A Private Reading

of Andre Gide's
Public Journal

HEN I was eight, my mother gave me a diary with a lock and a

key. It was raade in Turkey in the early 1960s. The fact that this
fancy notebook was intended as a "diary" at that time in Turkey
was in itself interesting. Until I received my elegant green diary it
had never occurred to me that I could have a private notebook of
my own to write things in, and that I could lock it and put the key,
probably the first I had possessed, in my pocket. It implied that I
could produce, own, and control a secret text. A very private
sphere indeed, which made the idea of writing interesting and
encouraged me to write. Up to that time, the idea of privacy and
writing had seemied to me to be completely contradictory. One
wrote for newspapers, for books, for publication I thought. It was
as if the notebook with the lock on it was whispering to me:
"Come, come, write something here and don't show it to anyone."
That the habit of keeping diaries is not common in Islamic cul-
ture is something historians and literary historians remind us of
eveiy so often. Otherwise not much attention is paid to the sub-
ject. The Eurocentric historian sees this as an inadequacy, and
sometimes relates it to concepts like private sphere, or insinuates
that individuality is curtailed by social .pressure.
As it can be obsen'ed from some annotated examples that have
been published, diaries have probably being kept without any
Western influence in many parts of the Islamic world. For the
most part the authors have kept these diaries for their own use,
for recording and remembering. They were not kept with any
idea of writing for posterity, and since there was no tradition of
Copyrig!it © 2003 Orhan Pamuk.

SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 70, No. 3 (FaU 2003)

1002 SOCIAL RESEARCH

annotating and publishing diaries they were destroyed, either

deliberately or accidentally. At first glance, the idea of showing it
to others or publishing it eliminates the privacy embodied in the
notion of a diary. The idea of keeping a diary for publication sug-
gests a certain artificiality and pseudo-privacy. On the other hand,
it tends to expand the concept of the private sphere through the
power of the writers and the publishers. Andre Gide was one of
the first to do this.
After the Second World War, in 1947, Andre Gide was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature. The decision was not surprise; the
78-year-old Gide was at the height of his famie and reputation. In
those years France was still seen as the center of world literature,
and Gide as the greatest living Erench writer. His outspokenness,
the vehemence with which he espoused political causes and the
equal vehemence with which he abandoned them, and the
endeavors he made to reveal the "sincerity of men," whom he
placed at the center of his intellectual world, had won him plenty
of enemies and admirers.
Among Turkish intellectuals, whose eyes were fixed with envy
and yearning on Paris, Gide also had large numbers of admirers.
The most notable of these, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, wrote an arti-
cle for the republican and pro-Occidentalist newspaper
Cumhuriyet when Gide was awarded the Nobel Prize. Before pre-
senting some extracts from this article, I must make a few remarks
about Tanpinar for those who know nothing about him.
Tanpinar was a poet, essayist, and novelist 30 years younger
than Gide. Today his work is foremost among the classics of mod-
ern Turkish literature. Not only leftists, modernists, and Occiden-
talists, but conservatives, traditionalists, and nationalists
acknowledge this status, and all frequently exploit Tanpinar's
reputation and prestige. Tanpinar as poet was influenced by
Valery, as novelist by Dostoevsky, and as essayist he leeirned m.uch
from Gide's uninhibitedness and logic. But his attraction for
Turkish readers, particularly intellectuals, and that which made
 READING GIDE'S JOURNAL 1003

his work indispensable in their eyes, was not that he was inspired
by French literature, but that he was committed with equal inten-
sity to the spirit of Ottoman culture, above all its poetry and
music. This simultaneous preoccupation with the tranquility and
dignity of a premodern culture and the modernist European lit-
erature gave rise to a fascinating tension in Tanpinar's personal-
ity, a characteristic he bore with a sense of guilt. In these respects
he could be likened to another non-European writer, Tanizaki.
Like Tanizaki, the tension between the tradition and the West is a
source of bitterness in Tanpinar's world. But unlike Tanizaki,
instead of getting pleasure out of the violence, suffering, and per-
petration of suifering caused by this tension, he focuses on the
way people are torn between t^vo worlds, and the sorrow and
poignancy of this condition.
Here is a passage from Tanpinar's article published in
Cumhuriyet 50 years ago:

