soldier Painters such as Hoca Ali Rıza (1864) can be given

as examples of these artists. The romantic attitude, which had taken the place of the

classical in the previous stage, would leave its place to a more naturalist attitude at

this stage.

5.1 The Transition from Poetry to Prose

In this period, when the transformations concerning both worldview and way

of seeing gained momentum, many formal transformations would be seen in different

art forms. On the one hand, while there was a transition from the traditional story to

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the novel; on the other hand, in the visual arts, a transition from miniature to wall

painting, and then to oil painting on canvas would be observed. As a result of the

transition from the contemplative way of seeing (tefekkur) to spectatorial (temaşa)

one, the shift from a more abstract and conceptual approach to a more concrete and

realistic approach was the common characteristic of all these transitions. Although

being less noticeable, the transition from poetry (verse) to prose as a manifestation of

the transformation in the way of seeing was considerably important. The relevance of

the transition from poetry to prose, which was a kind of meta-transition on the

literary plane, may be overlooked at first glance. However, with its six-hundred-yearlong

history, Divan poetry was the main literary genre of the contemplative way of

seeing in terms of being the literary result of the worldview and way of seeing

shaped by the Ottomans being an Eastern-Islamic civilization. On the other hand,

prose, which entered the Ottoman literary agenda via translated novels after the

Tanzimat, was the basic literary form of spectatorial way of seeing with its unique

history.

Before the examples of prose such as articles, plays, stories and novels, which

gradually flourished after the Tanzimat, the main literary medium that dominated

Turkish literature of the period was poetry (verse), especially Divan poetry. Rising

on a tradition of about six centuries, the Divan poetry, which emerged under the

influence of Arabic and Persian literatures, whose main measure was aruz prosody

[aruz ölçüsü] and whose face was completely turned to the East, was the product of a

completely different way of seeing when compared to prose which found its source

of inspiration in the West and was just recently being tried out in its Western form.

With their conversion to Islam, the Turks first came under the influence of

Arab and then the Persian culture. After a while, Arabic –which had a specific

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significance in terms of religion– would be the language of science. Persian, which

had a strong literary culture based on an ancient civilization, would be adopted as the

language of literature. During the Seljuk period, Persian would be accepted as the

official language; Turkish, which was constantly emphasized as a language that lacks

literature would be described as the “language of the common people” (Levend,

2018, pp. 627-628).

The incompatibility of Turkish with the aruz prosody taken from Persian

poetry had a great share in the fact that Turkish was considered to be inadequate in

terms of literature. Before converting to Islam, Turks used syllabic meter [hece

ölçüsü]. With the conversion to Islam, the aruz prosody, which the Persians took

from the Arabs but adopted to Persian, would be used (Levend, 2018, p. 637). In

parallel with the political, social and cultural developments that determined the

peculiar course of the Islamization of the Turks, Divan poetry was also shaped

around the aruz prosody, which was acquired from Persian, a language with very

different characteristics compared to Turkish. The difficulties experienced by the

poets who tried to use the aruz prosody in Turkish would cause the words in the

present language to be interfered with various other words to be taken from both

Persian and Arabic. As a result, a new language that was formed with the mixing of

Turkish, Persian and Arabic words would emerge and eventually would be called as

the Ottoman language. This language, as described by Tanpınar (2019), was the

language that Divan poetry established for itself in order to surpass Persian poetry (p.

128). During the establishment of this language, along with the words borrowed from

Persian and Arabic, both the image world and way of seeing belonging to those

cultures would also be adopted over time.

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Starting in the 15th century, with the contributions of Divan poets such as

Fuzuli, Şeyhî, Necati and especially Bakî, this language gained a literary quality.

However, the relationship between the language in question and the language spoken

by the people would gradually weaken so much that knowing Arabic and Persian

would not be enough to understand a text written in such a literary language. It

would be necessary to be aware of the knowledge and skills of that literary language

in question. In the 16th century, poets such as Mahremî and Nazmî, who had the aim

of a simpler poetic language containing more words from the daily spoken language,

had had an attempt called “Türkî-i basit” (Simple Turkish), but it was not effective

(Levend, 2018, p. 631). In the 17th century, poets such as Nefî and Yahya Efendi

tried to bring Turkish an aruz harmony by somehow harmonizing Turkish with the

aruz prosody (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 3). Even though, after the 18th century, with the

works of poets such as Fâzıl and Vâsıf, there was a tendency towards a relatively

simpler language, the current literary tradition would continue to exist until the

second half of the 19th century. As the transformation in the worldview and the way

of seeing made itself more apparent, the form and vocabulary of this literary

language would undergo an irreversible transformation (Andrews, 2009, p. 79) after

1860s. Considering the relationship between the transformation in the way of seeing

and the transformation in the language, this transformation process in the language

was in parallel with the transition process of the way of seeing from contemplation

(tefekkur) to spectacle (temaşa). This transformation started with the attempts of

simplification in the language by the members of the first generation of the Tanzimat

and continued with innovations in literary forms over time, and eventually reached

its peak with the pure Turkish movement in National Literature Movement.

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With the adoption of the Persian poetry both formally and with its imagery, a

literary language and tradition that could be called classical was established and it

created a new climate of taste (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 3). As a result of this newly

formed climate, Divan poetry, which initially had religious and mystical features,

gradually turned into a more lyrical kind of palace poetry which was previously

discussed in detail around Tanpınar’s palace metaphor. It is not surprising that a

similar transformation was observed in miniature art. Starting from the reign of

Mehmet the Conqueror, new subjects which finds its source of inspiration largely in

Persian miniatures, had been added to the Ottoman miniature (Renda & Erol, 1980 p.

24).

Due to the incompatibility of Turkish words with the aruz prosody, adding

Arabic and Persian words and expression patterns to the present language would

result in the adoption of the image system of those cultures, and therefore their

worldview, over time. This tradition, which would become stereotyped and classic in

about six centuries, would create its own strictly-rule-bound language, imagery and

way of seeing. Within the scope of this study, it was this way of seeing that the

expression of contemplative way of seeing corresponds.

In terms of having such a strong tradition and creating almost the entire

atmosphere in which the literary people of the period breathed, poetry was the

medium that was the last to be affected by the Westernization process that

accelerated with the Tanzimat and it showed the most resistance to it. In this respect,

within the scope of this study, poetry/verse (especially Divan poetry) is emphasized

as the literary medium in which the contemplative way of seeing is manifested; prose

(especially the novel) has been accepted as a medium in which the spectatorial way

of seeing was made visible. In the context of literature, the innovations and changes

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that have been aimed to be made in poetry since the first generation of the Tanzimat

can also been considered in order to show how two different ways of seeing, based

on contemplation and spectacle, came face to face, and how there was a

transformation from contemplation to spectacle.

Through the education they received, the foreign languages they learned, the

visits they made abroad, the contacts they established there, and the translated

materials the Ottoman intellectuals increasingly began to encounter the products of

the spectatorial way of seeing in different art forms. This, albeit indirectly, meant

that the Tanzimat intellectual had a brand new contact with both the external reality,

including life, nature and human beings, so that their literature gained a more social

content (Arslan, 2007, p. 1).

Students studying in schools such as Harbiye and Tıbbiye (Military and

Medical Schools), where European teachers taught, were learning a foreign language,

and they had the opportunity to come into contact with the worldview of foreign

cultures that were the product of that language. Even at the height of censorship,

different worldviews come face to face as the books published in Europe reach

students without being censored (Okay, 2010, p. 26). As an inevitable result of this

encounter, a new mechanism that questioned the past was slowly started to

materialize. According to Turkish literary historian Okay (2010), the

intellectual/philosophical knowledge acquired as a whole pile –not systematically–

from the West might have led to crossing between the boundaries of traditional and

dogmatic knowledge and paved the way for the rational evaluation of beliefs. In such

an environment, an individual could have felt the need to pass both his knowledge

and beliefs based on tradition through the filter of his/her mind, and in a sense, enter

into a kind of reckoning with himself/herself in his/her inner world (p. 26). It was

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inevitable that this would have transformative effects in the spheres of belief,

worldview and the way of seeing.

Realizing the possibility of looking at external reality, nature and people from

a completely different angle, with a brand new perspective, Tanzimat intellectuals

searched for a language and a medium in which they could express this new

experience. The dominant literary medium of the period up to that point was Divan

poetry which had a unique language, imagery and expression style. All these

elements of this poetry had been shaped by the way of seeing based on

contemplation. Therefore, the Tanzimat intellectual, who came into contact with the

spectatorial way of seeing, saw that s/he could not express this new experience with a

language, style and image world based on the contemplative way of seeing. In order

to express this new experience and reach the society through this expression, there

was a need for a new language and new styles. The prose genres that entered the

literary agenda with the newspapers, attempts to write novels, and attempts to bring

poetry closer to prose were all inevitable results of this need. The effect of the

transformation of seeing from contemplation to spectacle on the form of poetry,

which became highly visible especially in the period of Serveti-i Fünun, can be seen

in the emergence of prose poem [mensur şiir]. Many poems written for the paintings

published in the Servet-i Fünun magazine were in the genre of prose poem. Thus,

beginning with the second generation of Tanzimat literature, the form-based rigidity

of poetry began to weaken gradually (Özgül, 1997, p. 30). With the idea that every

word written in meter and rhyme does not have to be a poem and not every poem

should be written in meter and rhyme; Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem would make the

first move of writing prose poems, which was a new genre in Turkish literature with

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its most important examples given by the writers of Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Enginün,

2018, p. 493).

5.1.1 Transformation between Generations in the Context of Form and Content

It is also possible to summarize the transformation of way of seeing between

different generations in terms of form and content. What the first generation of

Tanzimat did first was to put a new content into the old form by partially changing

the choice of words and style. In the second generation, Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan

changed the form along with the content too. Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem, on the other

hand, created a content that was not very competent in terms of form. In this respect,

it can be said that Ekrem took the first steps of prose poem [mensur şiir] to flourish

during the Edebiyat-ı Cedide period. It could be said that it was with the poetry of

Edebiyat-ı Cedide generation a balance between content and form was obtained.

However, the attempt to simplify the language had not yet gained the desired

momentum. After 1908, the importance of social and political issues and the

convenience of the environment for discussion paved the way for handling content in

a simpler language close to the spoken language. While Ahmet Haşim broke away

from this tendency with his pure poetry [saf şiir] understanding, Yahya Kemal,

another poet of the period who also had the ideal of pure poetry, put forward a new

neo-classical attitude (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 244).

5.1.2 Transformation between Generations in the Context of the Simplification of

Language

When the transformation process between generations is evaluated in the

context of simplification in language, it is possible to say the following: The

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tendency towards the view of art for art’s sake –which was defended by Recaizade

Mahmut Ekrem and especially with Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan– was also evident in the

language, and the simplification process in the language that began with Şinasi and

continued to some extent with Namık Kemal, in a way, paused. The new language,

which was aimed to be created with the first steps taken by Şinasi to simplify the

language was the language of prose rather than poetry. It was primarily aimed at

revealing ideas. This new language would also form the dominant language of the

spectatorial way of seeing, which would gradually begin to emerge, and would give

its most competent examples in the novels of the Edebiyat-ı Cedide period.

On the other hand, the language of poetry would resist this search for a new

language and the transformation in the language of poetry would be only possible

after the Second Constitutional Monarchy. Compared to the first generation of

Tanzimat, which can be exemplified by Şinasi, Ziya Pasha and Namık Kemal, the

differences in the subjects of the writers of the second generation of the Tanzimat

such as Ekrem and Tarhan and the way they worked on them would, in a way, hinder

the efforts to simplify the language and caused them to use a past-oriented language.

In essence, the main difference was this: The language used by the first generation,

which aimed to educate and enlighten the people, tended to become simpler and

closer to the everyday language of the public. On the other hand, the second

generation moved away from the political and social issues, turned to the issues of art

and preferred to use the artistic language of the traditional literature rather than the

daily language. Still, they continued to make innovations in terms of both form and

content when compared to the traditional poetry. After this relative interruption

observed in the process of simplification in language the process would start to be

effective as by the Second Constitutional Monarchy, and the transformation process

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continued with Mehmet Emin Yurdakul, Mehmet Akif, Ziya Gökalp, Rıza Tevfik

and Yahya Kemal as these writers’ preferences were oriented towards the daily

language, i.e. Turkish. Kaplan (2019c) stated that this orientation was revolutionary

and the poems written with this thought from this period onwards would create a

completely different tradition, different from the poetry traditions of the previous

Tanzimat and Edebiyat-ı Cedide periods. This tradition, which was nourished with

folk poetry and spoken language, would be the main vein that would carry Turkish

poetry to present time (p. 244).

5.2 Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Servet-i Fünun) Generation

For the Divan poet –who focused on the meaning (mânâ) that he assumed to

be hidden behind the visible– the sensible world was a temporary dream. The true

world was the "invisible" one, i.e. the afterlife. For this reason, the Divan poet was

not content with dealing with objects as they appear. By making it a symbol (timsal),

the poet removed it from being a concrete object. Then, by abstracting it, he tried to

transform it into meaning. This thought of the poet was also the reason behind the

anthropomorphism, which was frequently seen in Divan poetry (Kaplan, 2014, p.

38). In addition to anthropomorphism; attempts to create allegory and metaphor such

as isolation, bracketing, and metaphorical substitution were other tools that serve to

this purpose. The interesting point is that the Divan poet too knew that the invisible

realm –which he thought somehow lied behind the visible world– could not be

expressed in any way. However, he did not refrain from the attempt to express it. As

a matter of fact, mazmuns created around similes, allegories and metaphors were also

created to realize this purpose. However, the formalist structure of Divan poetry

based on mazmuns made it difficult to reveal the reality of life as a whole. Rather

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than reflecting the sensible world as it is; the Divan poet's stylization tendency,

which created a kind of game or riddle between words, destroyed the visible integrity

of the visible world, removed the network of possible picturesque relations in it and

so could not present a complete picture (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 385). In this sense, the

result that emerged as a result of the act of stylization, even though the starting point

was the visible world, manifested itself in a very different way.

5.2.1 Different Approaches to Nature between the Old and the New

Unlike Divan poets, who look at the visible world and try to imagine the

invisible, the poets of the post-Tanzimat period try to reveal their mental world and

mood more and more through the visible world (Kaplan, 2014, p. 38). Due to the

different climates of the periods they live in, a kind of indecision, avoidance and

perhaps a lack of it appear in both approaches in presenting the visible world as it

seems. However, despite this similarity, there are some differences between the two

approaches in terms of how they conceptualize feelings and thoughts in the face of

visible reality.

