Excavating Memory Bilge Karasu’s Istanbul and Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Ottoman and Turkish Studies Series Editor Hakan T. Karateke (University of Chicago) Other Titles in this Series The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands: Turkish Memoirs and Testimonies of the Great War Selim Deringil  Disliking Others: Loathing, Hostility, and Distrust in Premodern Ottoman Lands Edited by Hakan T. Karateke, H. Erdem Çıpa, and Helga Anetshofer Waiting for Müteferrika: Glimpses of Ottoman Print Culture Orlin Sabev Investigating Turkey: Detective Fiction and Turkish Nationalism, 1928–1945 David Mason For more information on this series, please visit: academicstudiespress.com/ottomanandturkishstudies Excavating Memory Bilge Karasu’s Istanbul and Walter Benjamin’s Berlin ÜLKER GÖKBERK BOSTON 2020 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gökberk, Ülker, 1947- author. Title: Excavating memory : Bilge Karasu’s Istanbul and Walter Benjamin’s Berlin / Ülker Gökberk. Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2020. | Series: Ottoman and Turkish studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020019141 (print) | LCCN 2020019142 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644694428 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644694435 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Karasu, Bilge--Criticism and interpretation. | Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940--Criticism and interpretation. | Identity (Philosophical concept) in literature. | Beyoğlu (Istanbul, Turkey)--In literature. | Berlin (Germany)--In literature. Classification: LCC PL248.K33 Z64 2020 (print) | LCC PL248.K33 (ebook) | DDC 894/.3533--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019141 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019142 Copyright © 2020 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. ISBN 9781644694428 (hardback) ISBN 9781644694435 (adobe pdf) ISBN 9781644694442 (ePub) Book design by Lapiz Digital Services Cover design by Ivan Grave On the cover: Tan Oral, “Balıkçı ve Kediler” (Fish Vendor with Cats), an illustration for Bilge Karasu’s “Beyoğlu Üzerine Metin” (“Text on Beyoğlu”), from the book and exhibit “Beyoğlu’dan Esintiler,” 2008. Published by Academic Studies Press 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com To my beloved family Contents Acknowledgments x Introduction 1 1. Beginnings: Reading Memory 19 2. From Berlin’s Old West to Istanbul’s Beyoğlu: Narratives of Memory, Narratives of Lost Topographies 53 3. Incompleteness as Anti-Autobiography: The Production and Publication Histories of Benjamin’s and Karasu’s Memory Narratives 85 4. Bilge Karasu in Historical Context: Identity Formation in the Shadow of “Turkification” 106 5. Forgetting, Remembering, and the Workings of Collective Memory: Survival and the Retrieval of Memory Traces 128 6. “Dialectical Images” in Beyoğlu’s Black Waters: The Photograph as Testimony 157 7. Remembering as Distortion: Visual and Aural Traces of Alterity 175 8. Spatiality as the Inscription of the Past 199 9. Crazy Meryem as the Saint of Beyoğlu’s Marginalized: Toward a Final Reading of Difference 227 Conclusion 246 Addendum: Biographical Notes on Bilge Karasu 257 References 260 Index 271 Beyoğlu’nun sayısız sokaklarının herbirinde görüldüğü, görülebileceği gibi, burada da kediler. . . sokağa inerler, balıkçının ardından yürüyen ke- diler ordusuna katılırlar sessizce. Hiçbiri saldır- gan değildir. Balıkçı bir kapının önünde durdu mu hepsi durur, kıçını yere kor, sıralandığı çem- bersel çizgiden balıkçının ellerine diker gözlerini. (As they are seen, can be seen in each of the countless streets of Beyoğlu, so here, too, cats. . . they go down the street, they join quietly the army of cats walking behind the fish vendor. None is aggressive. When the fish vendor stops at a door they all stop, put their ass down, forming a circle they fix their gaze on the fish vendor’s hands.) —Bilge Karasu, “Beyoğlu Üzerine Metin” (“Text on Beyoğlu”) So zittert durch durch die schmetterlingserfüllte Luft das Wort “Brauhausberg.” Auf dem Brauhausberg bei Potsdam hatten wir unsere Sommerwohnung. Aber der Name hat alle Schwere verloren, enthält von einem Brauhaus überhaupt nichts mehr und ist allenfalls ein von Bläue umwitterter Berg, der im Sommer sich aufbaute, um mich und meine Eltern zu behausen. Und darum liegt das Potsdam meiner Kindheit in so blauer Luft, als wären seine Trauermäntel oder Admirale, Tagpfauenaugen und Aurorafalter über eine der schimmernden Emaillen von Limoges verstreut, auf denen die Zinnen und Mauern Jerusalems vom dunkelblauen Grunde sich abheben. (Thus, through air teeming with butterflies vibrates the word “Brauhausberg,” which is to say, ‘Brewery Hill.’ It was on the Brauhausberg, near Potsdam, that we had our summer residence. But the name has lost all heaviness, contains nothing more of any brewery, and is, at most, a blue-misted hill that rose up every summer to give lodging to my parents and me. And that is why the Potsdam of my childhood lies in air so blue, as though all its butterflies— its mourning cloaks and admirals, peacocks and auroras—were scattered over one of those glistening Limoges enamels, on which the ramparts and battlements of Jerusalem stand out against a dark blue ground.) —Walter Benjamin, “Schmetterlingsjagd” (“Butterfly Hunt”)