In these post-war years one of the pieces of foreign news

which has afforded me most is Andre Gide winning the
Nobel Prize. This honourable gesture, this deserved admi-
ration, has satisfied us all on one point about which we had
been justifiably uneasy: Europe still stands. Despite the
storms of disaster which have swept over it, the destruction
of homelands, the wretchedness of great numbers of peo-
ple waiting for peace which eluded them, eight capital cities
under occupation, and France and Italy squandering them-
selves on civil strife, Europe still stands.
Because Andre Gide is one of those rare people, just the
mention of whose name reminds us of the finest aspects of
a civilization or a culture.
During the war years there were two people I often used to
remember and think about. They appeared to me like two
stars of salvation in an occupied, devastated and desolated
Europe, in a grim darkness pregnant to an unknown future.
1004 SOCIAL RESEARCH

They were Gide, whose whereabouts were unknown to me,

and . . . Valery whom, by various roundabout means, I had
discovered was living in Paris without wine, without ciga-
rettes, and even without bread (Tanpinar, 1995: 476).
Tanpinar goes on to compare the writing of Valery and Gide,
and concludes:

These two friends alone were keeping Europe alive in its

purest form and broadest sense. They were re-inventing old
stories, re-establishing their value, in short rescuing a cul-
ture which was the essence of humanity from the grip of
prosalcism and aggression. . . . They were the identity of a
culture in human form (Tanpinar, 1995: 476-477).

When I first read this article years before, I remember finding

it very "European," if somewhat affected. What I regarded as
affected and even callous was that, whiie millions had died and
millions of others were suffering the loss of their families, homes,
and countries—so many lives lost and so many nations scat-
tered—our attention should be drawn to the cigarettes, wine, and
sufferings of one writer. What I admired as being European was
not the idea of Gide representing Europe, but that a writer could
be singled out from the crowd, and described as being the
"human form" of an entire culture, alone and single-handed, and
to wonder and worry about what he had done during the war.
Gide's famous Journal, in which he poured out all his thoughts
with an essayist's lack of restraint, is ideal for imagining him in
this loneliness, with his thoughts, indecisions, and fears. Gide
gave these notes recording his most private and personal
thoughts to his publisher and they were published during his life-
time. This journal may not be the most famous of its kind in mod-
ern times, but it is definitely the most prestigious. In its first
volumes there are some angry and derisive comments on Turkey,
which he visited in 1914 after the Balkan War.
 READING GIDE'S/OC/iWAL 1005

Gide first describes how he met a Young Turk on the train to

Istanbul. This pasha's son had been studying art in Lausanne for
the previous six months and was now returning to Istanbul with
Zola's popular novel Nana under his arm. Gide finds him super-
ficial and pretentious, and derides him (Gide, 1948: 6-7).
When he reaches Istanbul he loathes it, just as he had loathed
Venice, Everything there has come from somewhere else, either
brought by money or force. The only thing that makes him happy
about Istanbul is leaving it behind,
"Nothing sprang from the soil itself," he wrote in his diary,
"nothing indigenous underlines the thick froth made by the fric-
tion and clash of so many races, histories, beliefs and civilizations"
(Gide, 1948: 7).
Then he jumps to another subject: "The Turkish costume is
the ugliest you can imagine, and the race, to tell the truth,
deserves it" (7).
Something that many travelers who have experienced in differ-
ent countries and keep to themselves he admits with blunt hon-
esty: "I'm unable to lend my heart to the most beautiful landscape
in the world if I cannot love the people that inhabit it" (7),
At this point remaining true to his own "honesty" is more
important than the country he is visiting: "The very educative
value that I derive from this trip is in proportion to my disgust for
tile country," he writes. "I am glad not to like it more" (20).
The Swedish Academy praised Gide's writings as "a form of the
passionate love of truth that since Montaigne and Rousseau has
become a necessity in French literature." Such a sincere passion
for the truth of his own feelings and impressions prompted Gide
to say something else no one else had the courage to voice. After
his return from Turkey he remarked of Europe: "For too long I
thought that there was more than one civilization, more than one
culture that could rightfully claim our love and deserve our
enthusiasm. . . . Now I know that our occidental (I was about to
1006 SOGIAL RESEARCH