In the first approach, as it is aimed to be revealed through Tanpınar's idea of

palace metaphor, the path chosen for the individual in the face of both God, the ruler

and the beloved is to surrender himself/herself to the other person. It is even a kind of

servitude ready to perish for this cause. This attitude of servitude has the justification

and means of going beyond the external reality, which is already despised and being

stuck in it will make it difficult to grasp the truth. However, the understanding of

human being envisaged by the second approach had begun to change, even though it

bears some traces from the first. This "new" person, who dares to look at reality with

his/her own reason and eyes, not through the mediation of any authority, will have

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difficulty in coping with and digesting what he/she sees, as they gradually move

away from the structure of thought that has the means of transcending reality and

being in touch with the beyond. This difficulty, the intensity of which would increase

gradually, would create a tendency for introversion in the post-Tanzimat intellectuals

as the political oppression was felt more and more every day.

As a result of the period they lived in, the education they received, the culture

they acquired, the writers of Edebiyat-ı Cedide or Servet-i Fünun would have a

different view than the writers of the previous periods. In the poetry of Edebiyat-ı

Cedide, aesthetic concerns based on sense experience would be more prominent than

the religious, political, social or metaphysical concerns of the previous generations.

A similar aesthetic concern will be maintained by Fecr-i Ati writers, especially

Ahmet Haşim, after the proclamation of the Second Constitutional Monarchy. On the

other hand, due to the political climate of the period, poets and writers, who

approached poetry on a political and social basis rather than aesthetically as in the

first generation of the Tanzimat, would emerge (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 416). Partly due to

the oppressive climate of the period, they tried to replace the indifferent reality of life

that they wanted to escape from, with the unique reality of art, which they saw as

both beautiful and sublime (p. 404).

The pessimistic and melancholic mood dominating the Edebiyat-ı Cedide

generation, which underlies this desire to escape, can be attributed, on the one hand,

to the pressure of the tyranny of the Abdülhamid era and, on the other hand, to the

loss of their faith in religion and history, unlike the Tanzimat generation. Due to the

political and social climate of the period, this generation, which became increasingly

withdrawn with a state of deep melancholy and pessimism, focused on the analysis

of personal moods rather than social issues (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 104). While the first

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generation of Tanzimat considered art as an educational tool to enlighten the society;

starting from the second generation of the Tanzimat, especially with Ekrem's

initiatives, the idea of art for art’s sake, which started to flourish and dealt with art on

a more aesthetic plan,48 would come to the fore. In this sense, in contrast to the

simpler and more abstract style of Tanzimat literature, Edebiyat-ı Cedide literary

style –which was loaded with images– had a more ornate and concrete appearance

(Kaplan, 2019c, p. 104-108).

The aesthetic concern of Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets also affected how they

handled the nature as a part of that external reality. Compared to the first two

generations of Tanzimat Literature that preceded them, Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets

looked at the sensible world, especially nature, with a different attention. As Yahya

Kemal Beyatlı (1997) puts it, the new writers embraced the outside world with all

their enthusiasm, where "the old ones did not have time to look" (p. 56). Contrary to

the religious or metaphysical meanings that Ekrem and Tarhan, –who are members

of the previous generation, i.e. second generation of the Tanzimat– found in nature;

the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide –especially by Cenap Şahabettin and Tevfik Fikret–

treated nature be as a physical entity that appeals to the senses. Rather than religious

or philosophical ideas expressed through nature, the main interest of v poets was the

nature itself with its different colors, shapes and mobility (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 103).

This attitude corresponded to a different stage in terms of transformation in the way

of seeing. Understanding nature in such a context would allow it to be gradually

isolated from its metaphysical meanings, which have roots in Divan poetry.

48 This trend, which would be continued by the writers of Fecr-i Ati, one of the movements that would

emerge after the Second Constitutional Monarchy, would be severely criticized by the authors of the

National Literature movement, which was also the product of the same period.

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The poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide, on the other hand, tended to deal with

nature's appearance on the surface rather than the supersensory realm assumed

behind it. They described sensible world they perceived with their senses, primarily

through seeing and hearing. For this reason, description would be one of the most

prominent features of the Edebiyat-ı Cedide period, both in poetry and prose. The

main difference between the approach of previous generations to the and the

approach of Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets to sensible world and nature, while the former

was more abstract and intellectual; the latter was more concrete since it was based on

the senses. This made the poetry of v richer, more distinct and more vivid in terms of

description. The poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide, in addition to looking at nature with a

different attention than previous generations, started to use the description as an

expression of their own feelings and moods (Kaplan, 2019b, p. 49).

When compared to Divan poetry, which reflects its existence in a dull and

stagnant way as if it is free from the temporality and change that makes it happen;

the poetry of Edebiyat-ı Cedide, which treats existence as a kind of totality, has made

a great progress in the transition from contemplative to spectatorial way of seeing.

With their approach towards the external reality not with heart or reason but through

senses Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets associated external reality with the personality and

mood of the poet. This was one of the most fundamental innovations that v poets

brought to literature, i.e. the external reality has begun to be taken as an sensory

object of spectacle, not as a mental object of contemplation. In other words, there are

two main differences between watching the universe/external reality in Edebiyat-ı

Cedide poetry and watching it in all previous literary periods. The first of these is the

projection of an external reality grasped through the senses; the second is the

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expression of the poet's moods during the reflection of the external reality in this

way.

5.2.2 Picturesque Attitude

Although there had been attempts to describe the sensible world in both

Divan poetry and post-Tanzimat poetry, these were both few in number and

relatively simple. To see examples of a picturesque attitude in the Western sense in

Turkish literature, it would be necessary to wait for the Edebiyat-ı Cedide period. A

consciously picturesque attitude that did not emerge depending on the worldview,

way of seeing and understanding of poetry of the previous periods entered the

Turkish literature together with the writers of Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Kaplan, 2014, p.

38).

The picturesque, a different/separate category from the prominent aesthetic

categories of the 18th century, the sublime and the beautiful, paved the way for artists

to turn to subjects that were not considered canonically beautiful or sublime.

According to William Gilpin, who came up with the idea of the picturesque in the

early 1780s, the picturesque corresponded to the kind of view that would be pleasant

if included in a painting. In this sense, an observer looking at a landscape with a

picturesque eye was trying to evaluate the landscape in terms of how a painter would

reflect it on the canvas. In this respect, the picturesque character of a landscape was

evaluated in terms of its compatibility with the paintings made by masters of

landscape painting such as Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin or Salvator Rosa. In

other words, the observer in front of a natural scenery was trying to find similar

compositions in nature in accordance with landscape compositions made by the

painters mentioned above. This is why people who were after picturesque views

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looked at these landscapes through Claude’s glass. According to Gilpin's

understanding of the picturesque, painting both determines and shapes how nature is

to be seen. In this sense, on the one hand picturesque is an aesthetic principle that

determines how the landscape will be represented; on the other hand, it is a way of

seeing (Di Palma, 2016, p. 61).

Comparing the first period of Tanzimat literature with Edebiyat-ı Cedide

period, where the picturesque approach was at its peak, Kaplan (2014) argues that if

Namık Kemal's description of nature is compared to Halid Ziya's, the difference

between them turns out to be as great and striking as the difference between a faint

and clumsy sketch and a painting (p. 39). In terms of adjectives expressing sense

experience, descriptive expressions seen in Namık Kemal's prose are not as rich as

Edebiyat-ı Cedide poetry. Moreover, concerning the landscape he observer, Namık

Kemal presented more blurred depictions because of his refrain from expressing

what he saw as he saw it or –perhaps– his inability to do so as Hasan Bülent

Kahraman puts it (2013, p. 106). Namık Kemal also applied various synthesis and

analogies in order to create some images in the mind of his reader; however, these

similes were fed by some abstract intellectual connotations rather than being more

concrete similes arising from sense experience (Kaplan, 2019b, p. 50). In this sense,

Namık Kemal continued to write under the influence of a contemplative way of

seeing, even though he triggered serious transformations in the way of seeing of

literary generations that followed him via his works, in which he made significant

innovations, compared to the imagery of the previous periods.

One of the main reasons for the prevalence of the picturesque attitude among

the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide was the increasing interaction with the illustrated

magazines, the number of which had been rising since the 1880s and the works of

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French literature which were dominated by a similar attitude. When compared with

their predecessors, Edebiyat-ı Cedide period poets –inspired by the realism

movement in prose, Parnasse style in poetry and by the increasing number of

illustrated magazines– tended to describe what they saw as they saw it (Kaplan,

2014, p. 39). In this sense, the intensification of contacts with Western literature on

the one hand, and the increasing visual content of the magazines published at that

time, on the other hand, had a decisive role in the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide

expressing their moods by appropriating nature through this more active and lively

understanding of description (Kaplan, 2019b, p. 51).

Since it was not possible to print pictures in Mecmua-i Fünun (1862), which

was the first regularly published Turkish magazine in the Ottoman Empire

(Nalcıoğlu, 2013, p. 139), paste photographs were used. The first illustrated

magazine would be Mir'at which started its publication life in 1863 and included

pictures printed with the lithography technique. It would be necessary to wait until

the 1880s before pictures of artistic value could be published in magazines. One of

these journals was Mir'at-i Alem Mecmuası, which was started to be published in

1884. One of the first examples of the poetry genre –which was described as a undertableau

or under-picture poetry based on the pictures published in the magazines and

had an important role in the transformation of the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide – could

be found in this magazine (Özgül, 1997, pp. 27-29). Servet-i Fünun magazine, which

is full of pictures and photographs, is one of the indicators of this intense interest in

painting at that time.

Just as the first canvas paintings in Western style were based on some

photographs, it can be seen that the painting had a formative effect in terms of style

and composition in the poems written about photographs and pictures published in

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magazines. The picturesque attitude brought to the poetic understanding of the period

by the poems written under the pictures where a nature whose vastness was confined

within a frame and which had more picturesque qualities was the main theme,

became the preparation of a more descriptive style of expression. Thus, the poet who

aimed at reflecting the external reality in a more detailed and vivid way tried to

describe what he saw in a somehow painterly way. In other words, in these poems, a

section of nature –that had already been described within a certain framework– was

also depicted with words. However, it cannot be said that the poet had direct contact

with nature in these poems. Rather the poet indirectly came into contact with nature

through pictures which the poet wrote about. Nevertheless, the poems written under

pictures had an important role in the poet's view of nature with a new eye or the

increasing place of nature in poetry (Özgül, 1997, p. 29-31).

In terms of revealing how the way of seeing is transformed in this period, the

formative relationship of poetry with other art forms, specifically painting, that goes

beyond the content is important. In this context, the first point to be emphasized is

that poetry had a more sensory quality and becomes more nourished by sense data.

This process was supported by searching for pictorial and musical elements in the

external reality (i.e. nature), which is the source of sense data. In this case, the

intense interest of the poets and writers of the period in painting and the fact that they

were influenced by Parnassian poets in France had an important role. The movement

of writing poems under pictures, which had many examples in the Servet-i Fünun

magazine, can be accepted as the starting point of the tendency of depiction in poetry

(Özgül, 1997, p. 30). The origin of this movement was the French Parnassian poetry.

The Parnassian school –named after the three-volume publication Le Parnasse

contemporain: recueil de vers nouveaux [Contemporary Parnassus: Collection of

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New Poems] inspired by Mount Parnassus, considered the home of the muses in

Greek mythology– gave direction to French poetry which was in the process of

transitioning from Romanticism to Symbolism between 1860 and 1880. Parnassian

poets, who were not indifferent to the Positivism movement which was very

influential in the intellectual climate of France since the 1850s, emphasized a

scientific approach in observing external realities by keeping a distance from the

overly emotional attitude of Romanticism that lacked a scientific point of view

(Whidden, 2007, pp. 19-22).

There were many common points which Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets shared with

their Parnassian counterparts. The importance they attached to form and composition

in poetry, their attitudes towards art for art’s sake, their view of art as an opportunity

of escapism from the oppressive environment, their critical attitude towards the

excessive emotionality of the previous generation and their difference from previous

generations in terms of considering nature at a more sensual level were some of

them. Just like the Parnassian poets, the Positivism –whose effects were just

beginning to be observed in the Ottoman Empire– also had an important role in the

new approaches of Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets towards nature, which also differed from

the previous generations.

It is important to note that the nature depicted in the works of Edebiyat-ı

Cedide poets was not the nature that the poet saw directly with his own eyes; but was

rather the nature that the poet saw indirectly through other works such as poetry,

painting, pictures or images. In this sense, the source of some of the views that

Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets described in their poems were the descriptions made by the

French romantics or the paintings presenting a pre-prepared view of nature in terms

of its colors, shapes, composition and perspective. Therefore, the poets of Edebiyat-ı

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Cedide could not create a natural landscape of their own. What remained for the poet

was to describe what he saw in paintings or pictures with words. In particular, this

was the main descriptive attitude beneath the poems written under pictures or

paintings in the magazines. While trying to describe the nature like a realistic painter,

Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets also tried to reveal his mood through the description.

However, when they tried to reflect their own moods by means of the landscapes

they tried to describe as they see it, landscapes were mostly gaining dream-like

appearances which were turning into a place of day-dreams [hülya] promising a kind

of happiness for the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Kaplan, 2019b, p. 55).

In an article published in Peyam-ı Sabah in 1928, Cenap Şahabettin –one of

the leading poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide generation– emphasized that previous

generations could not see that poetry is a painting depicted with words (Kaplan,

2019a, p. 386). For this reason, they could not achieve to limit the poems they wrote

by framing them like a painting. In this article, the relationship that Şahabettin

established between poetry and painting through words such as “plate”, “pictured”,

“limiting by framing” is remarkable. Here Şahabettin treats poetry as a painting made

of words and with definite borders. In terms of grasping how the way of seeing had

changed from one generation to another, it is important to see how the relationship

between poetry and other arts –which started to be established with Recaizade

Mahmut Ekrem of previous generation– reached a different point with Cenap

Şahabettin a generation later.

In the article titled “Tetebbuat-ı Edebiye”, which he wrote for the magazine

Servet-i Fünun in 1896, Şahabettin considers the change in language and style

through the changing feelings and thoughts. Here, Şahabettin stated that one should

search for new words, phrases, styles and images for the description of the newly

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discovered landscape (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 419). As a matter of fact, this is what he

himself did in the poems he wrote in the same period: finding brand new words,

phrases, styles and images to describe the external reality he saw with a new eye. In

another article published in the Servet-i Fünun magazine in 1925, Şahabettin argued

that while describing nature, the style must be defective, just like nature itself, by

having a playful syntax compromising the structure in order to break the monotony

and ensure diversity so that the endless change and diversity in life will be reflected

in the expression (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 419).

5.2.3 The Directive Effect of Painting on Literature

As a matter of fact, even though Divan poetry pushed these boundaries

several times, it could not be successful because contrary to the West, the Ottomans

were deprived of the guiding influence of visual arts such as painting and sculpture

on literature (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 273). Mehmet Akif Ersoy also complained of a

similar situation in his article titled Description, written in Sırat-ı Müstakim in 1912:

“The reason why our literature lags behind in terms of description can be attributed

to the absence of painting. Yes, if we had painting in the past, maybe our poets

would understand the value of the painting and try to write in this way, that is, as

they see” (Enginün & Kerman, 2011, p. 1058).