say French) civilization is not only the most beautiful; I believe, I

know that it is the only one" (20).
These words by Gide, which could easily win him a prize for the
politically most incorrect comment at an American university,
illustrate that a passionate love for truth does not always lead to a
politically correct statement.
But my object here is not to dwell on Gide's devastating hon-
esty, or to condemn him for his undisguised reclaims. I love Gide,
his work, his life, and his values just as Tanpinar did. In my child-
hood and youth his books were much loved in Turkey. May father
had all of them in his library; and I experienced all the love of
Gide previous generations had felt.
I know that I can best approach the concept of Europe from
this angle: by simultaneously thinking of the dislike Gide felt for
other civilizations—for my civilization specifically—and the great
admiration Tanpinar felt for Gide and through him for Europe. I
can only express what Europe means for me in terms of this com-
bination of contempt and admiration; love and hate; revulsion
and attraction.
At one point in his article, which he concludes with praise of
Gide's "pure thought" and "sense of justice," Tanpinar intimates
that he is aware of these lines in the Joumal (Tanpinar, 1995: 477).
But with understandable difference, he does not go into detail.
Tanpinar's teacher and mentor, Yahya Kemal, one of the greatest
twentieth-century Turkish poets, had also read Gide's account of
his visit to Turkey: this came to light in a letter addressed to A. S.
Hisar and published after his death in which he described these
notes as "a travel diary which sets out to revile the Turkish char-
acter with the most poisonous animosity." He complains to his fel-
low writer, "Of all the defamatory writing against us ever written,
this is the most venomous. . . . It vexed me to read it" (Beyatli,
1990: 97). An entire generation had read these pages by Gide,
and like an indiscretion to be passed over in silence had, apart
from a little whispering, behaved as if they had never been writ-
 READING GIDE'S JOURNAL 1007

ten or they had been written in a locked diary. Not surprisingly,

when selections from Gide's Joumai were translated into Turkish
and published by the Ministry of Education, his remarks about
Turkey were quietly left out.
In other articles Tanpinar vmtes about the unmistakable influ-
ence on Turkish poetry of Gide's book Les nourritures terrestres
(Fruits ofthe Earth) (Tanpinar, 1995: 477). The custom among
many Turkish writers to keep a diary for publication before their
death comes from Gide. A style of diary inspired by Gide^ Joumai,
written more in anger and denunciation than as confession, was
made popular by Atag, the most influential critic of tlie Turkish
republic's early years, and found a following among the next gen-
eration of critics too.

I ask myself whether in going into all this detail I am losing

sight of the real question. Is there really a contradiction between
Gide's account of his journey to Istanbul and Turkey after the
Balkan War and his dislike of the Turks, and the admiration felt
by Tanpinar and a whole generation of Turkish writers for Gide?
We admire writers for their ovm worlds, values, and literary skills,
not for whether they approve of us, our country, or our culture.
In his Diary of a Writer, published in installments in a newspaper,
Dostoevsky describes what he saw on his first journey to Erance;
he talks at length of French hypocrisy, and of how the sublime
values of that country were fading and being replaced by money.
But when he read these words later they did not stop Gide from
admiring him, or from writing a marvelous book about Dosto-
evsky. In this respect, to the extent that he distanced himself
from a narrow patriotism, I regard Tanpinar, who was an admirer
of Dostoevsky who despised the French, as taking a "European"
attitude.
1008 SOCIAL RESEARCH

When in 1862, fuming with rage, Dostoevsky declared that the

concept of fraternity no longer existed in France, he went on to
expand the topic, prefacing his remarks with the words, "In
French nature and in occidental nature in general. . . . " Here,
when he identifies France with the Occident, there is no differ-
ence between Gide and Dostoevsky. Tanpinar's outlook is the
same, but unlike Dostoevsky he did not feel an increasing anger
toward France and the West, but an awkward admiration, mixed
prickings of conscience.
I can now tackle my earlier question better: perhaps there is no
contradiction in admiring a writer who scorns one's own culture,
civilization, and nation; but there is a strong bond between the
two states of mind—disdain and admiration. From the window
through which I look out, the idea of Europe appears to be in the
shadows of this bond. My image of Europe or the West is not a
sunny, luminous, grandiose, and sublime idea. My image of the
West is of a tension, a clash between hate and love, aspiration and
disparagement.
I do not know whether Gide had to travel to Istanbul and Ana-
tolia to discover that his own France, or Occidental civilization,
was, in his own naive words, "the m.ost beautiful of all"? But when
Gide arrived in Istanbul I have no doubt that he set foot in
an (other), different civilization from his own. For the past two
centuries, Occidentalist, Ottoman, and Turkish intellectuals have
been convinced, like Gide, that Istanbul and Anatolia, our places,
are completely divorced from the West. But at this point, where
Gide feels irritation and scorn, they feel longing and admiration,
and experience a kind of identity crisis. When, like Tanpinar they
begin to identify themselves excessively with Gide, either they
silently pass over his disdainful comments about themselves, or at
the opposite on the edge of Europe, torn between West and East,
is obliged to have a faith in Europe even stronger than that of
Andre Gide. The extent of Gide's influence on Turkish literature
 READING GIDE'S/OCZRATAL 1009