Appropriating nature and objects through imagination and the senses required

a certain experience that the disconnection between visual arts and literary arts,

which was not present in the West, prevented from occurring. On the other hand,

Western languages and literatures were in a sense trained by painting and sculpture,

especially at the beginning of the 19th century (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 275). One of

Tanpınar's main theses on the issue of describing the sensible world is based on the

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idea that art media such as painting and sculpture affect literature through language.

Tanpınar, who carried this process of influence back to Homer, states that the share

of painting in the development of prose especially in the 18th century is a subject that

must be evaluated. According to Tanpınar (2016), a culture expands as it transfers its

gains to separate techniques, and the only remaining attention becomes a

composition. Language is the largest mirror of this composition (p. 65). What is

meant by the techniques in this expression are different art mediums such as painting

and sculpture. The education that those channels demand from their artist paves the

way for orienting to the visible world with different attention. This composition of

different attentions finds its broadest reflection in the language by providing the

training of the mind. Tanpınar, in essence, points to the education of the mind in a

certain way with the relationship between technique-training-attention-language.

According to Tanpınar, writers who tried to produce examples of Westernstyle

stories and novels between the years 1870-1880, not only did they try to deal

with the outside world, but they also tried to deal with the human being and his/her

psychological condition in a different way than those before them. However, they

were unaware of the difficulty of the work they were undertaking. Such a new and

different narrative style, which differed from the old ones, required a different

contact with life in the first place. Therefore, the issue was tied to reflecting what

was gained from living, seeing and experiencing. The authors and poets, who lacked

this experience, would try to convey or adapt to the experience of the West, with

small and well-intentioned studies because

in the new era, literature conquered nature by pursuing painting. Sea,

mountain, forest, wide natural landscapes, animals, most of them start

in the painting first. Long before literary realism in the 19th century,

17th and 18th century artworks, and even 16th century "genre" paintings

–some Spanish– should be remembered. The painting criticism that

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started in the 18th century has had a big share in the enrichment of

French prose with the depictions of objects and daily life. While they

were describing the painting, they found the things, nature, even the

air, that is, the reflections of this movement around and on people who

talk, laugh, have fun, who are united by joint or opposite movements.

To understand this effect, it is sufficient to think that most of the great

French novelists criticized or were interested in painting (Tanpınar,

2016, p. 65).

In this sense, both the Western language and the mind –which expressed colors,

surrounding air, volumes, gestures, with the effect of painting– passed through the

training of the concrete. British landscapers had a share in the development of both

the English prose and the French novel in the sense that painting dragged prose

behind it by opening new horizons to it (Tanpınar, 2016, p. 66). The influence of

visual arts on literature was not confined with theWest. It was also the case in the

Ottoman culture, albeit in a different way. In this sense, art forms such as miniature

and calligraphy had their influences on Divan poetry. Tanpınar (1988) said “A

geometrical palette that is always ready to escape into abstraction helps literature” (p.

296). But this abstract attitude would not have been able to describe a scene in a few

lines, except for some stereotypical expressions, because it was devoid of the

relevant habit of seeing. This attitude was something that could only be attained

through the clear and sustained use of a technique (Tanpınar, 2016, p. 67).

The technique in Tanpınar's expression of "something that can only be

handled with the clear and continuous use of a technique" is a concept worth

emphasizing. That is to say, Tanpınar (1988) treats this concept as a kind of personal

work of an internal order (288). Highlighting the difference between the concept of

nev, which means "genre, type or form" and the concept of technique, Tanpınar said

that the first generation of Tanzimat authors did not adopt the Western novel as a

technique; but they tried to appropriate it as nev. It can be said that the traditions and

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forms to which the authors of the period belonged were different than the traditions

and forms on which Western novel or prose genres were based. Since it was not

possible to acquire these new and foreign traditions and forms at once, they turned to

the types (nevs), most fundamentally, the form. The association of the first products

given in the Western style in different branches of art with imitation was also due to

this situation. As a matter of fact, Tanpınar (2016) underlines that when evaluating

the Turkish novel, the first truth to be considered is that the emergence of the novel

in the Ottoman Empire was not a result of natural development, but it was a process

of abandoning a tradition and establishing a new one (p. 59).

When the development of the novel in Europe is examined, it is seen that the

emergence and development of the novel was one of the important results of the

transformation of worldview and way of seeing in Europe, which started with the

Renaissance. Novel as a genre was a form for a content that was the product of the

specific conditions (Arslan, 2007, p. 13). The Tanzimat writer, who would encounter

this literary form only after the Tanzimat, lacked not only form but also content. The

reason why the first novelists of post-Tanzimat literature seemed "unsuccessful"

when compared to their Western counterparts was not only that they had a very

different way of seeing; but they were also completely alien to such a protracted

historical transformation. Thus, it was not a matter of incompetence. Due to the way

of seeing they adopted, they had a completely different stance in the face of sensible

reality. This pushed the Tanzimat writers to imitate what they saw. The process,

which initially started with only the formal imitation of the novel genre, would

eventually involve the imitation of the content.

Therefore, in the course of Westernization, it was the form which was taken

from the West at first, because it was the easiest to be imitated. It would take a long

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time to establish the traditions that would create these forms, but Ottoman society of

that time had neither such time nor resources. It was centuries-old traditions that

determined these specific forms in the West. In the Ottoman Empire, it was hoped

that the new/Western forms that were imitated would create a new tradition while

breaking away from the existing tradition based on centuries. In other words,

Westernization meant the cultivation of a brand new cultural climate for the Ottoman

Empire, which required many years and great struggles. For this reason, forms that

were the manifestation of a certain historical and cultural climate in the West were

taken and almost tried to be "installed" in the current cultural climate. The main

expectation was that these Western forms would change the climate and, over time,

create a fresh one. But in this way, the natural process was literally reversed. In this

context, two different worldviews and the ways of seeing based on them came face to

face. While Western mind had been trained in concrete through the medium of

painting hand; the Ottoman mind had always been oriented towards the abstract by

virtue of art forms such as miniature, calligraphy and tile arts. To be expressed in the

lexicon of this dissertation, whereas the Western mind was designated by the way of

seeing based on spectacle; the Ottoman mind was shaped by the way of seeing based

on contemplation.

From the beginning of the 18th century, and especially in the middle of the

19th century, these two different –sometimes conflicting– ways of seeing would clash

and sometimes overlap. During this process, the internal unrest and even a crisis

[buhran] arising from the conflict and the hope of finding a synthesis that could

reconcile these two different attitudes would be experienced side by side. Divan

literature, which was introverted rather than external, had a way of thinking and

feeling that tended to contemplation and abstraction. In the process after the

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Tanzimat, it was desired to create a more concrete and realistic conception of

literature that tried to move away from this approach of the old literature as much as

possible (Arslan, 2007, p. xi). However, the traditional and ingrained structure of the

old way of seeing in minds would show a strong resistance to these attempts, which

would eventually result in conflict. In the background of the transformation of

contemplative way of seeing into the spectatorial one, many different transformations

and transitions –some more visible and some more invisible– have taken place. The

diversity of this background shows that the transformation experienced in the way of

seeing was a multifaceted and complex. The institutional transformation that took

place before and during the Tanzimat period was also reflected in educational

institutions, and the emphasis on foreign language learning (especially French),

different Western cultures and lifestyles also increased the contact. This contact,

which intensified with students and bureaucrats who were sent abroad for education,

would manifest its results in the field of literature in the form of being introduced to

new media such as newspaper articles, theater plays, stories and novels through

translations, and then produced similar products.

5.2.4 Cenap Şahabettin

In terms of regarding and describing nature in poetry in a different way from

previous generations, Cenap Şahabettin prioritized Tevfik Fikret. The first poem

written by Cenap Şahabettin with such an attitude was the poem “Deciding on

Requests [Tayin-i Metalib] published in Hazine-i Fünun in 1895. Şahabettin's this

poem is very important in terms of revealing the main lines of the view of nature that

dominates the poetry of Edebiyat-ı Cedide for the first time. With this poem, in

which Şahabettin tried to establish a close relationship between nature and spirit,

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nature was no longer considered a dead landscape; but expressed as a concrete

manifestation of the spirit of the universe [ruh-i kâinat] that permeates the entire

universe. Thus, on the one hand, the nature was revealed with its own spirit and on

the other hand, it became a home to the different moods of the poet (Kaplan, 2019b,

p. 52). Cenap Şahabettin believed that the universe and nature –as a part of the

universe– had a spirit, and he aimed to establish a bond between the human being

and nature through this spirit. Şehabettin tried to bring a kind of vitality to the objects

by making use of all the opportunities that nature offered him (Koçakoğlu, 2017, p.

103).

The content of Şahabettin's 1897 poem “Winter Tunes” [Elhân-ı Şita] is

composed of the description of a snowfall. In contrast to the static appearance of

winter in Divan poetry; in “Winter Tunes” winter takes on a dynamical appearance

associated with both sound and music. Seeing a musical quality in snowfall, Cenap

Şahabettin tried to imitate this musical quality of snow. As a matter of fact, the name

of the poem also summarizes this attempt. Thus, a content that blends musical

impressions with both picturesque and psychological impressions emerged (Kaplan,

2019c, p. 104). Şahabettin, who established a groundbreaking relationship between

poetry and painting with the influence of Parnassian poets, also tried to write poems

emulating music by establishing a relationship between poetry and music (sound)

with the influence of French symbolists (Kaplan, 2019a, p. 491). In this context,

Şahabettin –who considered the external reality like a painting in some of his poems–

also listened to it like an orchestra in some of his poems (p. 411). According to

Kaplan, Cenap Şahabettin thought that there was a spirit in nature, which was similar

to the human spirit and tried to express this in a way that it could be seen with his

poems (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 103). Şahabettin did this by attributing human actions,

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movements, feelings and thoughts to nature (p. 216). Although examples of the

anthropomorphic approach to nature are also seen in Divan poetry, Şahabettin’s

difference from them is that he wanted to express the spirit of the universe by

connecting his images to psychological themes. So in his poems where Cenap

Şahabettin regarded the seasons in an almost anthropomorphic quality and enlivened

them with human attitudes and movements, the main concern is to reflect the mood

of the poet.

5.2.5 Tevfik Fikret

Tevfik Fikret was another Edebiyat-ı Cedide poet whose traces of picturesque

attitude are frequently seen in his poems. It was inevitable that the imagination of

Fikret, would be influenced by his experience as a painter. According to Kaplan,

during his stay in France, Cenap Şahabettin formed a kind of theory about

descriptive poetry with the examples he obtained from Western, especially French,

poets. In this respect, he was Şahabettin who drew Tevfik Fikret along with other

Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets in this direction of Şahabettin, who put forward a much

closer profile to the Parnassian school than Fikret and showed great mastery in nature

descriptions, made painting the main purpose of his poetry. According to Kaplan,

without Şahabettin’s persistent attempts in this direction, Turkish poetry would not

have easily acquired the skill of description, which is one of the basic elements of

Western poetry (Kaplan, 2019a, pp. 386-388). Kaplan's thoughts above are

remarkable in terms of revealing what kind of a transformation there was in his

understanding of poetry and his way of seeing, together with Şahabettin and Fikret.

In terms of revealing what kind of a transformation there had been in both the

understanding of poetry and the way of seeing of the poets of Edebiyat-ı Cedide,

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especially Şahabettin and Fikret, Kaplan's thoughts above are noteworthy. Poetry,

which was mostly under the influence of contemplative way of seeing until the

period of Edebiyat-ı Cedide, began to come under the influence of spectatorial way

of seeing under the leadership of poets such as Şahabettin and Fikret. The most

important reason for this transition is undoubtedly that poetry has begun to be

influenced by a different art medium such as painting. In this period, Turkish poetry

was not only affected by painting; also inspired by music; but the effect of painting,

which is almost an embodiment of the spectatorial way of seeing, had been much

more decisive in the course of the poem. In terms of being based on a tradition of

about six centuries like Divan poetry, Turkish poetry of the period was the art form

in which the contemplative way of seeing was most visible among other art forms.

On the other hand, canvas painting, an art form acquired from the West, was almost a

manifestation of the spectatorial way of seeing. The interaction of two art forms,

shaped by completely different ways of seeing, transformed the way of seeing that

dominates poetry.

According to Kaplan, poets such as Namık Kemal and Abdülhak Hamit had

distorted the external reality in their poems and it was Tevfik Fikret who restored the

external reality into its natural color, size and form. Constructing his poems as if he

was making a painting, Fikret's starting point is not mazmuns or ideas; but images

and imagination. In other words, in Fikret’s poems, the idea is shaped by following

the description or around that description. In this sense, in many of Fikret's poems

such as “The Lighthouse” [Fener], “The Evening” [Akşam] and “The Fog” [Sis],

feelings and thoughts were given after the description of a landscape (Kaplan, 2014,

p. 41). The change in describing external reality, which Kaplan mentions while

comparing Namık Kemal, Hamit and Fikret can be interpreted in the context of the

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transition from the metaphysical stage to the naturalist stage, which is put forward

within the scope of this study. While the metaphysical attitude of Namık Kemal and

Hamit caused the external reality to be distorted while being depicted in poetry;

Fikret’s picturesque attitude enabled the external reality to be presented as naturally

as possible. The change in attitude experienced during the transition from the

metaphysical stage to the naturalist stage can be interpreted as the replacement of the

metaphysical attitude with the picturesque one. This change of attitude and the

transformation from contemplative to spectatorial way of seeing were two parallel

processes. Fikret’s imagination –which was trained and shaped by painting– played a

big part in his picturesque attitude. In this respect, Fikret would take the relationship

between literature and painting, which his teacher Ekrem had traced theoretically in

Zemzeme III, to the next level by revealing how painting affected literature with the

poems he wrote himself (Tanpınar, 1988, p. 498).

Parallel to the transition from metaphysical stage to the naturalist stage in

literature from Namık Kemal to Tevfik Fikret, there was a similar transformation in

painting from the tradition of the Primitives to Hoca Ali Rıza. Şeker Ahmet Paşa,

born in 1841, who was among the second generation military painters, was almost

the same age as Namık Kemal. Both of them produced works in the period which

called the metaphysical stage within the scope of this study. In this respect, in terms

of his landscape paintings, Şeker Ahmet Paşa experienced ambivalences similar to to

those experienced by Namık Kemal in the face of nature. With its poets and painters,

this generation, born around 1840 and coinciding with the metaphysical stage,

produced artworks at a time when the contemplative and spectatorial ways of seeing

faced each other and tried to dominate one another. In the naturalist stage where the

next generation poets and artists who were born in the 1860s such as Tevfik Fikret

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(b. 1867) and Hoca Ali Rıza (b. 1864) produced artworks, it would be observed that

the contemplative way of seeing was gradually replaced with the spectatorial one.

The picturesque attitude seen in both Tevfik Fikret and Hoca Ali Rıza was one of the

most obvious manifestations of this situation.

5.3 Naturalist Stage on the Visual Plane: The Case of Hoca Ali Rıza

Tansuğ (1999) speaks of the Third Generation of Soldier Painters, including

names such as Hoca Ali Rıza, Halil Pasha, Ömer Adil and Ahmet Ziya Akbulut, as

artists who started to enjoy the daylight in the open air by getting in close contact

with nature (p. 96). In this sense, Tansuğ, who specifically refers to Hoca Ali Rıza

(1858-1930), described him as the period’s greatest hero of Turkish painting who

faced nature (p. 99). Malik Aksel (2011) also refers to the period when Hoca Ali

Rıza and his contemporaries, whom he said brought the love of nature to the country,

were at a period of transition from miniature to canvas painting. Yet, according to

Aksel the traces of miniatures were seen in the paintings, and the old traditions had

not disappeared yet (Aksel, 2016, p. 174). In this respect, Aksel (2016) describes the

landscape paintings made by Hoca Ali Rıza and his contemporaries as works full of

peace and serenity, in terms of both form and content, where even the birds do not

fly in the air (p. 190). In these paintings made in a "bright, spacious, heartwarming

atmosphere", "nature and things were brought into order like a script […] not a trace

of pretense, pretentiousness, or arrogance could be found." (p. 174) Aksel stated that

sometimes a few imaginary landscapes were brought together in these landscapes

called Tabiat-ı sakine [serene nature] and compositions were created with

imagination/idea and nature was revealed with all its poetry (p. 190). Turan Erol also

stated that Hoca Ali Rıza had developed a type of landscape based on a sincere and

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inexhaustible love of nature, and "was trying to appropriate nature into the world of

painting with a loving and humble approach" (Renda & Erol, 1980, p. 143) (See

Figure 11).

Figure 11: Hoca Ali Rıza, “Çengelköy”, n.d.

The similarities between Hoca Ali Rıza and the English painter John

Constable (1776-1837) are striking in terms of painting outdoors, ascribing a kind of

spirituality to nature, and adopting a humble and optimistic attitude towards nature.

For Constable, who believes that there is something full of divinity in trees, flowers,

meadows and mountains, nature is the most obvious manifestation of God's will.

Nature, if contemplated faithfully enough, will reveal its moral and spiritual

qualities. In this respect, Constable, who sees landscape painting as an expression of

spirituality, tries to reveal the moral and spiritual quality hidden in nature with his

paintings. Underlying Constable's approach to nature is how the mechanistic

universe understanding of the 18th century transformed the view of nature (Clark,

1984, p. 78). It can be said that the approach of the Barbizon School painters, who

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were highly influenced by Constable49, was romantic towards nature. It is possible

that Hoca Ali Rıza, might have tended to make the spiritual aspect of nature visible

with his naturalist understanding in accordance with the worldview transformation

that accelerated during the era he lived in, similar to Constable, who tried to reveal

the spirituality that he thought was hidden in nature with his unique naturalism, in the

face of the increasing mechanization of nature.

A. Kemal Emin's article titled "Nature", published in the Istanbul Painters

Society newspaper in 1911, may provide a clue as to how nature was viewed at that

time. In the article the author claims; “the artist sees nature as a manifestation of

creation that reveals innumerable beauties, and therefore states that nature is the most

competent teacher of fine arts” (Öndin, 2000, n.d.). As a matter of fact, it is said that

this approach, which names the real teacher as nature, was also frequently expressed

by Hoca Ali Rıza. The artist, who made pochades (plein-air oil sketches) and

drawings in the open air in order to depict the views of Istanbul at different times of

the day with the color effects that emerge as a result of the change of light, often

emphasized the importance of painting in the open air and that nature was the most

important teacher (Pehlivan, 2018, p. 151). Hoca Ali Rıza, who made imaginary

paintings from time to time in addition to his outdoor landscape paintings, also stated

that these works were different from others by adding the phrase "from the idea" next

to his signature (Aksel, 2016, p. 175). This emphasis of Hoca Ali Rıza is important in

terms of revealing the difference between the works he made directly from nature

49 The Barbizon School is a group of French landscape painters such as Theodore Rousseau, Jean

François Millet, Narcisse Diaz, Charles François Daubigny, who settled in the village of Barbizon

near the Fontainebleau Forest in the second half of the 19th century. See, John William Mollett, The

Painters of Barbizon, N.Y.,Scribner and Wolford, London, 1980

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and the paintings he created from his imagination. Considering the central position of

imagination in contemplative vision, the role of Hoca Ali Rıza in the transformation

to spectatorial vision will be better understood.

Due to the more prominent plays of shadow and light, some of his works are

interpreted as impressionist just like some of the paintings of his contemporary Halil

Pasha (Baytar, 2017, p. 292; Pehlivan, 2018, p. 150), Hoca Ali Rıza's style, which is

based on a strong understanding of pattern rather than color, is closer to naturalism

than to impressionism. The naturalism mentioned here has also been interpreted by

some art historians as a kind of realism (Baytar, 2017, p. 292). In this context,

Tansuğ (1999) emphasized Hoca Ali Rıza's "realization" of the objective appearance

in nature as a pictorial phenomenon, by saying that the artist created a soft light

atmosphere with a solid understanding of drawings and a fresh feeling (p. 99). Hoca

Ali Rıza, who said that his profession was landscape painting (Derman, 1989, p.

439), had not received any painting education in Europe, like some of his

contemporaries, but he had taken painting lessons from Süleyman Seyyid and

Monsieur Quez in addition to the art education he received from Osman Nuri Pasha

at Kuleli Military High School, which he was admitted in 1879. It can be said that

such a background has a share in his naturalistic approach to painting (Baytar, 2017,

p. 292).

To fully understand Hoca Ali Rıza’s approach to painting, his use of light

also provides clues. Clark (1984) says that facts were lovingly transformed into art.

Bringing the facts together to a higher level of reality, this embracing love was

expressed with light in landscape paintings. The presence of intense light in Hoca Ali

Rıza's landscapes is also a manifestation of this embracing love underlying a deep

humility. In this respect, in Hoca Ali Rıza's paintings, houses and streets seem to be

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bathed in an intense midday sun. With the warm colors and soft brush strokes he

uses, Hoca Ali Rıza's paintings convey a calm, peaceful and sincere atmosphere.

Mehmet Ergüven (2007), who looked at Hoca Ali Rıza's attitude towards

nature –especially his optimism towards nature- from a different perspective, with

the idea of locus terribilis, which he associated with the romantic art movement,

criticized the artist's paintings by saying that "it is not a corner from nature, but a

panel of positivity" (p. 160). Trying to present nature as a locus terribilis –as if it

were compulsory– Ergüven refers to Hoca Ali Rıza’s landscapes as, "it is not a

corner from nature" it is "an artificial paradise free from any friction". However,

Ergüven is ignoring that what Hoca Ali Rıza is after may in fact be a locus amoenus.

With reference to Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Ergüven associates the

idea of locus terribilis, "a place full of fear and violence", with romanticism. Yet in

this context the situation is a little different. Although romantic artists and thinkers

have brought the idea of seclusion in nature to the forefront specifically, the

association of nature with the idea of locus terribilis is related more to Enlightenment

than romanticism. As a matter of fact, Hans Rudnick (2013), who examined the

handling of the human-nature relationship in literature through the concept of locus

amoenus, which means "a pleasant place that gives happiness and peace" in Latin,

stated that the understanding of the concept of remoteness had changed from the 17th

century to the 19th century. Accordingly, in the 17th century, distance, which was

more associated with danger and fear, came to be regarded as more attractive and

inspiring in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the 18th century, when the

Enlightenment gradually increased its influence, the human being, who was

gradually losing his/her relationship with nature surrounded by the mystery of the

sacred, tried to find solace in reason. When viewed from the point of view of the

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Enlightenment, it is seen that the issue of interfering with nature is approached more

cautiously (Rudnick, 2013, p. 30) . Rudnick stated that the image of a forest, rocks or

mountains, which provide a setting for distance and seclusion, was associated with

the idea of locus terribilis, which was opposite of the idea of locus amoenus, in this

period (p. 29). Romantics, who would engage in a fierce struggle with

Enlightenment ideals, would mingle more with nature, especially by turning to the

mountains.

In the romantic understanding of nature, which is based on the contrast of

how small the human being is compared with the grandeur of nature, it is thought

that behind everything existing in nature is God, who is an eternal unity. Unlike the

Enlightenment, reason is taken as the inner manifestation of this unity. The external

manifestation of the unity is accepted as nature. Landscape painting, which is a

product of the creative abilities of the human reason (spirit), is the reflection of

nature, which is the external manifestation of this divinely clear unity, on the canvas

(Gustav, 1998, p. 103). It is this point of view that underlies the sentimentality and

modesty seen in the paintings of artists who dwell on such an understanding (Clark,

1984, p. 84). Perhaps nature, into which the Romantics increasingly got engaged

with or flee, is not exactly a locus amoenus; but it is not a locus terribilis either. In

this context, the point that should be emphasized the most is whether a piece of

nature is a kind of locus amoenus or locus terribilis depends the mood of the person

in it. According to the fluctuations of the mood of the person, nature can make

transitions between these two loci.

As a matter of fact, locus amoenus, in general terms as assumed in Western

literature; in terms of being a peaceful, ideal place where elements such as trees,

grass and water are centrally located, giving a sense of security and harmony, bears

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similarities with the understanding of paradise in Islam and the garden in the

Ottoman Empire. As it will be explained shortly, Üsküdar, which is also the

birthplace of Hoca Ali Rıza, is a locus amoenus for the artist as it is the reference of

many of his paintings. However, at this point, it is appropriate to underline an

important distinction: Both the neo-classical nature that is based on the intellectual

infrastructure of the Enlightenment, and the reflection of the romantic understanding

of nature, which can be read as an anti-Enlightenment in a sense, in painting, are

idealized natures. Even if it is possible to say that nature may be a kind of locus

amoenus for Hoca Ali Rıza, the nature depicted in his paintings is not idealized; it

should be noted that it is depicted in a very naturalistic (realist) style.

Ergüven (2007) expects Hoca Ali Rıza to come to terms with nature, which

he positions as a locus terribilis, but Hoca Ali Rıza had not made such an attempt.

Moreover, Hoca’s approach to nature with a kind of respect and kindness by

depicting nature as a locus amoenus was interpreted by Ergüven as Hoca Ali Rıza’s

inability to shift from being a "servant" to being an "individual" (p. 163). Both

Chinese scholars-painters who adhere to Taoist teachings and the first landscape

painters of the Ottoman Empire, who were shaped by the Islamic worldview, tried to

"retreat" (p. 162). This act of retreat actually corresponds to a withdrawal of the self

[ego, soul], or at least an attempt to draw back. To the extent that the self can be

pulled back, the difference between the "hereness of the body" and the concrete

"there of space" will disappear, and a state of oneness/unification with nature, the

universe, Tao or God will be possible. This is how the eastern (Far East and Islamic)

traditions eliminate the tragic issues of the individual, to which Ergüven constantly

refers. The cause of the tragedy is the creation of a being outside and separate from

the ego by being imprisoned in the here and now through the body, and the

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separation of the ego from the whole. The eastern artist tries to pull back his/her self,

to destroy it at the border point, trying to prevent the tragedy before it happens. In

this respect, Hoca Ali Rıza was neither in a reckoning with nature, nor did he aim to

reflect his own mood on the landscape he paints. By “pulling himself back” as much

as possible, Hoca Ali Rıza tried to show what kind of a mood/atmosphere the

landscape had as he was thinking and contemplating rather than watching or

spectating. Therefore, what dominates here is actually an abstractionist attitude rather

than an empathetic attitude.

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CHAPTER 6

IMPRESSIONIST STAGE: THE BIRTH OF A NOVEL GAZE

In religious and metaphysical stages, the external reality is regarded in

relation to the Truth which is thought to be beyond it. But in the impressionist stage

which is the fourth one, the external reality is now considered through the

appearances perceived by the senses. At this stage, the ontology of being is

completely abandoned in favor of the ontology of becoming. The senses and

subjectivity come to the fore. Unlike the previous naturalist stage, external reality is

now considered as a collection of sensations or impressions. The literary and visual

content of this stage was created by the writers of Fecr-i Ati and National Literature,

and the painters of the 1914 Generation (Çallı Generation), who were born roughly

between 1880 and 1900. The poet Ahmet Haşim (1887-1933); and painters such as

Nazmi Ziya (1881), Hikmet Onat (1882), İbrahim Çallı (1882), Hüseyin Avni Lifij

can be given as examples of these writers and artists.

6.1 Impressionism as a Way of Seeing

Austrian art critic Hermann Bahr (b.1863-1934) said that how a person saw

the world was determined by his/her attitude towards the world, that was, his/her

worldview. The change in one's attitude towards the world would cause a

transformation in the way of seeing; its transformation would be followed by the

change of technique. In this sense, the history of painting is actually the history of

seeing. In this context, the issue of "discovery of nature" is primarily the result of the

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subject's attitude towards the world, and secondly the transformation in the way of

seeing. What determines the attitude of the person towards the world is the

relationship of trust with the outside world. If a person can reach a point of

separation between the self and the rest of the world, where he/she can say "me and

you", he/she can also separate the outside from within (Bahr, 2006, pp. 117-118).

The second half of the 19th century, when modernization was gaining momentum and

impressionism flourished, was a time when –just as Bahr mentioned– the selfconfident

person could well establish the distinction between inside and outside. As a

matter of fact, British art historian Kenneth Clark (1984) emphasized that

impressionist painting was full of confidence in both nature and human being’s own

nature (p. 96). This period was a period in which the understanding of being, the

understanding of reality and the interpretation of objects, which rose on the

ontological and epistemological aspects of the changing worldview, were also

changing in parallel to this worldview. Primarily the way of seeing and ultimately the

art technique were affected by this total transformation process.

Where the hierarchy between being and becoming, reality and appearance,

the intellectual and the sensible, continuity and change, absolute and relativity,

objectivity and subjectivity, was broken down in favor of the latter, Impressionism,

was one of the most important and decisive art movements of the second half of the

19th century. Impressionists, who were the pioneers of modern art, had irreversibly

transformed the field of art. The transformative effect created by Impressionism on

the understanding of art, which had been institutionalized and rooted until that time,

would be carried to a completely different dimension with the art movements that

would mark at least the first half of the 20th century, especially Cubism. In this

context, it can be said that Impressionism had played a direct role in the process of

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the formation of a scopic regime in the West (Crary, 2010, p. 38) and an indirect role

in the transition from contemplation to spectacle in the Ottoman Empire. Therefore,

in order to better understand what kind of turning point Impressionism corresponds

to in the history of Western art as a way of seeing and how it transformed previous

paradigms, it will be proper to examine Impressionism in terms of ontological and

epistemological starting points, as well as its practice and works of art. This

discussion will also serve as a theoretical background in order to reveal more clearly

what role the painters of1914 Generation, who had an impressionist attitude, played

in the transformation of the way of seeing in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.