despite his tirade against the Turks and derisive opinion of them
can perhaps be explained in this way.
Where I come from, the idea of the West is not a concept to be
examined, analyzed, or developed by looking at the history and
great ideals that created it; it is an instrument. When we use it as
instrument we participate in a kind of "civilizing process."
Because Europe has it, we want something that does not exist in
our own history and culture, and legitimize our demand by
appealing to Europe's prestige. At home in our own country the
concept of Europe justifies the use of force, radical political
changes, and ruthless severance from tradition. From improve-
ment of women's rights to violations of human rights, from
democracy to military dictatorship, many things are justified by an
Occidentalism, which stresses the idea of Europe and a kind of
positivist utilitarianism. Throughout my life many habits of daily
life, from tabie manners to sexual ethics, have been criticized and
changed on the grounds that "that's how they do it in Europe." It
is something I have heard over and over again since my child-
hood, on, the radio, on the television, and from, my mother. It is
Rot an argument based on reasoning, but one that precludes all
reasoning.
What I find heartfelt in Tanpinar's excitement about Gide's
Mobei Prize can be better understood when we recognize that the
Occidentalist intellectual depends on an ideal of the West rather
than the West itself. Like Tanpinar, the Occidentalist intellectual,
even if he is someone who regrets the loss of traditional cultural
values, the old music, poetry, "the sensitivity of former genera-
tions," and past lifestyle, can only criticize his own culture in
depth, can Only make the transition from a conservative national-
ism to creative modernity to the extent that he clings to a fairytale
image of an ideal Europe or the West. At least he can open up an
inspiring, critical, and interesting hew area between the two.
On the other hand, the need for a fairytale image of the West
can cause even a deep and complex writer like Tanpinar to share
1010 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Gide's naive and vulgar idea of the West: "Occidental civilization

is the most beautiful." But this European dream depends on
imagining a contradictory, hostile "other." Now I return to one
not easily provable reason for the failure of Occidentalist
Ottoman and Turkish intellectuals to openly raise an objection to
Gide's crude and humiliating remarks about their own culture,
for the feelings of guilt felt by one generation of twentieth-cen-
tury Turkish intellectuals, and their silence: in one comer of their
minds, perhaps unacknowledged even by themselves, they pri-
vately agree with Gide's observations. But they locked and hid
these thoughts in their own journals.
In fact, a considerable proportion of Gide's observations were
shared by the Occidentalist Young Turks. It depended against
whom and under what circumstances these sentiments were
expressed, whether they were whispered clandestinely or shouted
aloud. Here we gradually approach the point where the idea of
Europe was to become interwoven with nationalism, which was to
nourish it and give it shape. The views of Gide and similar West-
ern observers of the Turks, Islam, East, and West were not only
adopted by the last generation of Young Turks, but incorporated
into the founding concept of the Turkish republic.
Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish republic and father of
the modern Turkish nation, carried out a program of Occiden-
talist reforms during the early years of the republic, from 1923 to
the mid-1930s. Along with the replacement of the Arabic alpha-
bet by the Latin, the Islamic by the Christian calendar, and Eriday
by Sunday as the day of rest, there were other reforms such as
improvements in women's rights that left deeper marks on soci-
ety. The debate triggered by these reforms between Occidentalists
and the modernists who defended them, and the nationalists and
conservatives who attacked them, still forms the basis for most ide-
ological discussion in Turkey today.
One of the first reforms Ataturk carried out was the statutory
adoption of Western dress two years after the establishment ofthe
 READING GIDE'S JOURNAL 1011

republic in 1923. This proscriptive reform, which obliged every-

one to dress like a European, was inspired as much by the
Ottoman legacy of distinguishing forms of dress for each religious
community as by an Occidentalist vision of Europe.
In 1925, exactly one year after the publication of Gide's
remarks about the Turks, Kemal Ataturk was to express similar
ideas in a public address delivered in the course of a tour of Ana-
tolia during which he announced the new laws on dress:

For example, I see a person [indicating with his hand] in

the crowd before me wearing a fez on his head, a green tur-
ban wound around the fez, a mintan [coUarless shirt], and
over that a jacket like my own. The lower part I am unable
to see. Now what kind of costume is that? Would a civilized
person let the world hold him up to ridicule by dressing so
strangely? (Unan, 1959: 216)