(Neo)-classicism which was Academic and traditional along with

impressionism which was avant-garde and innovative are not only two different art

movements or artistic attitudes; but they also correspond to two different ways of

seeing. When examined in terms of the formal elements of the painting, these two

different ways of seeing are made visible on the painting plane as a closed form

approach based on drawing and a unrestricted form approach based on color.

However, there are deeper ontological and epistemological differences behind the

visibility of these two approaches on the canvas.

When evaluated from an ontological point of view, in order to reveal how

impressionism differs from the classicalist understanding of art, which constitutes the

backbone of the academic art understanding of the period, Parmenidean

understanding of Being and Heraclitean understanding of becoming can offer a

convenient starting point in terms of how the external reality and the objects that

compose are conceptualized and interpreted on the visual plane.

The basic teaching of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who lived in

the second half of the 6th century BC, was based on the idea that everything is in flux

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[panta rhei]. For Heraclitus, there was no such thing as unchanging substance, since

everything was in a constant state of flux and nothing remained fixed and

unchanging. Thus, nothing was permanent except the change itself, and everything

was in a constant state of becoming. This means that things were in a constant state

of becoming and they were constantly changing from one moment to another, so that

they lacked the continuity required by being (Shakian, 1997, p. 18). On the other

hand, another ancient Greek philosopher, Parmenides, who was born at the end of the

6th century, a generation after Heraclitus, argued that the Being had neither a

beginning nor an end; and it was a permanent, unchanging and static. According to

Parmenides, the state of being of things perceived by the senses was illusory, and

behind this state of being was the eternal Being – as the ultimate reality (Shakian,

1997, p. 20). Emphasizing the distinction between senses and reason, appearances

and truth, Parmenides stated that knowledge based on senses is misleading. The

truth, that is, the knowledge of Being, can only be reached through reason. Plato who

merged the discussion of Being and becoming in his dualism created a kind of

synthesis from this opposition between Being and becoming. So that opposition

between Being and becoming transformed into the opposition between reality and

appearance. In other words, Parmenides' Being was transformed into reality and the

intelligible world50; and Heraclitus’ becoming was transformed into appearances and

the sensible world51. According to Plato, behind, beyond or above the sensible world,

which is perceived through the senses and consists of visible, sensible, tangible

things, the world of Ideas or Forms existed. Contrary to common sense, it was this

50 The word intelligible means “noētos” in Ancient Greek.

51 The word sensible means “aisthētos” in Ancient Greek.

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world of Ideas that was essential, true and final (Stumpf, 1977, p. 49). The

Hellenistic philosopher Plotinus, who lived in the 3rd century AD, would read the

main difference between the intelligible and sensible worlds through the concept of

unity. In the sensible world, in terms of being subject to both time and space, the

existence of the whole separately in each part had disappeared. In this respect, the

sensible world lacked the unity character of the intelligible world (Emilsson, 2017,

pp. 386-387).

In his book Felsefe Sorunları [The Problems of Philosophy] (1994), British

philosopher Bertrand Russell (b.1872-1970) explained what kind of different

attitudes the painter and the philosopher had towards being in the context of the

opposition between reality and appearance, through an example of an observed table.

Although common sense says that the observed table is in reality all the same color,

someone walking around the table would see that each time the parts of the table

where the light is reflected would change; therefore, the color distribution on the

table –considered to be fixed- would also differ. Moreover, two observers looking at

the table from different points at the same time would see different color

distributions even if they were looking at the same table. Stating that such

distinctions are of paramount importance to the painter, even though they may seem

insignificant in practice. In this respect, Russell advises painters to break the habit of

assuming that objects "really" come in colors that common sense says they are;

because color is not an inherent quality of the table. It is a feature that changes

depending on who is looking at the table or the light falling on the table. In this

sense, just like sounds and smells, colors are also sense-data. The experience of

directly discerning these sense data is also called sensation. Even if the sensations

arise from a quality inherent in the table itself, it cannot be said that the sensations

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directly indicate any quality of the table. On the other hand, the existence of sensedata

regarding an observed object, no matter how dependent on the observer, is

accepted as an indication of an object that exists independently of the person. It is at

this point that the distinction between appearance and reality, which corresponds to

the distinction between how things appear and what they actually are, sprouts.

Appearance is, in a sense, immediate and given. Moving from appearance to reality

will require some inference, in which reasoning is included. In this respect, the

painter is concerned with how the object appears; the philosopher is concerned with

what the object is (Russell, 1994, pp. 10-16). Impressionist painters -who think that

objects in nature do not have a fixed form or color (Gombrich, 2006, p. 394) that can

be transferred to the painting surface independently from the position of the viewer

looking at them and the effects of light - were concerned with how the objects

appeared, exactly as Russell suggested. It may not seem surprising at first that the

Impressionists, as painters, adopt such an attitude. However, considering that the

painters who adopted the classicist-academic attitude, which formed the backbone of

the art understanding before Impressionism, were not concerned with how the object

looked temporarily. They were concerned with what the object actually was or how it

should look ideally. Considering this fundamental difference between the academic

tradition and impressionism will be significant in understanding how impressionism

constitutes a turning point – both ontologically and epistemologically – in the way of

seeing.

Starting from such a framework, the Being in the context of an impressionist

ontology is not conceived as a Being in the Parmenidean sense or it does not

correspond to some kind of ultimate reality in the Platonic sense. In this respect, it is

possible to say that it does not refer to an absolute and static object. In terms of

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Impressionist ontology, Being is conceived as a kind of becoming, corresponds to

appearances and refers to a dynamically complex structure consisting of

sensations/impressions that vary from person to person. In this sense, for the

Impressionist, Being is not something that can be thought; because it is sensible. In

other words, for the impressionists, an object is not a Being that can be grasped by

intellect or reason; it is a kind of appearance perceived through the senses.

Impressionists do not seek any ultimate reality or substance that is supposed to be

behind these appearances (Tunalı, 2013, pp. 92-94). Understanding the existence,

external reality and nature as Being or becoming creates two different attitudes

towards all these. The artist, who sees the external reality as a Being, tries to identify

the static, indivisible, unchanging, absolute, substantial, intellectual and rational,

which is almost outside of time. Here, there is a Being corresponding to a whole that

has an objective existence independent of any subject; and there is a concept of time

consisting of a monolithic, almost single moment. The artist, who sees the external

reality as a becoming, tries to identify what is subject to time, in constant motion and

change, divisible, relative, accidental, sensible and empirical. What is in question

here is relative to a subject. Hence a becoming that carries a subjective existence;

there is fragmented time consisting of individual moments (Tunalı, 2013, pp. 86-87).

In this framework, the artist adopting the classicist-academic attitude, comprehends

external reality as a Being; whereas the artist, who adopts the impressionist attitude,

comprehends the external reality as a becoming.

From an epistemological point of view, the relationship established with the

Being in impressionism is not based on reason or intellect; it is based on sensation

and/or perception. In this sense, impressionism does not have a rationalistic and

intelligible character; but it has an empiricist and sensible character. Qualities such as

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that each sensation has an individual character and that appearances depend on the

subject who senses or perceives them make impressionism a subjective approach

rather than being epistemologically objective. When evaluated in terms of truth

[hakikat], for the impressionist, truth no longer has an ontological character; but it is

possible to say that it has only an epistemological aspect. For the Impressionist, truth

is not capitalized Truth, which is considered as the equivalent of Being or the

real/true. For the Impressionist, there is an epistemological truth, namely truth value,

in the sense of the conformity of a sensation to its originating object. What is at issue

here is not the truth, that is, the reality of a Being thought to be the source of

appearances; but it is the truth value of knowledge about appearances (Tunalı, 2013,

p. 106). In other words, when it comes to an object perceived through the senses,

what the senses reveal directly is not a truth about the Being of that object

independently of the viewer; but it is a truth about the sense-data that originate the

appearance of joy (Russell, 1994, p. 16).

Based on the positivist and experimentalist ontology of the Austrian physicist

and philosopher Ernst Mach (b.1838-1916), Turkish philosopher and art theorist

İsmail Tunalı (2013) puts forward the concept of object that guides impressionist art

as follows: Object is a complex of sensations/impressions or is a synthesis. Objects

are sensations and apart from these sensations, there is no other object behind,

beneath, or beyond. The object made up of sensations/impressions is, in essence, a

mere appearance or phenomenon. This appearance/phenomenon is an appearance

that exists for that subject as a result of the subject's relationship with the object and

is not independent of the subject. In this sense, for the Impressionists, the thing -that

exists or which is called reality- is a world of appearance that comes together with

sensations/impressions. This world, which is in a state of constant change and

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becoming, is not rationally and objectively perceived; but it is perceived sensorially

and subjectively. Behind this world of appearances/phenomena, there is no world of

noumenas –in the Kantian sense– or a substance –in the Platonic sense– that never

changes and remains the same as their source (pp. 20-22). In such a framework, the

noumena corresponds to an object that exists independently of human perception and

creates a kind of contrast with the term phenomenon, which refers to objects

perceived through the senses. While Plato's Ideas or Forms are noumena; objects

perceived by the senses in the visible world correspond to phenomena (Honderich,

1995, p. 657). In this sense, reality from the impressionist understanding of art is an

appearance or phenomenon consisting of sensations and impressions.

In the classicalist or neo-classical understanding of art, which constitutes the

backbone of the academic understanding of art of that period, the object was

perceived rationally and reason was at the center of the relationship between subject

and object. Again, a rational order formed around formal elements such as harmony,

symmetry and balance dominated the artwork, which was created based on such an

understanding of the object. On the other hand, in the impressionist understanding of

art, sensations/impressions were at the center of the relationship between the subject

and the object. External reality was regarded as a kind of synthesis/complex of

sensations and is grasped through the senses rather than the intellect.

This ontological and epistemological difference -which lies behind the

classicist and impressionist understandings of art considering the external realityinevitably

determines their conception of depiction and form. As a result of the

relationship between the subject (observer) and the object (the world) every work of

art is a kind of expression of a certain understanding of reality or object

interpretation (Crary, 2010, p. 38). Therefore depictions in artworks would also

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change depending on this object interpretation and way of seeing. In this sense, the

impressionist understanding of painting is subjective and it pertains to the surface,

flatness of the painting (Tunalı, 2013, p. 45). This indirect emphasis on the surface of

painting by the Impressionists would be one of the first sources of inspiration for the

art movements of the 20th century, such as abstract art which emphasized the

flatness of the painting. Accordingly, painting was not an extension or a substitute

for external reality. On the contrary, it had a reality and autonomy of its own. In this

sense, impressionism lacked the main characteristics of the previous art movements,

which were dominated by the search for a fully objective equivalent to natural vision

(Crary, 2010, p. 39). It also lacked a geometric or linear perspective creating the

illusion of three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface and promising a more

objective appearance by emphasizing line-based depth. In Impressionist painting, it

is seen that the aerial perspective, which emphasizes a sense of depth that is not

based on lines and is achieved with colors, comes to the fore, as well as a distinctive

sense of volume achieved through the juxtaposition of different color tones (Antmen,

2010, p. 22).

6.2 Impressionist Technique

As briefly summarized above, there were profound differences between the

impressionist attitude and the academic attitude towards art, both ontological and

epistemological terms. However, these differences were not limited to these

ontological and epistemological considerations. There was also a technical difference

between these two attitudes. Impressionists painters made their paintings in the open

air, directly observing nature, rather than working from a model at the studio. Since

s/he only considered the effects of light at his/her studio when working with a model,

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s/he would be unaware of how challenging and at the same time instructive it was to

paint outdoors in the context of effects of ever-changing light. Under the controlled

light at the studio, it was impossible to depict the effect of rapid light changes on the

appearance of the object by the light-shadow transitions that give a certain volume

and solidity to the object. Under constantly changing light and weather conditions in

nature, there were no gradual transitions between dark and light, light and shadow.

On the contrary, there were sharp oppositions. According to the intensity of daylight,

the illuminated surfaces appeared much brighter compared to the studio. Shadows

were not composed of gray or black colors as was assumed and they could take on

different colors depending on how the light was reflected (Gombrich, 2006, pp. 392-

393). The painters who chose to paint outdoors by experiencing these conditions

began to see external reality and objects with a different eye.

In this sense, for the artist, who came out of the studio to the open air, there

awaited a kind of "discovery" in terms of reflecting the variable light and weather

effects on the pictorial plane, and seeing nature with a fresh eye. Even before the

Impressionists, artists were – in a sense – starting from external reality or the sensible

world. However, the difference between the painters working within the

classical/academic tradition of the period from the impressionists was that they

treated what they saw as raw materials and turned them into the ideal form they

thought or assumed. This what was meant by idealization: transforming what is seen

by the artist in the context of a narrative to be conveyed, in accordance with the

requirements of the narrative. Through idealization, the artist was painting objects as

s/he thought they should be. In contrast, a naturalist painter depicted what actually is

as s/he thought it to be. An Impressionist painter, on the other hand, transferred

external reality to the canvas as it appeared to him/her at a particular moment. In this

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process, there was a transition from the ideal to the real and from there to the

appearances themselves. In other words, from how an object should look to what it

actually is and finally to how it appears. In this sense, how the object is appeared

from a subjective viewpoint –rather than what it was objectively– became the subject

of the painting.

Impressionist painters, who preferred to paint in the open air rather than the

studio environment -where the light effects could be controlled- had the opportunity

to observe how the constantly changing light conditions affected the appearance of

the objects. When an Impressionist artist looked at nature, s/he didn't paint the lines

that distinctly separated objects from each other [Fr. contour] (Tunalı, 2013, p. 41).

Therefore in an impressionist painting, there was no understanding of closed form

emphasized by lines presupposing a rational understanding of order, as in classicist

painting. Instead of a closed form based on contour lines, their main concern was to

convey the changing appearances of the objects under different light and weather

conditions. Thus they adopted a more unconstrained understanding of form based on

color (light) fields (p. 52). The contour line, which is the basis of the understanding

of form based on drawing, defines the outline of a shape, separating it from the space

it is in, and gives it a kind of volume. In this sense, impressionists did not focus on

outlines that are supposed to keep the objects unchanged and separate them both

from each other and from the place they are in. Rather they focused on their colors,

which constantly appeared different from different perspectives under different light

and weather conditions. Each individual stroke of color used to project these color

spaces onto the canvas corresponded to instantaneous sensations of color and light,

referring to the varying appearances of objects (p. 39).

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Before impressionism, external reality and objects in it were portrayed as

having a continuity independent of change. But with the attempts of the

impressionists, who sought to portray the sensations created by the constantly

changing appearances of objects under different light conditions, the change of the

appearance of objects under different light conditions became one of the subjects of

the painting. For example, Claude Monet created successive series such as

Haystacks, Poplars and Rouen Cathedral in the early 1890s to show how the

appearance of objects is perceived differently at different times of the day, in

different weather conditions or in different seasons. Although the subject of the

picture seemed to never change, the content of the picture was constantly changing

due to the changing light and weather conditions. The content of the painting was

now the appearances depending on the changing light and weather conditions.

Because of this, the same subject had different views (Lemonedes, 2006, p. 139).

While painting objects, Monet advised to forget that the objects have a definite and

distinctive form, and to paint each one as a speck of color or shape – as it appears to

the viewer (Werner, 1998, p. 5). In this sense, Monet's random and fragmented

brushstrokes produced a pulsating fluid effect which eliminated the distinct contours

that separate objects and made them appear as if they were melting or mingling with

each other.

The aim of the impressionists, especially Monet, was to reflect the temporary

effects of light and air reflected on the objects and the sensations/impressions created

by these effects, rather than presenting a naturalist description of the visible world. In

this respect, the impressionists' perception of external reality and objects reflected on

their canvases, that is, their tendency to paint visible reality as appearances

consisting of impressions drew the reaction of the critics, whose view of painting

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was shaped by the academic art understanding of the period and who had definite

judgments about how objects should be shown on the surface of the painting. The

loss of the understanding of form based on contour lines inevitably led to the loss of

the understanding of volume and depth. As a result of the gradual disappearance of

line, form, volume and depth, there were only areas of color that melted into each

other left. Thus, critics such as Louis Leroy who compared impressionist-style with

academic paintings, with reference to painters such as Alexandre Cabanel (b.1823-

1889) or William-Adolphe Bouguereau (b.1825-1905)- criticized impressionists as

lacking rules and a solid base of drawing (Antmen, 2010, p. 21). The lack of clarity

in impressionist works, which had been one of the plastic ideals of academic painting

since the Renaissance, was the point of the criticisms of the period that these works

labeled as unfinished, complex, and sketchy.

6.3 Line vs Color & Contemplation vs Spectacle

On the one hand, there was classicists’ understanding of closed form

consisting of outlines, which based on the ontology of Being grasped with reason. On

the other hand, there was the impressionists’ understanding of form consisting of

color fields, which is based on the ontology of becoming perceived by the senses. It

can be suggested that tension arises especially around only two of the formal

elements of painting: line and color. By analogy to these formal elements, there was

the confrontation of two different ways of seeing on different ontological and

epistemological foundations. It is possible to trace this 19th-century-debate on

whether color or outlines are essential in paintings back to the 15th century.

The debate over whether outlines (drawing) or color were essential for

painting was based on the question of how nature could be represented and this

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question dated back to the 15th century Italy. While the Venetian School believed that

color [It. colorito] was the way to bring art closer to nature; The Florence School

believed that it was the drawing [It. disegno] that would do the trick. In this context,

whereas the Florence School painters built their compositions on sketches based on

detailed drawing studies; the painters of the Venetian School created compositions of

layered color spaces directly on the canvas, rather than starting with drawings that

had clear outlines around the objects. For Venetian painters –just as it would be for

the Impressionists four centuries later– what mattered was how light would affect the

appearance of an object and how this could be shown through the colors put on the

canvas (Sorabella, 2002).

At this point, it will be proper to dwell on the concept of disegno in more

detail in order to reveal what kind of ontology the artists of the Florence School -who

took a stance in favor of drawing based on outlines- acted on. In his book The Lives

of the Most Distinguished Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568) Giorgio Vasari

(b.1511-1574), the founder of the first art academy called Accademia del Disegno

(established in 1563) and one of the first art historians, stated that art consisted

primarily of imitation of nature. On how to understand the word imitation here,

Italian sculptor Vincenzo Danti's (b.1530-1576) distinction between imitation [It.

imitare] and copying [It. ritrarre] could be instructive. According to Danti, while the

act of imitation is aimed at presenting things in perfection as they should

appear/should be; copying corresponds to revealing things that are already perfect as

they are. In this sense, unlike copying, imitation is a kind of perfection and

idealization. Although nature had aimed to create beautiful and complete forms with

matter, matter may not fully undertook these forms. Therefore, nature that is

somehow not perfect and should not be copied; but it should be idealized and

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imitated. When it comes to works of art, works of art that are considered complete

should be copied; artworks with deficiencies should be imitated and perfected

(Gregory, 2018). Coming back to Vasari, a style [It. maniera] can only be developed

by examining the works produced by the great masters. With such an understanding,

from the Renaissance until the beginning of the 19th century, artists turned to the

works of great masters instead of looking directly at nature in order to imitate nature

better. In such an orientation, nature is not completely ignored or imitated in spite of

it; however, the deficiencies seen in the observed nature are being completed and

idealized by the intervention of the intellect (Hutson, 2016, p. 57). The most

appropriate example of this attitude is the works of great masters. As a matter of fact,

Vasari warns artists who focus only on the works of masters and leave nature on the

sidelines, emphasizing that the way to be followed is to consider the works of

masters and nature together (p. 60).

6.3.1 The Idea of disegno

At this very point, the concept of disegno, which Vasari put forward, comes

to the forefront, which means design [tasavvur]52 and drawing together in Italian. For

the artist, who is in pursuit of the perfect form53 based on the proportional relations

between the whole and the parts, the ability to distinguish the idea of perfect form

52 Derived from the Arabic word suret meaning "shape", tasavvur means "shaping in one's mind,

forming an idea, designing" (Ayverdi, 2020, Kubbealtı Lugatı, p. 3079). The Turkish word tasarım,

which is synonymous with tasavvur was a Turkish word derived later.

53 The word suret of Arabic origin is synonymous with form and shape in the sense of “what the eye

sees at first sight, outward appearance” (Ayverdi, 2020, Kubbealtı Lugatı, p. 2898). It is also possible

to use the word suret instead of form over the above-mentioned suret-tasavvur relationship. In addition

to this meaning, suret means "copy"; “picture, description”. It also means "face" (Ayverdi, 2020,

Kubbealtı Lugatı, p. 2898) and, in mystical context, as the sensible manifestations of God's attributes

on earth, and the manifestation of mana (God) in the universe. However, the words form and suret here

should not be confused with the words Form or Idea in the Platonic sense.

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through design and the ability to represent it on the visible plane through the drawing

are essential for disegno (Duro, 2002, p. 89). In other words, disegno refers to both

the intellectual/theoretical and sensorial/practical aspects of artistic activity.

Therefore, disegno is the realization of an idea formed in the mind through the work

of art. According to Vasari, who underlined the relationship between disegno and

intellect, the intellect, starting from the objects in nature, derives a universal

judgment about those objects through the proportional relations of the whole with the

parts, and the parts with each other and with the whole. As a result of this

understanding, certain judgments, notions or mental images are formed in the mind.

Here, disegno -which gives the artist the opportunity to express his/her inner vision

(Sorabella, 2002) is the expression of this judgment, notion or image in the mind that

is made visible in the art medium. To put it in another way, starting from the

different forms in the visible world and their proportional relations with each other,

the artist tries to gather the perfect form as an idea or design (tasavvur) through

his/her intellect; and s/he tries to make it visible with his/her hands.

Although it is open to debate to what extent these views of Vasari are

nourished by Platonist and Aristotelian tradition, it is possible to say that nature, in

the sense that Vasari discusses over the concept of disegno, is not directly copied, but

it is indirectly imitated by being completed to a certain intellectual [idea-l] perfection

through the interventions of the intellect. In this sense, the idea of the perfect form in

the artist's mind is superior to images from nature, even though this idea is basically

formed from the forms in nature, since the sensations obtained from the objects in

nature by the sense of sight are evaluated as pure sense data and they are despised as

they are not subject to the intervention of the intellect (Blunt, 1962, p. 141). This is

what is meant by painting of what should be rather than what is/seen. Nature, with its

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quirks and flaws, should not be copied exactly and directly; it should be imitated in

such a way that its perfect, valuable and lofty aspects can be brought together. The

most inspiring and guiding sources on this path are the works of great masters,

especially ancient Greece and Rome (Duro, 2002, p. 91). As a matter of fact, from

the establishment of the first art academy in Florence in 1563 by Vasari until almost

the end of the 19th century, the view of art academies on the work of art was

determined within this framework.

6.3.2 The Line vs. Color Debate

By the end of the 17th century, while the Poussinists, named after the French

painter Nicolas Poussin (b.1594-1665), argued that the most important element in the

painting was the drawing; the Rubenists, influenced by the approach of the Dutch

painter Peter Paul Rubens (b.1577-1640) claimed that the main element was color.

The Poussinists, who seemed very impressed with the ideal understanding of ancient

Greek art and Plato's doctrine of ideas, thought that such an ideal could be reestablished

on the canvas with various interventions to the objects and appearances

in nature. In this respect, for the Poussinists, color had a secondary decorative

meaning besides the form and drawing that developed around the understanding of

disegno and expressed with lines. The Rubenists, who defend loyalty to nature

against the loyalty of the Poussinists to the ideal, argued that the main purpose of

painting was to deceive the eye by imitating nature, and color was superior to

drawing in terms of loyalty to nature (Janson & Janson, 1995, p. 604). In this

context, the French painter Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), who was the leader of the

Poussinists at that time, stated that the function of color is to satisfy the eyes, and the

function of the drawing is to satisfy the mind (“Poussinist”, 2013) Le Brun's

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distinction between mind and senses, which can be based on the question of whether

painting is an art or craft, was also significant in terms of what kind of a way of

seeing would be used to handle nature. However, in the process of turning the

landscape from being a background for historical paintings into an autonomous

painting genre on its own, Rubens' approach would start to be favored again in the

form of naturalism as artists turned more and more towards nature.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the line or color debate would be

replaced with the classical-romantic conflict. In this discussion, Jean-Auguste-

Dominique Ingres (b.1780-1867) was at the center of the classic camp emphasizing

drawing and outline, and Eugène Delacroix (b.1798-1863), who saw color as a

means of expression in itself, was at the center of the colorist-romantic camp. At this

point, it is worth mentioning that be it pro-drawing and classical or colorist and

romantic; both artist groups supported an idealistic understanding of art because of

the idea that they had painted what they envisioned through their imagination instead

of what they saw (Antmen, 2010, p. 12). Moving this discussion from an idealist

context to a more realistic context in terms of content and a more naturalistic context

in terms of form would reach the impressionist painters through the attempts of

Gustave Courbet (b.1819-1877) and Barbizon School painters, respectively.

6.4 Impressionism in the Ottoman Empire

Impressionism, which had its most active period in France between 1870 and

1880, took about 45 years to reach the shores of Istanbul; this was the case when the

students of Sanayi-i Nefîse Mektebi (School of Fine Arts), who were sent to Europe

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in 1910,54 returned to Istanbul in 1913-1914 due to the outbreak of the First World

War (Duben, 2007, p. 144). In this respect, the year 1914 was almost a milestone in

the sense that the understanding of canvas painting and landscape in the Ottoman

Empire came closer to the understanding of painting/landscape in the West (Tansuğ,

1999, p. 118). The group, which included Nazmi Ziya Güran (b.1881-1937), Hikmet

Onat (b.1882-1977), İbrahim Çallı (b.1882-1960), Hüseyin Avni Lifij (b.1886-1927)

and Feyhaman Duran (b.1886-1970), is known as the 1914 Generation (because it is

the year they returned home) or the Çallı Generation because of the remarkable

personality of İbrahim Çallı. Stating that this generation constituted a real turning

point in Turkish painting, Tansuğ (1999) claimed that these artists helped literary

circles to become more interested in painting (p. 127).

6.4.1 The 1914 Generation

The impressionist attempts in the Ottoman context coincided with the period

when the transformation from contemplation to spectacle was experienced most

intensely and radically. However, these attempts were not like the conscious attitude

in the West, especially in France, and the possibility of a certain imitation tendency

in these painters should be noted. Unlike the French Impressionists, most of whom

were born around 1840, the 1914 Generation painters, were born around 1880.

Within the scope of this study, in which the transformation in the way of seeing is

aimed to be examined through generations, writers and painters born around 1880

follow the Edebiyat-ı Cedide generation in literature and the Third Generation of

54 Nazmi Ziya Güran (1881-1937), Hikmet Onat (1882-1977), İbrahim Çallı (1882-1960), Hüseyin

Avni Lifij (1886-1927), Feyhaman Duran (1886-1970), Ali Sami Boyar (1880-1937), Ruhi Arel

(1880-1931),Namık İsmail (1890-1935)

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Soldier Painters. The poets of the Fecr-i Ati period and the painters of the 1914

Generation play a role in the reduction of reality to appearances in the transformation

of worldview and way of seeing, which was experienced as the reduction of truth to

reality, reality to appearances, and appearances to moods.

In the process of the formation of the painting tradition in the Western sense

in the Ottoman Empire, in terms of emphasizing the importance of the 1914

Generation, the writer Fikret Adil’s (1901-1973) remark on the period before 192855

when the painters of this generation began to produce their works is noteworthy. Adil

had said, "The Turkish painting world was passing through a chaotic becoming

[tekevvün hercümerci]” (as cited in Duben, 2007, p. 158). The fact that the word

"hercümerç" means "chaotic and the word "tekevvün" in this expression is

"becoming"; is interesting in that it refers to the ontology of becoming seen in the

paintings of this generation, albeit quite indirectly. As a matter of fact, Nurullah Berk

(b.1906-1982), one of the D Group painters, saw the role played by the 1914

Generation painters in the history of Ottoman-Turkish painting as equivalent to the

role played by the impressionists in Western art (as cited in Duben, 2007, p. 141).

Criticisms among generations, sometimes excessive criticisms, are

remarkable in that they show how the way of seeing and the understanding of art

(painting) had changed between the generations in question. For example, the 1914

Generation painters underestimated II. The Second Generation of Soldier Painters –

including Şeker Ahmet Pasha– and the Third Generation of Soldier Painters along

with their contemporaries known as Primitives/Photo-interpreters by calling them as

55 The reason why Fikret Adil gave such a date is that 1928 was the date when the generation that

came after the 1914 Generation and later to be known as the Müstakiller, returned home after the

painting education they received in Europe.

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“wagon painters” referring to still-life painting methods in Anatolia carried out on

horse carriages. Similarly, the painters of the 1914 Generation would be criticized as

lacking a "solid understanding of drawing and color" by the next generation artists,

who were influenced by the cubist movement (Tansuğ, 1999, p. 119; Aksel, 2011, p.

346).

In this context, the criticism that Cemal Tollu made about the painters of the

period –who worked with a technique close to the impressionist technique– in his

article titled "Turkish Painting in the Constitutional Era" (as cited in Duben, 2007, p.

148), written in 1949, is quite remarkable. After stating that this understanding was

"a brand new path, a strong step" for that period, however the "exciting brush strokes

used" made people forget the local color and interrupted the search for a solid form.

Tollu said, "Instead of the unchanging and eternal life of nature (ufule mahkum an-ı

hayatını) they went too far in terms of trying to capture and determine nature (as

cited in Duben, 2007, p. 148). Although Tollu evaluated the point reached in a

negative way with expressions such as "formlessness, colorlessness, absence of

geometric values", Tollu's evaluation regarding the way nature was handled clearly

reveals the transformation experienced: Instead of painting the unchanging, eternal

life of nature; the artists had aimed to catch and show the moments that were

destined to change and disappear.