If these remarks are read in conjunction with Gide's notes, it

could be assumed that Ataturk concurred with the French writer
in tliinkirig that what was most infuriating about Turkey was the
way people dressed. We have no idea whether Ataturk had read
Gide's observations published a year before, but as we have
already seen, Yahya Kemal, one of his supporters, had read them
just around that time, and expressed his strong indignation in let-
ters. However, what matters here is that Ataturk echoed Gide in
viewing dress as a yardstick of civilization: "When the citizens of
the Turkish republic declare that they are civilized, they are
obliged to prove that they are so in their family life and in their
lifestyle. A costume which, if you will excuse the expression, is half
flute half rifle barrel, is neither national nor international"
(Unan, 1959: 210).
The point is not whetJier these words by Kemal Ataturk address-
ing the forms of private life are an answer to those of Gide or not.
The fact that Atatiirk identifies Europe with civilization entails
ttiat Occidentalist discourse is a source of humiliation. This
1012 SOCIAL RESEARCH

humiliation is closely bound up with nationalism. Occidentalism

and nationalism have the same spirit, but as in the case of Tan-
pinar, it exists in combination with feelings of guilt and shame.
The idea of Europe in my world is also profoundly mixed up with
these sentiments, but in a very "private" way.
Both Gide and Ataturk consider that the ugliness of the cloth-
ing worn by the Turks in the early years of twentieth century is
the undesirable result of being beyond the pale of European civ-
ilization. Gide sums up the relationship between a nation and its
costume in the words, "and the race, to tell you the truth,
deserves it."
Kemal Ataturk, on the other hand, believed that Turkish
apparel misrepresented the nation. During the same tour of the
country, at the time when he was launching reforms of dress, he
declared:

Is there any point in displaying a valuable jewel to the world

when it is smeared with mud? Is it reasonable to inform
them that there is a gem hidden beneath the mud, but that
they are not aware of it? Of course it is essential to dispose
of the mud in order to reveal the jewel. . . . A civilized and
international style of dress is for us bejewelled, a costume
worthy of our nation (Unan, 1959: 210).

Ataturk, by presenting traditional costume as mud enveloping

the Turkish people, found a way to confront the sense of shame
that afflicted every Occidentalist. This might be described as a
tangential blow at shame.
Ataturk distinguishes between the costume he (with Gide and
Occidentalism) reject, and the people who wear it. He views dress
not as a part of the culture that shaped the nation, but as a stain
smieared like mud on the race. Therefore, for the sake of the idea
of Europe, the difficult task of forcing the people to discard this
costume in favor of another in order to become European was
tackled. A few years ago—exactly seven decades after Ataturk
spoke these words—the Turkish police were still chasing people
 READING GIDE'S JOURNAL 1013

wearing traditional dress in conservative districts of Istanbul, with

television cameras and. journalists in pursuit.

Now let us speak openly of the shame, that basic emotion that
has covertly but constantly accompanied the idea of Europe from
the words of Gide to the reaction of Tanpinar, and from the poet
Yahya Kemal's indignation at Gide to Kemal Atatiirk's attempts at
reassurance.
The Occidentalist is first of all ashamed because he is not
European. Then (but not always) he is ashamed of what he does
to become European. He is ashamed that he has lost his own
identity in the endeavor to become European. He is ashamed of
having and not hawng his own identity. He is ashamed of the
shame itself, which sometimes he erupts against and sometimes
accepts with resignation. He is ashamed and angry when these
shames are bared.
All these embarrassments and confusions rarely impinge on the
"public sphere." In publishing Gide's Journal in Turkish, just as
those sections concerning Turkey have been cut, so words about
Gide rem^ain whispers. While Gide's will to expose his private jour-
nal in the public sphere arouses our admiration, it is also inter-
preted as a source of legitimacy for state intervention in dress,
which is one of the most private human concerns.

Translated from Turkish by; Mary Ism

References
Beyatli, Yahya Kemal. Mektuplar ve Makakler (Letters and Essays). Istan-
bul: Istanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1990.
Gide, Andre. The Journals of Andre Gide. VoL 2. Trans, and annotated by
Justin O'Brien. NewYork: Knopf, 1948.
1014 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Tanpinar, Ahmet Hamdi. Edebiyat Uzerine Makaleler (Essays on Litera-

ture). Ed. Zeynep Kerman. Istanbul: Dergah Yaymlari, 1995.
Unan, Nimet, ed. Atatiirk'iin Soylev veDemegleri II (1906-1938) (Ataturk's
Speeches and Statements). Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 1959.