This is what the impressionist painters in France aimed to do, as it was stated

before. Duben (2007), who acted with an approach parallel to Tollu's approach,

stated that the Turkish artists of the period could not fully grasp the impressionist

method and they missed the technical and scientific features of impressionism (p.

150). However, Duben also expressed how effective the impressionism was in

determining the attitude of the artists of the period towards nature, even it was

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through imitation: “It is important that the Turkish artists, who imitated

Impressionism, started to take an interest in nature. […] Turkish artists, who hide in

their memoirs of the view that 'the landscape is a weave made of fairy tales and

dreams rather than what is seen', went out into the open air and observed and studied

the living model itself, regardless of the outcome” (p. 150). Duben's reference here

that the interest in nature started with the artists of the Constitutional Period is

noteworthy. In this framework, although it was said that the artists had not

consciously taken them as examples or understood them, the 1914 Generation

painters who were closer to impressionism also acted with a similar motive. This

situation corresponded to a brand new break, a transformation in the way nature was

handled and represented on the canvas.

When it comes to landscape painting, it cannot be denied that such an attempt

was also made by artists such as Şeker Ahmet Pasha, Hoca Ali Rıza and Halil Pasha

before the 1914 Generation; however, it is possible to say that the 1914 Generation

made a different move than their predecessors when it comes to treating nature as

nature, that is, as a section of the sensible world. In other words, although landscape

painting as a genre did not enter the agenda of Ottoman painting with the 1914

Generation, how nature was conceptualized and how this conceptualization was

expressed through landscape painting underwent a great transformation with the

1914 Generation.

Tollu’s statement “Instead of the unchanging and eternal life of nature (ufule

mahkum an-ı hayatını) they went too far in terms of trying to capture and determine

nature” and Duben’s statement “Turkish artists, who hide in their memoirs of the

view that ‘the landscape is a weave made of fairy tales and dreams rather than what

is seen’, went out into the open air and observed and studied the living model itself,

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regardless of the outcome” reflect this transformation. Tollu said, "Although it is

possible to consider it as a breakthrough that would be harmful to Turkish painting,

since it broke the tradition of painting with respect and indoctrination, which we

loved in the past, we still owe new opportunities to this concussion" (as cited in

Duben, 2007, p. 149), and he criticized the artists of the 1914 Generation for this

transformation they initiated, as well as praising it. It is possible to describe this

transformation as the transition from dream aesthetics of contemplative vision to

reality aesthetics of spectatorial vision. Between the dream aesthetics of

contemplative vision and the reality aesthetics of spectatorial vision, especially in the

Third Generation of Soldier Painters lied a kind of transitional aesthetics of dream,

seen in the paintings of Hoca Ali Rıza.

The reason why some artists and art historians such as Tollu, Tansuğ and

Duben did not find the paintings of the 1914 Generation painters to be adequate or

impressionistic in the Western sense may be due to the fact that these artists –no

matter what– kept the balance between drawing and color. The education that these

artists received both in Sanâyi-i Nefîse Mektebi and in Europe was an academic

education based on outlines, drawing and composition. In other words, these artists,

who did not receive an impressionist education, showed a personal interest in the

impressionist attitude of the period. These painters, who were criticized even if they

did not paint with an overly impressionist style in terms of brush techniques and the

use of color that would completely eliminate the drawing, actually acted as a

transition between the Hoca Ali Rıza generation's perception of landscape painting

and the next generation, the Independents [Müstakiller], being aware of what they

were doing. They would probably have met with a much greater backlash if they had

made paintings that were completely devoid of the drawing as did the Impressionists.

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In this respect, most of the landscape paintings made by the 1914 Generation

painters have a different dynamism than the landscape paintings made by the

previous generations. The reason behind this dynamism lies in the fact that they

attached importance to color as much as to the drawing (See Figure 12).

Figure 12: Avni Lifij, Cami, n.d.

According to Tansuğ (1999), among the 1914 Generation painters who were

educated in Europe, they understood that in painting, besides the importance of

drawing and composition, it was a matter of harmony and balance in terms of color

too (p. 128). Although this statement of Tansuğ may seem ordinary at first glance, it

will become even more meaningful when it is taken into account that the process of

gaining strength against drawing in the history of Western painting was not easy (See

Figure 13).

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Figure 13: Nazmi Ziya Güran, Karacaahmet, 1933

This struggle between drawing and color is important in terms of the questions

whether painting is a sensual act or an intellectual one; or does painting appeal to the

senses or the intellect. Indeed, it is possible to take this discussion as far back as to

the discussions between Ingres and Delacroix in the mid-19th century; the

Poussinians and the Rubensians in the late 17th century, and between the Florentine

School and the Venetian School in the 15th century. In this respect, it is very

significant for the 1914 Generation painters to give importance to color as much as to

drawing, and even to upset the balance in favor of color, both for the history of

Ottoman/Turkish painting and for the transformation in the way of seeing from

contemplation to spectacle. The reference made by the painters of this generation to

color in relation to the drawing is such that they were criticized even by the artists of

the next generation. Thanks to this importance attributed to color versus drawing, “an

inner dynamism that separates the painting from every element that makes it static is

reflected in the rhythmic relationships of the painting forms” (Tansuğ, 1999, p. 129).

Different from the understanding of previous generations, working in the open air in

the process of bringing color to the forefront of the painting, had a great share in

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directly observing the change in light and weather conditions and therefore

transferring them to the canvas.

It may be beneficial at this point to underline the fine distinction on painting

outdoors. The tradition of painting outdoors in the sense of making drawing-based

sketches to be completed later at the studio has a long history that can be traced back

to 17th century painters such as Claude Lorrain (b.1600-1682). However, with the

formation of the necessary technical infrastructure with portable paints, canvas and

easels starting from the 1840s, the attitude of carrying the canvas into nature and

completing the painting there would turn into a new act of painting with the Barbizon

School painters and then the impressionists who followed them (in the 1860s). The

acts of working in nature to make sketches to be completed later at the studio and

finishing a painting in the open air again correspond to a different attitude from the

pictorial depiction of nature in terms of the discussion of whether line (drawing) or

color is essential. In the first attitude, there is a kind of observation of nature.

However, this observation is a preliminary study to complete the painting later at the

studio. Since these preliminary studies were based on line/drawing and colors were

almost never included in the process, the effect of changing light conditions could

not be taken into account. All these effects would be completed later at the studio

with the schemes presented by the imagination or the paintings made by the masters.

Therefore, in terms of transferring nature to the canvas through this attitude, the

drawing played a more important role compared to color; reason also played a more

important role than the senses. Working directly from nature and completing the

painting there required exposure to changing light and weather conditions and taking

them into account. Changing light and weather conditions were given with different

color values. At this point, the use of color came before the pattern, and the senses

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were at the forefront rather than the reason and imagination. This is exactly why the

tradition of drawing-based work and the tradition of color-based work correspond to

two different ways of seeing (See Figure 14).

Figure 14: Nazmi Ziya Güran, Moda, 1934

When viewed on the scale of history of Western painting, the act of painting

outdoors may seem like a minor detail of technique; however, when it comes to the

19th century Ottoman art, which does not have a deep-rooted Western painting

tradition, the act of painting in the open air has a much more crucial meaning than its

meaning in the West. When we look at the adventure of the image in the transition

from miniature to canvas painting, it can be seen that the images made to decorate

the story among the manuscripts gradually spread to the single pages called murakka,

from there to the book covers, then to the cabinet doors and then to the walls. It is

also noteworthy that in this process, where the image gained its autonomy against the

narrative, the landscape began to take precedence over other subjects. Imaginary

landscape paintings, which were first seen on the walls of the rooms in the palace,

later began to decorate the walls of the houses of the notables of the city, extending

to some houses in Anatolia. After all this, the adventure of the image on the canvas

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began. The act of painting, which was carried out at the studio on canvas, wood or

cardboard at first, would begin to be done outside the studio (in nature) with the

transfer of the canvas to nature over time. In other words, the ever-changing

adventure of the image was accompanied by changes in the process of creating the

image. Finally, the image, which was then completely dominated by the landscape,

was able to go out into the open air and breathe the vitality. This process, in which

images emerge from the pages of manuscripts and reach the open air, was also a

result of the transformation in the way of seeing. The transition from wall painting to

canvas painting, from the religious stage to the mystical stage; the attempt to start

painting outdoors can also be regarded as the turning point of the transformation

from the mystical stage to the naturalist stage. In other words, in terms of being an

indicator of the Ottoman painting history and the change in the way of seeing, the

choice to paint in the open air is as essential as the transition to canvas painting in the

Western sense. These transitions reveal how the external reality/nature was

comprehended both ontologically and epistemologically, in parallel with the

transformations in worldview and then in the way of seeing.

The first and most important reason why the 1914 Generation painters

corresponded to a different stage in terms of transformation in the way of seeing is

that they were influenced by the Impressionism movement in terms of both style and

understanding, to a large extent, as a result of the education they received abroad.

Respectively, the act of painting in the open air was well embraced by the names of

this generation such as Nazmi Ziya Güran, Hikmet Onat, İbrahim Çallı, Avni Lifij

and Feyhaman Duran. As mentioned before, prior to the 1914 Generation painters,

there were painters such as Hoca Ali Rıza and Halil Pasha, who were members of the

Third Generation of Soldier Painters that painted outdoors by observing nature.

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However, their outdoor work activities were mostly for preparation for the paintings

they would complete later in the studio. In order to reflect the ever-changing light

and weather effects in nature on the canvas, painting in the open air would become a

tradition with the 1914 Generation painters. For example, the pochade56 paintings

made in one sitting in open air began to be encountered with the painters of the 1914

Generation, with painters such as İbrahim Çallı, Feyhaman Duran and Avni Lifij

(Pehlivan, 2019, pp. 113-114).

6.4.2 Impressionist Stage vs. Naturalist Stage

In this sense, although the painters of two generations, one following the

other, chose to paint in the open air and had the opportunity to observe the changing

light and weather effects, there were some differences between the two generations

in terms of approach to nature and style. These differences were also important in

that they essentially corresponded to a transformation in the way of seeing. In this

context, Tansuğ’s (1999) remarks for Hoca Ali Rıza, who is from the generation of

Third Generation of Soldier Painters, that Hoca Ali Rıza had transferred what he saw

with his heart's eye to the canvas in a unique style (p. 119) is quite remarkable. At

this point, considering the place of the eye of the heart in Ottoman and especially in

Sufi culture, what was different between the two generations in terms of the way of

seeing becomes even more evident. In short, in Ibn. Arabî's epistemology, which is

the core of Sufi epistemology, the center of awareness and consciousness is the heart.

Reason and imagination are considered as the two eyes of the heart. With the eye of

56 Pochade which is also a form of sketching, is different from sketches that aim to express a view

with lines and drawings; it is intended to express the appearance with the atmosphere it is in through

colors.

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the imagination, the heart sees the One in all things, namely Being; it realizes the

transcendence of Being and the diversity of becoming through the eyes of reason.

Being able to see the traces left by God in the sensible world, which is thought to be

a manifestation of God, with the body/head eye is not possible; it is only possible to

with the heart's eye. In this sense, according to Al-Ghazali, the eye of the heart can

see the spiritual or (the Truth) directly, just as the eye of the body can see the

sensible world directly. However, these two ways of seeing, differ from each other in

that the first one is based on sensation and perception, and the latter corresponds to a

kind of comprehension and understanding. In this sense, through a distinction made

between the heart and the mind, the comprehension of the Truth is attributed to the

heart, even though the reason is given a share in comprehending the reality. As it was

emphasized before in Chapter 5 about Şinasi, the presence of God's light could only

be felt through basiret.

It is also possible to attribute the act of seeing with the eyes of the heart that

Tansuğ attributes to Hoca Ali Rıza, in a different sense, to Şeker Ahmet Pasha, a

generation before Hoca Ali Rıza. Similarly, as mentioned earlier, it is emphasized

that Chinese landscape painters who paint in the shan shui tradition also saw their

landscapes with the mind's eye. However, there are some differences between Şeker

Ahmet Pasha and Hoca Ali Rıza, as well as between Chinese landscape painters and

Ottoman painters who painted landscapes in the 19th century, in terms of what the

eye of the heart or mind saw. The concept of sublime can play a key role in revealing

these differences. As a result, it can be said that with the 1914 Generation painters,

the eye of the heart had been replaced by the eye of the head, or more accurately, the

sense of sight. Now, it was a way of seeing that was shaped by the intellect and not

imagination, the sense of sight and the reason.

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6.5 Impressionist Stage on the Literary Plane: The Case of Ahmet Haşim

Ahmet Haşim, almost all by himself, undertook the reflection of the

impressionist stage, which was the last stage of the transformation in the way of

seeing from contemplation to spectacle, on the literary plane. Tanpınar (2016) wrote

that Haşim was the successor of Edebiyat-ı Cedide language (p. 321). This

evaluation is very important in terms of showing what kind of transformative effect

the language created by Edebiyat-ı Cedide poets such as Tevfik Fikret and Cenap

Şahabettin had created in the next generation. Just as Namık Kemal followed the

path opened by Şinasi, Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem and Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan

walked the path paved by Namık Kemal. Cenap Şahabettin and Tevfik Fikret

followed after Ekrem and Tarhan, and Ahmet Haşim advanced on the path opened by

the Edebiyat-ı Cedide generation. Tevfik Fikret, with his picturesque attitude and

painterly gaze, created a language of poetry that easily adapted to every scene of life

and was very close to spoken language (Tanpınar, 2016, p. 269). Fikret's plain and

clear language (p. 269), which brought poetry closer to prose, would play a major

role in shaping the poetic understanding and language of the next generation.

Haşim's poems were one of the most visible examples of this case. On the other

hand, these poems coincided with the impressionist stage, which was a completely

different stage.

However, Haşim had painted a portrait that differed from other members of

his generation both with his language and his poetics. Haşim would play one of the

most influential roles in shaping the poetic understanding of the next generation with

his almost distinctive poet persona. Tanpınar (2016) claimed that Haşim had created

a poetry that looked at the landscapes in nature with a whole new eye (p. 321).

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Haşim's poetry is a completely about the mood (p. 321). Here, it is Haşim's

impressionist gaze that Tanpınar pointed to as a brand new eye. This impressionist

gaze of Haşim is the result of the transition from the naturalist stage, in which the

previous generation produced their works, to the impressionist stage. The mood,

which started to occupy more and more space in poetry with the poems of Cenap

Şahabettin and Tevfik Fikret, and was conveyed through landscape descriptions, took

up a central position in Haşim's poetry. Although Tevfik Fikret, similar to Cenap

Şahabettin, used landscape descriptions as a basis to express his mood, for Fikret,

nature was more of an escape from life (Tanpınar, 2016, p. 272) and lacked the

universal spirit that Şahabettin mentioned. In this respect, when evaluated from the

perspective of Tarhan-Şahabettin and Fikret, it is seen that nature gradually gets rid

of its metaphysical connotations as a result of the transition from the metaphysical

stage to the naturalist stage. The process of purifying nature from its metaphysical

connotations would be carried to a higher level with Haşim's poems at the

impressionist stage. Thus, the subject of Haşim's poetry would be nature, which is in

a state of constant change and becoming.

Haşim wanted to harmonize with nature, which he enjoyed watching and

being in, almost to identify with it (Uzsoy, 2017, p. 185). However, the basic motif

underlying this desire for harmonization was not the indecision of Namık Kemal and

Tarhan towards nature. Haşim went beyond painting nature in a picturesque manner,

as Cenap Şahabeddin and Tevfik Fikret did, and began to look at nature with a whole

new gaze. This new gaze refers to Haşim’s impressionist gaze.

Just like the impressionist painters did in their paintings, Haşim built his

poetry on the different appearances of objects at different times of the day (Ünal,

2017, p. 90). Perceiving external reality through images and impressions in an

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impressionist line, Haşim transformed nature into poetry by filtering images from the

pure poetry filter in his poems (Uslu Kaya, 2017, p. 88), which were among the most

beautiful examples of impressionist poetry (Doğan, 2017, p. 35). In the poems that

Haşim wrote like impressionist paintings, fusing and melting of colors were

dominant rather than lines (Kaplan, 2019c, p. 153).

Kaplan (2019d) stated that the first poets to use color in a remarkable way in

Turkish literature were the poets of the Edebiyat-ı Cedide period. These poets used

words corresponding to colors to express feelings, thoughts and images. However,

with Haşim, not only color but also light became one of the prominent elements of

poetry (p. 279). This was one of the most striking differences between Haşim and his

predecessors. In this respect, Haşim's poetry corresponded to the impressionist stage

in the context of the transformation process in the Ottoman way of seeing. Within the

same context, Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar compared the landscape created by Haşim to a

new garden arranged in a French style, rather than an oriental garden (Enginün,

2018, p. 617).

Regarding Haşim's unique point of view, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu

(2016) said that thanks to Haşim, who looked at the whole life "always behind this

phantasmagorical prism", many neighborhoods he lived in but did not understand the

meaning of seemed like a phantasmagorical world (p. 14). Similarly, Ali Canip

Yöntem, who aspired to look at nature that seemed plain and colorless to him,

through Haşim's eyes, said, “Every time I read a page from Haşim, I think I am

looking at nature through a crystal prism” (Haşim & Polat, 2016, p. 8). There is no

mystical or religious motivation behind the uniqueness of Haşim's view of the visible

world and the phantasmagoric landscapes he derives from it. Haşim, who was

suspicious of a realm other than the sensed one, neither sought a meaning in the

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universe, nor was he after the truth; because Haşim was indifferent to both mysticism

and religious feelings (Karaosmanoğlu, 2016, p. 38).

According to Turkish linguist and writer Rûşen Eşref Ünaydın (b.1892-1959),

Haşim opened the doors of a brand new flow to Turkish poetry and conveyed the

landscapes he saw almost like a painting (1972, p.257). Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu

underlined a similar situation and says the following: “He would reveal many

beauties of İzmir as nature and as a city that I was not even aware of, in the form of

Monet's and Cezanne's paintings” (Karaosmanoğlu, 2018, p. 83). Yakup Kadri's

emphasis on Haşim's painterly attitude, as well as his association of his depictions

with the paintings of Monet and Cezanne, is also remarkable in that he underlined

Haşim's relationship with the impressionist perspective; “the objects, persons and

events [Haşim] mentions go beyond the time and space and would take on the colors

and shapes just as seen in the 'impréssioniste' pictures” (2018, p. 82).

Associating this situation with the sensitivity of Haşim's sense organs, Yakup

Kadri adds: “Ahmet Haşim had at least one or two more than the five senses we

know of. Because his eyes were seeing things in a landscape that we couldn't see.

Because his nose was picking up scents from a flower that we didn't understand.

Because his ears knew how to pick up and listen to things that we thought were dead

and silent” (2016, p. 14). Yakup Kadri's interpretation of Haşim is remarkable in the

context of "multi-sensory perception of landscape" (Mark, 2011, p. 2) and Yakup

Kadri’s statement points to Haşim’s completely different attitude towards the

landscape. The poems that Haşim collected under the title of Lake Hours [Göl

Saatleri] are almost a manifesto of this attitude.

The poems in which Haşim's impressionist view was most visible in his book

Lake Hours. In 1911, the poems he wrote while he was in Izmir were published in

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Servet-i Fünun magazine. The titles of the poems in Lake Hours, which consist of six

verses following a four-line preface, are also remarkable in the context of

impressionism. These poems, with their titles corresponding to different times of the

day, such as “Noon”, “Afternoon”, “Evening”, “Night”, “Midnight”, “At Dawn”

reflect the appearances at different times of the day. It can be argued that these titles

are reminding of Claude Monet’s “Haystacks” and “Rouen Cathedral”. Just as Monet

conveyed different light conditions corresponding to different times of the day in the

1890s, Haşim reflected the views of the lake at different times of the day in his

poems. Considering that the 1914 Generation painters had not yet returned to their

homeland in 1911 when these poems were written, it can be said that these poems of

Haşim preceded the impressionist view in the history of Ottoman painting. Adding to

that, Tanpınar stated that these poems resembled impressionist painting sketches

(2016, p. 296). Literary historian İnci Enginün (2018) called these poems as painting

poems (p. 610).

Departing from Lake Hours’ 4-line-long preface “Seyreyledim eşkâl-i hayatı /

Ben havz-ı hayâlin sularında, / Bir aks-i mülevvendir onunçün / Arzın bana ahcâr u

nebâtı”57 Kaplan said that these lines summarized Haşim's attitude towards the

world. According to Kaplan, Haşim did not portray external reality as it was and as it

appeared – the way realists did (2019d, p. 285).

Within the scope of these statements it can be concluded that Haşim differed

from naturalists by not describing sensible reality as it was; but he also approached

the impressionists by describing it as it appeared. Diverse forms of life, with stones

57 I watched the shapes of life / in the waters of the dream pool, / colored reflections hitting the water

of the imagination pool / are the animate and inanimate objects of the world for me.

258

and plants, were creating colorful reflections in Haşim's imagination pool. Haşim had

moved from the reflections of animate and inanimate objects on the water to the

reflections of appearances in his imagination. What Haşim was talking about here

was actually the impressions. Every aspect of external reality, from celestial bodies

to landforms, reflections and shadows, to the most dazzling colors, were echoed in

other poems included in Lake Hours. The act of watching that Haşim talked about

here was no longer based on tefekkür. As it is about impressions/appearances; it was

based on temaşa. The contemplative way of seeing, which was dominant in the

religious stage, was replaced by the spectatorial way of seeing in the impressionist

stage. Haşim's Lake Hours heralded a brand new perspective based on spectatorial

way of seeing.

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CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION

Based on the couplet “Mestâne nukûş-i suver-i âleme baktık / her birini bir

özge temaşâ ile geçtik”58 quoted from 17th century Divan poet Nâilî, Hasan Bülent

Kahraman (2013) made a distinction between scopic regime based on modernity and

Ottoman temaşa systematic. Kahraman’s distinction formed a fundamental point of

departure for this study. In the context of this study what has been done in a sense is

directly opposite of Kahraman’s claims. As a matter of fact, what Kahraman called

as scopic regime is being addressed as the spectatorial way of seeing within the

framework of this study. And what Kahraman called as temaşa systemic is being

addressed as the contemplative way of seeing (tefekküre dayalı görme biçimi). In

this study it is argued that what Kahraman called as temaşa should be tefekkür

instead.

Although the claim of this study seems as a simple argument to make,

clarifying and elaborating on the differentiation of temaşa and tefekkür has

significant consequence in regards to analyzing the transformation of the worldview

and way of seeing in the Ottoman culture in the 19th century.

This contemplative way of seeing transformed into a spectatorial way of

seeing in the process of Westernization experienced by the Ottomans in the 19th

58 We stared drunkenly at the embroidery of the images of the world. / We passed by watching each one

in a different way. (Dünyadaki suretlerin nakışlarına sarhoşça baktık. / Her birini başka bir şekilde

seyrederek geçtik.)

260

century. As the Ottomans experienced a transition from absolutism to

constitutionalism, from sultanate to republic, from monarchy to democracy, from

theocracy to secularism, from being a servant/subject to being an individual through

the course of Westernization period, occurred a transformation in the traditional

worldview of the Ottomans.

The naturalist worldview –which was adopted in the course of Westernization

or modernization– was no longer based on the act of contemplation [tefekkür], but

instead it began to be shaped by the act of viewing [temaşa]. Whereas the

contemplative worldview was based on the eye of the mind or the heart, the

spectatorial worldview would be based on the eye of the head or bodily eye. In this

sense, in the face of nature, feeling of curiosity [merak] and desire to dominate the

nature would begin to take place the feelings of awe, wonder [hayret] and reverence

so that the way of representing the nature in artworks through descriptions or

depictions had also changed. In this course the nature or sensible reality [gerçeklik]

was no longer a mean for reaching or grasping some transcendental Truth [hakikat];

it had become an end-in-itself. Therefore hierarchies between Truth and reality,

intellect and reason, reality and appearance, inward meaning and outward form,

abstract and concrete, unearthly and earthly, seeing with the eye of the mind and

seeing with bodily eye, tefekkür and temaşa would change.

Within the scope of this study, this transformation has been examined in four

stages: Religious, metaphysical, naturalist and impressionist. There are diverse

characteristics that distinguish each stage from the others. Accordingly, the religious

stage was shaped around the stylization tendency. At the core of this tendency lies

the idea of aniconism in Islam. It is a kind of indecision or uncertainty that gave its

characteristic to the metaphysical stage. Underneath this indecision or uncertainty

261

was the uneasiness experienced by some Ottoman intellectuals, who gradually began

to see external reality with a different eye. The naturalist phase was shaped around

the picturesque attitude. At this stage, painting gave direction to literature, just as

photography gave direction to painting. The Impressionist stage was shaped around a

brand new gaze based on spectacle (temaşa), called the impressionist gaze.

The religious stage was the stage in which the contemplative way of seeing

was most dominant. The metaphysical stage was the transitional stage from the

religious stage to the naturalist stage. At this stage, there is a kind of struggle

between the contemplative way of seeing and the spectatorial way of seeing. The

naturalist stage was the stage in which the spectatorial way of seeing became more

and more dominant. The Impressionist stage was the most dominant stage of the

spectatorial way of seeing. In this process, the traditional way of seeing of the

Ottomans, based on contemplation, turned into a way of seeing based on spectacle.

In the transition process from the ontology of Being to the ontology of

becoming, the existing hierarchical structure between (divine) Truth, (objective)

reality and (subjective) appearance has been shifted in favor of the latter ones in the

sense that Truth-oriented attitude has given its place to the reality-oriented one; and

eventually the reality-oriented attitude has given its place to the appearance-oriented

one. At this point, (subjective) appearance began to be considered as more significant

than the (objective) reality and (divine) Truth, respectively. External reality –which

was conceptualized as a pale shadow of the Truth in the first two stages– was

considered as the truth itself in the naturalist stage. In the impressionist stage,

external reality began to be conceived as consisting only of appearances. In this

process, the Truth has turned into a mere appearance. Intellectual content of the

transition from contemplation to spectacle was shaped, with reason replacing the

262

intellect as a mental faculty, and then the senses coming to the fore. In the process

where Being was reduced to becoming and reality was reduced to appearances, the

representation of the Truth has begun to be replaced by the description of

appearances.

To sum up:

1. It is possible to see many examples where the concept of contemplation in English

is translated into Turkish as temaşa or tefekkür, or vice versa. However, the concepts

of temaşa and tefekkür, by their origin, are words that have different meanings, and

to use them interchangeably or to use them as if they are synonyms can lead to some

unexpected directions.

2. Based on the distinction made between the concepts of contemplation (tefekkür)

and spectacle (temaşa), it is possible to propose two different ways of seeing that are

shaped around the acts met with these concepts. Contemplative way of seeing and

spectatorial way of seeing.

3. Contrary to what was claimed by Kahraman, the traditional way of seeing of the

Ottoman was not based on spectacle (temaşa), but on contemplation (tefekkür).

4. Through this distinction proposed between the two ways of seeing, Westernization

and modernization process experienced in the 19th by the Ottomans can be

reinterpreted within the framework of the transformation in the way of seeing.

263

5. Accordingly, in the Westernization process, the Ottoman's contemplative way of

seeing turned into a spectatorial way of seeing.

6. It is possible to examine this transformation through religious, metaphysical,

naturalist and impressionist stages, which coincide with different generations on both

literary and visual planes. In this respect, in the literary context, poetry, which is the

most visible form of contemplative way of seeing, was chosen, and in the context of

the visual plane, painting, which is the most visible form of spectatorial way of

seeing was chosen.

In the Context of Contribution to the Field of Study: Based on the distinction made

between the concepts of tefekkür and temaşa, the two different ways of seeing that

have been proposed based on these two concepts, and the transformation between

these ways of seeing, this study can offer interpretation suggestions at different

scales, including minor and major. Based on this study, on a minor scale, it is

possible to execute a different reading on the course of Turkish literature in the era of

Westernization in poetry, and the course of Turkish art history in the 19th century, in

particular. On a major scale, the worldview transformation of the Ottoman Empire in

the process of Westernization and modernization could be interpreted with a brand

new reading through the transformation in the way of seeing. In this process, it is

possible to interpret the diversities between different generations through the

differences between the four stages proposed in this study.

In the Context of Further Studies: This study can be considered as introduction

consisting of a historical and theoretical background for a larger-scale study designed

264

to be more inclusive and versatile. In this context, it is possible to suggest a larger

scale study that could be conducted in the future, as such: A transformation similar to

the one experienced by the Ottoman Empire also took place in the West. In the

process that started with the Renaissance, the way of seeing in the West changed

from being based on contemplation to being based on spectacle. This process can be

studied in detail with its historical and philosophical underpinnings on both visual

and literary planes. After this review, an even more comprehensive comparison of

the Western and Ottoman ways of seeing can be made.

Similarly, Japanese modernization can be examined through the

transformation in the way of seeing. In Japanese history there has been a

transformation process called Meiji Restoration Period (1868-1912). In this respect,

on the basis of transformations in the way of seeing, the comparison of two cultures,

which have undergone similar transformations in similar years, can yield very

interesting results.

Furthermore, in terms of examining the transformation of a way of seeing

through the similarities and differences between different mediums such as poetry

and painting, which at first glance seem unrelated to each other, this study can

inspire interdisciplinary researchers to conduct similar analysis on the manifestations

of ways of seeing in diverse fields.

265

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